Basic Barré Chords #3of4 (Guitar Lesson CH-006) How to play A shapped barre chords

Justin's Completely Free, Guitar Chords Lessons. This is Lesson CH-006 Part 3.

In this lesson you will learn about A shape major barre chords, how they are formed, and tips for getting the fingers in the right place and all the notes clear.

Find the related course notes on the following link:
http://justinguitar.com/en/CH-006-BasicBarres.php

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

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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.