Guitar Lessen - Barre Chords and Guitar Players - the Conflict Continues

One roadblock on the highway of learning guitar is the barre chord. The newbie guitar player tries it and it hurts. If you persevere, the discomfort will lessen and eventually go away altogether. Too many people allow barre chords to stop their progress as guitarists. You had to get callouses on your fingers at the beginning of taking your guitar lessons. You got over that hump, you can get over this one.

First, the difficulty with barre chords could be just due to the fact that your guitar’s action is too high. This could be the case with a beginner’s acoustic guitar. If you take it to a guitar store or to a guitarist that you know, they will be able to tell you if the guitar is at fault. With an acoustic guitar it might be a matter of putting in a shallower bridge bone and filing the grooves in the nut a little. With an electric guitar the action can be adjusted.

If you are seriously put off by learning barre chords, you can back off a little and try alternatives like completely ignoring chord changes. That sometimes works when you accompany yourself singing. Another alternative is to stay with the open version of your chords. This could make your guitar playing a little awkward depending on the style of guitar playing you are getting into, but you could try it.

Another approach to chords is telling yourself that they are all basically three notes: the first, third and fifth notes of the scale. So a three note F chord is made up of the notes F, A and C. You can play the notes in any order, not necessarily from lowest to highest. If you try finding three note chords for yourself you might learn something about the notes on the fretboard. While we are on the subject of playing fewer notes, you could just play the first and fifth notes of the chord. These are your basic power chords.

As barre chords are open chords with some notes fretted by the first finger, you could try just moving the open chord up the fretboard and only playing the notes that are not using the barre finger. For example you could just move the open E chord up one fret to make an F and don’t play the open strings.

To play barre chords you might need to build up some strength in your fingers that you don’t have already. The best way to do this is to devote a little time every day to practicing your barre chords. Learn your basic barre chord shapes based on the open E, A, C, G and D chord shapes. Don’t be too hard on yourself, there are five shapes to practice, and you can fool around with trying out how they sound in relation to each other, and your changes don’t have to be quick. Once you have done fifteen minutes a day on barre chords for a week or so, you will be seeing improvement enough to motivate you to finish the job. Like getting callouses, once you can play a barre chord, you will never slide back.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.


Learning to teach yourself how to play guitar these days is much easier than in years past. Mainly because of the online options you have to teach yourself how to play guitar.

Online video and audio lessons for guitar have become more and more available in recent years and they rival any traditional or home tutor lessons that are much more costly.

Video capture software have made it possible for professional instructors to not only produce high quality videos but also capture video where you can see both hand moving on the guitar at the same time.

This is crucial when learning to teach yourself how to play guitar because you can actually watch hand movements over and over again to begin to mimic the movements of the teacher.

These lessons are more affordable because when you are using a teacher in the home you tend to spend alot of time going over older lessons to make sure you have them down. When paying a teacher per lesson this can start to add up very quickly.

With the online lessons to teach yourself how to play guitar you can review those lessons as many times as you need without incurring additional lesson costs.

Another added bonus to using the newer online video and audio lessons are the advent of jam tracks. These tracks allow you to apply each thing you learn to actually playing along with a band track making learning much more fun.

I know when I started learning guitar using a traditional instructor there was nothing more boring than having to practice chords and notes for hours upon end without having anything to relate them to as far as actually playing something.

My son recently decided to pick up the instrument and rather than teaching him I told him you are going to teach yourself how to play guitar using online lessons.

He has been having way more fun than I did as a kid learning guitar because I can see him using each of the chords and note structures as he learns them to play along with jam tracks. This makes him feel like he can actually play the guitar rather than just some random chords and notes.

My guess is he is probably a couple years ahead of where I was at his age simply because he is using huitar lessons that make learning easier and more enjoyable. I can certainly tell you they were much easier on my wallet as well.

I recommend anyone interested in starting to teach yourself how to play guitar spend some time looking at the great online video and audio guitar lesson packages as a easier and much cheaper alternative to not only learn how to play guitar but have a lot more fun while doing it.

They are designed by top guitar lesson instructors that know how to make these pessons not only great for adults but even better for kids that have short attention spans.

The lessons, games and jam tracks are designed to teach yourself how to play guitar but at the same time enjoy learning the instrument. That is something we really did not have as kids.

About The Author

Check out one of the best ways to teach yourself how to play guitar using online and video lessons at: http://www.proguitartraining.info


  
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