Hello my friends.
Hope this finds you well and happy.
Welcome to Master Your Barre Chords Part 3,
where we're going to be talking about A shaped barre chords.
I'm a little gutted because I just filmed four lessons
with my new little lapel microphone to increase the sound quality,
and I forgot to turn it on, so now I have to do them all again, don't you just love that?
Anyway, so, before we get into doing these A shaped barre chords,
it's really important that you mastered properly your E shaped barre chords.
The most important reason is the fact that this muscle here,
in between your first finger and your thumb, needs to get nice and strong.
So, make sure you do a little bit of work
with some songs using those E shaped and A shaped barre chords.
The other songs that I will have to do again now, are Times Like These by Jack Johnson,
which uses E shape barre chords,
as well as a really funky rhythm guitar pattern with this click thing.
And also Day Tripper by The Beatles.
I'll redo those lessons as soon as I can, but I'm not sure if I'll have time
to do them in this session now.
So, but I figured the A-shaped barre chord is kind of more important.
So, let's get straight into checking out our A shaped barre chords.
But you've either learnt to play your A chord like this,
with all three fingers in a line like that,
or the other method that I talk about on my website,
where you'd swap 1st and 2nd finger over, and get this little grouping here.
Either one of those is fine for playing the A chord.
But neither of them work for a barre chord.
Now in order to show you this, I'm going to make sure that,
I'm going to use first this three in a line shape here.
Now if we were to play a barre chord, of course we can't use our first finger,
so we take first finger off.
Second finger moves to where first finger was before,
third finger moves over again,
Little finger comes in to where the 3rd finger used to be.
And there you can see, you have them in a line.
This is quite a common way for me to play A chord anyway,
because my fingers are a little bit too fat to fit in the frets there properly.
So you might want to check this out as another
alternative way of playing your regular A chord as well.
Now when we go for a barre chord for that,
of course the chord shape would then move up, I'll just move it up one fret.
And then the 1st finger would go down in a barre,
remembering that it's kind of slightly on the side, which is ok.
. . .
In fact it's good.
Now the most important thing that you can learn just from this so far,
now this isn't the way that we're going to finish playing the barre chord,
so don't rush to learn this way just yet.
But make sure that the tip of your 1st finger here,
is muting that 6th string.
It's really like, it's literally the strings sitting on the tip of the finger.
So this finger's not pressing down on the string,
it's just touching, it's almost like pushing the string up just a little bit.
Just enough to make sure it's muted. It's really important,
because the Root note is the note here on the 5th string.
So it's really important that we can hear this note,
that note has got to be one of the clearest in the chord,
and also remember that wherever we put that note will become the name of our chord.
So, now, to get this chord shape down properly,
with these three fingers in a line like that and have the barre going, is quite difficult.
Also, the barre has to remember,
would have to touch, would play that note there on the thinnest string as well.
So little finger would have to be nice and round to keep the thinnest string clear.
Now, what's actually a lot more common when we play this barre chord shape,
is to play it like this.
This 2nd finger here, I'm going to tuck it under there,
just to make it nice and clear for you to see what I'm doing.
But of course normally when you're playing it you would leave it out.
You wouldn't tuck it behind like this.
So, the 1st finger is not going to change from that other variation that we had,
which was, it's muting the 6th string, it's playing firmly this note.
But what's different is now we're using a 3rd finger barre,
and 1st finger doesn't even actually have to barre.
Because with our 3rd finger we're playing the note on the 4th string,
the note on the 3rd string, the note on the 2nd string,
and then we're kind of lifting our finger away from the fingerboard,
so that this top string, the thinnest E string,
is actually muted again, so that both the outside E strings are muted
for this type of barre chord shape.
Very, very important.
So, what's important, what's important? There's lots of things that are important.
The way that you perform this barre, is making sure that the,
first of all that the tip of the 3rd finger is not touching the 5th string.
So it's, if the 3rd finger is even just slightly too high like that,
it'll end up muting the 5th string.
And you want that note, that's the most important one.
That's the Root note, so make sure that the tip of that finger
is not touching the 5th string.
Now, try and, when you're pressing the barre,
just as I mentioned for the first finger before,
try and imagine that your energy is pushing,
energy, I'm sounding like a hippy again, but watch how, the middle of,
the energy that you're using to press this finger down,
is the centre of your finger, don't let it be just the tip or the underneath.
But try and kind of press it down from the middle,
almost like you're trying to press the G string,
or the 3rd string down harder than the others,
it's a really good way to think of getting your,
that barre chord shape really solid.
Now the other important part I need to show you is the position of the 3rd finger.
OK here we are for our new angle for the 3rd finger.
Now what I want you to make sure that you're aware of,
is that, oh, if I can do this, it is kind of weird.
This knuckle here, is further forward, than this part of my finger.
So, it's kind of, it's moving away, like that,
so when I'm pressing down, I'm able to press from here,
down with that whole section of my finger there.
If it's too flat, like this, like a lot of people try and do it like this,
with their, you know I talked about how bad it is before,
to have your wrist like this, but if you try and play it like this,
with the 3rd finger here straight,
you can't really press down properly in the middle.
You'll end up either pressing all of them, and getting a 6th chord,
which isn't what you want really.
And, or, you'll just really damage your wrist,
if I just, I might even be able to pan out here.
If I, yay, look at this, don't you love remote controls?
See, you can see how badly positioned my wrist is there,
to have this huge big bend there, is really gonna be uncomfortable,
and that's caused by having my third finger straight,
whereas if I'd, if I do that, I'll do that as a close-up if I can.
Yes, sneaking in, look at this, I love technology.
If I bend my 3rd finger in like this, now you can see that's correct,
and the angle, well it's still got an angle,
but it's nowhere near as bad as when it was like that.
So there is still a bit of an angle there, but it's not terrible.
OK, so, oh, a little bit too close there.
So, just really make sure then that this part of it,
this knuckle is further forward than that part of your hand.
So, and your pressing down that, and also it's laying down,
and it's lifting up, so I'm actually able to get this note here,
the 2nd string and mute the 1st string.
So this note here is ringing, and the thinnest string is not ringing.
It's really important.
Make sure again you do your strum, pick-out, and strum again.
Make sure that you got all those notes.
And also check that the two outside strings are muted as well.
To the Master Your Barre Chords Part 4,
where we're going to look at the variations of that barre chord shape.
Make sure you spend a little bit of time with it again.
Try and get one chord shape down at a time,
and be really happy with the way you play it.
There's no point in knowing lots and lots of chords
that you can't play and that you can't remember.
So, it's definitely, definitely worth writing these things down,
you know, print off some chord paper from my website,
write down all the chords that you know so you've created your own chord book.
So you've got a kind of a collection of the things that you know.
The chords that you know in your head.
You'll also find writing it down on a page will help you remember each shape.
So, of course there's chords on my website that you could choose to print out.
But I think writing them down yourself is also a good way
of making sure that you remember them.
So, before you move on to the next one you want to make sure that you've got
all your E shape, your Major, min, min7 and 7 chords so they're all sounding cool.
And, excuse me, also the A shaped barre chords.
Remember, of course, that this is now a 5th string Root.
So, whereby we had a regular A chord,
the chord I was just demonstrating in that close-up was a Bb chord,
. . .
cause I always had my 1st finger in the 1st fret,
if I put my 1st finger in the 3rd fret, we've now got a C chord.
You hear it's quite similar, there's open chord C,
barre chord C, pretty straight forward.
C at the 3rd fret, D at the 5th fret,
E at the 7th fret. That's the basic gist.
You should hopefully have checked out your Root notes for 5th and 6th string Root
in the Power Chords lesson. If you didn't, you're very naughty
and you should go and revise your Power Chords right now.
OK, I shall see you later on for Part 4, when we check out the minors,
and the 7th shapes for this 5th string Root barre chord.
Remember this is A shape, because it's built around an A chord.
Take care and see you soon, bye bye.