Learn Guitar Bar Chords – Beginners Introduction – Lesson 15
Introduction To Guitar Bar Chords
The word “bar”, which is also spelled “barre”, is quite simply any open guitar chord,
played on any fret, using one finger to fret two or more notes. Picture
if you will, that the nut of the guitar (that white piece at the top of
the neck that guides the strings over the fretboard) is moveable.
If you were able to move it up three
frets and play an open “E” chord, you would now have a “G” chord.
Remember that the low open “E” string is the root note of the “E” chord.
If you move it up chromatically, the first fret is F, the second fret
is F#/Gb, and the third fret is G.
We can’t move the nut, but we can move our fingers. Place your first finger across all the guitar strings
on the third fret. Now, form an open “E” chord formation with the other
fingers: Third finger on the fifth fret of the A5 string, fourth finger
on the fifth fret of the D4 string, and the second finger on the fourth
fret of the G3 string. Your first finger should be pressing down on the
third fret of the low E6, B2, and E1 strings. To further illustrate the
relation of this chord to the open “E” chord, remove your first finger,
and slide all the rest into the open position. You are now playing an
open “E” chord, but with a few finger changes.
We’ll call this the “E Position Bar
Chord” for easier future reference. You can play this bar chord on any
fret, and the chord name will correspond to the E string note name your
first finger is on. For example, playing the chord with your first
finger barring the fifth fret produces an “A” chord, since “A” is the
note on the fifth fret of the E string.
Bar chords are very useful, and can be
heard in every musical style. Bar chords are used to make open chords
sound different, by way of a thing called “inversion”. Inverted chords
are exactly the same as their common-name counterparts, as they share
the same notes, but the notes are simply played in a different order. To
illustrate, let’s play an open “A” chord. Now play the E Position Bar
Chord on the fifth fret. They’re both “A” chords, but sound different
because of the order of the notes.
Try the following exercise to get used to the “E Position Bar Chord”. Strum each chord four times:
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