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Now, a lot of people really struggle with the F chord, the big barre chord F,

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the big bad F everone's scared of but that one's not coming up until Stage 6.

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What I'm gonna show you is a nice little work-around that you can very often play instead of big bad F

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and that's this F major 7. It's not a particularly difficult chord, in fact actually it's kinda easy

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but what's difficult about it is making sure that you use your ears to let you know when you can use it.

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So if in the sheet music it says 'F' you should try and play this Fmaj7 if you struggle with Big F

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and use your ears to tell you, does it sound cool or not

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'cause sometimes it will sound cool, sometimes it won't.

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For those of you that are music theory buffs or have studied other instruments

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if the song is in the key of C then you play Fmaj7 instead of F. It's probably gonna sound cool.

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If it's in any other keys the Fmaj7 might sound a little bit, well, not right, a bit weird.

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So, just be aware of that and most importantly remember that if it sounds good, it is good.

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So if you try and insert the Fmaj7 instead of an F and it sounds good:

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Brilliant! Use it! It's working, man! That's what the whole point is.

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If it sounds bad, go: 'Uh, OK, I can't play that song until I learned proper bar chord F.'

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which is like I said. It's coming up in two stages. So, we're in Stage 4 now

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and it comes at the beginning of Stage 6, so you haven't got that long to wait.

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So, let's go to a close-up now and check out this Fmaj7.

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So here we are, this is our Fmaj7 chord and you can see if you look at the neck diagram there

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that we are not gonna play the thickest two strings.

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So it's kinda like a D chord in that way. We're not gonna touch those two thick ones at all

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'cause that will sound really horrible with this Fmaj7.

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Now, the fingering is quite easy 'cause we've got here just literally open thinnest string,

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then first finger 1st fret 2nd string, second finger 2nd fret of the 3rd string,

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and third finger 3rd fret of the 4th string. That's a very cool sounding chord.

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. . .

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Now, what's important to realize here, it's a good trick to try and get your third finger

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just leaning over to touch that 5th string a little bit, just to stop it ringing out in case you hit it accidently,

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just if you like a little precautionary measure.

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Now, if you find yourself ever struggling with this one a good way, to get to it as well is from C chord.

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So, if you're starting off with a regular C chord and you move both your second and third fingers

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down toward the ground by one string, you end up with an Fmaj7.

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It's a very, very...you can hear it's kind of an airy sounding chord. I really like this chord.

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and very often you'll find that this chord is used with C.

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So you will often find yourself going like C, Fmaj7 and then maybe G, that kind of thing.

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So, it's a really, really nice little one to get under your fingers.

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I am gonna show you the proper way to play F

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and a whole bunch of cheats on how to get around playing F if you're finding F really difficult

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but I want you to get this chord down, this Fmaj7 chord down,

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'cause it's a really, really useful one to have down at this stage before you've learned proper Big F.

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So, try and get that one under your fingers nicely and I'll see you for yet another chord,

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you learn a lot of chords this stage, I'll see you for another chord in a moment.