Basic Barré Chords #2of4 (Guitar Lesson CH-006) How to play

Justin's Completely Free, Guitar Chords Lessons. This is Lesson CH-006 Part 2.

In this lesson you will learn more about E shape barre chords, hand position and finger tricks and also how to play the minor, 7th and minor 7th shapes, how they are formed, and tips for getting them sounding cool.

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

Taught by Justin Sandercoe. Filmed and edited by Justin too... but not as well as Jedi would have ;) Support notes at www.justinguitar.com - check the "Basic Barre Chords" lesson. I think I look a little strange, kept burping and stuff due to excessive eating of crap food in my latest attempt to stop smoking... either that or I am just weird... or both :) lol.

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And it is all totally free, no bull. No sample lessons, no memberships, no free ebook. Just tons of great lessons :)

To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

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Have fun :)

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When you play a regular open E chord,
the low note E is the open string,

which is the 6th string.

So that's kind of the, what we
call the 'root' note of the chord.

The concept of this root note is that if
we move a chord and it doesn't use any

open strings the chord has a root note
and that becomes the name of the chord.

So this chord here, where
we moved E up one fret,

and put the barre down to make F,
the reason that that chord is called F,

is cause the root note, the note
underneath your first finger is the note F.

Now if we think about where the
other notes are on the 6th string,

say the 3rd fret of the
6th string is the note G,

so if we put down our barre chord shape,
the same one that we're just talking about now,

but now the 3rd fret,
the note underneath the 1st finger,

3rd fret, 6th string, is the note
G, so it becomes a G chord.

And then if we move it up
another two frets it becomes the note A.

So this becomes A barre chord, and you
can hear these things if you test them,

it's quite a nice thing to listen
to, is the G at the 3rd fret,

barre chord and G open
chord. Very, very similar chords.

An A chord with open A.
That's A at the 5th fret.

They sound slightly different of
course, it's a different voicing,

or a different grip of the
chord, but it's essentially the same chord.

So it's a good
idea that you hear
that.

Now, there's also a
few very common variations.

Of this E shape. We've
just been talking about E Major,

and that's definitely the first one
that you should try and get down,

but after that you can
also learn minor, dominant 7th,

and minor 7. Dominant 7th
is obviously sometimes just called 7.

So, we're gonna go
back to another closeup now,

if I can get my little
remote going, and then we'll check

out what these other variations are
on the E barre chord shape.

OK, here we are now, this
is up at the 5th fret,

I'm holding this chord down, this
would be an A barre chord,

A Major, and just very often
referred to as just A barre chord.

Now, the first variation that
you want to learn of this,

or the first kind of way
of changing this into another chord,

is by lifting of the 2nd
finger, will get us an Am chord.

Just the same as when you had an E
open chord and you lifted off your 1st finger,

you got an Em chord,
with this, we started with A,

if we lift off the 2nd
finger we get Am barre chord.

Obviously my helps in
here (?), there's the Major,

lift off that 2nd finger,
and you've got the minor.

Now you can see that my 2nd finger's kind of

lending a little bit of assistance
there to the 1st finger.

It's completely cool for that one
to sit on top there a bit.

It does make it a lot
easier to hold the barre down.

I don't recommend that
you only learn that way,

but particularly when you start, you
might want a little bit of assistance.

Or if the action's high on your guitar, and
you need to press the strings down pretty hard,

that can be a bit of
an advantage. So then we've got Major,

lift off the 2nd finger, minor. Now, if
we go back to Major for a second,

and we lift off little finger,
we end up with a 7.

Just again, if you think back to E
chord, if you have a regular E chord,

and you lifted off your 3rd
finger, you'd end up with E7.

And so the same shape applies
up here, so this is A,

lift off little finger, and you've got
A7, now you can combine those two things,

which was lifting off
2nd finger to get minor,

lifting off little finger to
get 7, and you get m7.

Am7, so Major, lift off
2nd finger rather, is minor,

lift off little finger is A7.
Lift off 2nd finger and little finger,

and you get Am7. So there (?)
the four common E shape barre chord forms.

Major, minor, 7 and m7.

So you definitely want
to check those things out.

Remember that they all move,
so that was A, 7,

with the little finger off, if
I move it up 1 it's Bb7,

if I move it up again it's B7. You got it.

They all move around as much as you like.

This is a pretty weird one, I'm
not trying to show off my T-shirt,

and I'm not trying to look
like I'm chopping my own head off.

I just want to talk a little
bit about this part of your arm,

and how it sits for your barre chord.

So right now I'm holding an A barre chord,

You can see here that this join
here from my forearm into my hand,

is quite straight along here.

A lot of people when
they start their barre chords,

they try and do this, so in
order to make their 1st finger straight here,

their trying to
straighten their whole hand,

and they put a really
big kink in their hand there,

and that's kinda bending
in the wrong place.

If you keep your
1st finger straight of course,

you think about it, instead of,
to make your 1st finger straight,

you can either do that,
bring your whole hand up,

or you could just bend your fingers up,
and keep this part of your hand straight.

Which is a lot
better, you've got all of

the muscles that control
your fingers are in your forearm,

they're up here, you can see them
wiggling around when you move your fingers.

And they're controlled by tendons which
run down the back of your fingers,

down into your forearm there, and
if your wrist is locked like that,

it's not very good for
the tendons, they tend to rub,

and it can kinda lead to RSI
and I think it's called Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

I'm not a doctor, but this is
just the, no, I'm not a doctor,

but I'll have a look at it for you.

So, this is what I've
heard about this Carpal Tunnel,

is caused often by the wrist
being too locked up like this.

So, try and make sure
when you're playing your barre,

if you find that your
wrist is forward like that,

try and concentrate on flattening
that part of your wrist out,

and making sure that you're
bending, it's not perfectly flat,

but it's pretty close to flat.

That's my barre chord shape there.

(?) it's pretty straight, yeah?

So, um, yeah, so just be aware of that.

Also be aware of this.

A lot of people do this
when they try and play barre chords.

They stick their elbow right out
like this, it looks kinda funny.

I call it chicken wings.

So, just be aware of that.

If you find that your
elbow's looking a bit uncomfortable,

or you've got a lot
of tension in your shoulder,

try and imagine that your fingers are stapled or nailed onto the guitar neck,

and then just relax your forearm.

'Cause it really should be, even
though look I'm playing the chord,

this is really completely loose
see, it's not even slightly tense.

So, you want to think about that.

Well I hope you enjoyed
that, my first solo installment,

and that it made sense, and that it's helping you with your E shape barre chords.

I'm planning on doing all of
the other barre chords as well,

the A shape and C shape, and
those kind of interesting CAGED ones as well.

But I thought I'd start off
with this and see how much,

how long it takes me to edit it.

I'm a still a bit slow on
the i-movie, but practice makes perfect, hey.

You all know about that, as I do as well.

So, hope you have fun, and I'll, I always
kind of get stuttery at the end.

It's really funny. Take care of yourselves
and I'll see you soon. Bye Bye.

There's the t-shirt close up, for
any of you that missed it.

(Tassie devil singing.)