Bar chords

Bar chords are some of the most commonly used chord shapes and often prove difficult when learning guitar. The main idea is that you use your index finger to press down across all six strings creating a bar and you use your other fingers to make up the chord shape.

One cool thing about these chords is that you only need to know a few shapes which you can slide around the neck to create other chords. For example if you can play an F major bar chord shape you just slide it up to the 3rd fret and you now have a G major chord, slide it up to the 5th fret and you have an A major bar chord. This makes playing most songs really easy as you don't have many chord shapes to memorise.

Perhaps the most difficult thing when you start is pressing down hard enough on the strings to get a nice tone. If you don't press down hard enough you will find that your chords sound muffled and just plain awful. Practice is the key to developing the fretting hand strength needed to play these chords.

This first exercise shows two different chord shapes. An Fmaj bar chord shape followed by an Fmin shape. We then move these shapes up the neck to form a Cmaj and Cmin chord.

The next example shows bar chord shapes on the 5th fret. The first shape is a Cmaj chord followed by a Cmin, Fmaj and Cmin

Take your time with these shapes and with practice you will get them down.