Guitar Chords: Barre Chords

So, following on from the last post in this series on guitar chords, in which we’ve looked at major and minor open chords, we’ll now be looking at “barre chords”.

What are Barre Chords?

Barre chords, sometimes spelt “bar chords” or “barr chords” are chords in which there are no open strings. Instead, we use our first finger to “barre” the strings at a certain fret. This “barre finger” is acting as the nut, which allows us to move our open chord shapes around the fretboard.

For example, compare the F chord below with the open E major shape. Every note is moved up by one fret (up in pitch, so notes that were on the first fret move up to the second etc,). Therefore all the notes that were open strings in the E chord (which is pretty much “fret 0″) now have to be moved up by one fret also (so they become “fret 1″, or the first fret). The easiest way to do this is to just lay your finger across all the strings at the first fret and then add the “E shape” from there.

The same thing can be done to the “A shape”, which is how we play B chords. Remember, there is both a major and a minor shape to learn.

Pay close attention to the red dots, these are the root notes. So on the F chords, the note on the low E string is an F, and on the B chords the note on the A string is a B. If you use these charts in conjunction with the .pdf file of all the notes on the guitar fretboard (found on the home page), you should be able to work out a major and minor chord for every root note (or “letter”).

If you want to stay updated with this series, please don’t forget to subscribe.
Rob.

November 23, 2010 at 11:00 pm | Guitar Chords, Guitar Technique and Exercises | 1 comment

One Response to “Guitar Chords: Barre Chords”