WEBVTT

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Hello my friends, it's Justin again
coming for the first solo video lesson

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meaning that I'm by myself
not that it's about lead guitar.

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And what this lesson's going to 
be about is barre chords.

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A lot of people, when they first
start playing barre chords,

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say they have a bit of difficulty trying
to get all the notes clear and clean.


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So I'm going to try to explain to you
where the barre chords come from.

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The basic kind of shapes like you might
have learned an F chord,

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it's called an E shape barre chord.

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But I'll give you a few tips on
making sure that you get

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the fingering kind of good for that.

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The first thing is, I've already mentioned
it before, it's an E shape.

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So the very first barre chord shape
that most people learn

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is based really by playing a
regular E chord,

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which I'm hoping you know, 
you should know your E chord good

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before you try a barre chord
with an E shape.

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If you refinger that chord, 
i.e. change the fingers that

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you use, but keep the dots the same.

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So you end up using your second,
third and fourth fingers

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and your first finger is free.

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I'm going to go for a closeup
in a sec, I just have to figure

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out how to do that in a sec.

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Once that chord shape is down
if you move that shape up

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and put your first finger down,
your first finger is replacing the nut.

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The nut is the little plastic or bone
usually white thing down at

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the end of the guitar neck.

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So you can see very clearly that
we've got and E chord,

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if we move up everything up one fret
and then put your first finger

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on the first fret, your first
finger has replaced the nut.

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And the reason it's an F chord
is because it's all the same notes

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just everything has been moved higher
by one semi-tone.

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So, now I'm just going to give 
you a closeup of that,

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exactly this E to F movement.
And then we'll move it up to an

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A or something and 
I'll give you some stuff.

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So I'll get my fancy remote control
thing here, and see if I can

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figure out how to get the camera
to do a closeup on my hand.

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So I'll see you guys in a sec.

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OK, that didn't seem too bad,
so here we are in a closeup.

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So if we start here with our regular 
old faithful E chord.

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So we've got first finger, 
first fret, third string.

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Second finger, second fret, 
fifth string.

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Third finger, underneath.

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Remember of course you are trying
to get this finger up as close

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to the fret as you can,
but you can't get it right

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next door because the third finger
is kind of blocking the way a bit.

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So that's your basic E chord.

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Your first attempt at playing
a barre chord, you should try

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move your second finger to where
your first finger was.

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Your third finger moves to where
your second finger was.

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Your little finger sneaks up there 
underneath.

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So you've now got,
second finger, first fret, third string.

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Third finger, on the fifth string second
fret. And little finger underneath on the

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fourth string. So you can see
now that your first finger

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is free to wave and do little
stupid dances and stuff. OK.

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So that's your E chord.
To get to F you move all of those

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notes up one fret, and the first finger
now goes down and covers

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all of the strings. Now even that's
covering all of the strings because

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your second, third, and fourth finger
covering strings three, four, and five.

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You only really needed to cover
the thickest string and the

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thinnest two strings.

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But in order to do that you kind
of want to put your pressure

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focus your pressure like it's here
in the middle of the barre.

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That's the place that you kind
of focus your energy.

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I know that sounds a bit funny,
hippy stuff.

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But if you think about pressing down
in the middle of the finger,

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it will make the two ends help press
down, kind of consistently.

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Now the other thing with barre chords
that's really important:

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the second, third and fourth fingers
are kind of standard.

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Make sure that they are pressing down
and not trying to lay over like that.

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Regular E, moving up to F.

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Now when you put the barre down don't
try and press down flat down that way

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with the first finger.

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Actually what you're trying to do here
is you're trying to roll over

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the part of your finger,
there's my hand.

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The part of the finger that presses
down for the barre is here,

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It's not the flat like this.
It's not that part there that presses

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it's this kind of on the diagonal of
your finger, the edge.

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So what you do is you put your
first finger down flat kind of

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right on the barre itself.

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So that would be behind the barre,
you can see the barre there now.

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So this is like right on the barre.

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And then you roll it slightly onto the
side, and then your fingers go down.

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Now by doing that, as you probably know,
your first finger doesn't really

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want to move a lot either way sideways.
I know you can move it a little bit,

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but It doesn't tend to want to.

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So if you're trying to think of 
your barre chord grip like this,

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then when you're trying to, if you're
trying to turn your hand that way

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on the guitar neck here, so this way.

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You're putting the pressure sideways
with the first finger.

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Think of the pressure as going sideways.
Not going straight down.

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It will make it an awful lot easier to 
get your barre chord really solid.

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So put it down on the fret
roll it over onto the side,

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so to kind of like 45 degrees,
it's not the side side.

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And then put your other fingers down.

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Make sure of course you practice doing
picking your notes one at a time.

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Making sure you get a nice clear chord.

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Also make sure that your first finger
isn't hanging over the end too much.

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I see some people trying to do their barre
chords with way too much

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of the first finger flopping over.

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So, keep it down so that basically the
idea would be if you moved it down

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to the fifth string root barre chord,
which we're not going to talk about yet,

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but if you did, the first finger, the tip
of it would be muting the sixth string.

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But we want it, you know,
half a centimeter over the end,

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you know that 's like a quarter
of an inch or something like that

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for you Americans who don't have
the metric system going on yet.

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OK, so, the main thing with the barre
chord is making sure you put it flat,

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roll it over onto the side, 
keep the pressure focused in

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the middle of your first finger,
and make sure the rest of your fingers

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is square and not laid over like that.

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Make sure that they kind
of square up like that.

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It was too long, please join me

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for Part two.