More Bar Chord Examples (Part 2)
In the last lesson about bar chords we discussed using the E and E minor shape to create 24 chords up the neck using just one shape! This means that if you have a songbook with chords written over the lyrics, you can pretty much play every song. The only issue with this is that you may find yourself jumping from the first fret up to the tenth fret! This takes away some of the fluidity of the music which is very important.
As previously discussed there are several other bar chord shapes that can be used which mean that any given chord is only a maximum of a few frets away from the first.
Currently we have worked on not only the E and Em but also in the first lesson about bar chords we used the Am shape to create a Bm.
The final chord that is very popular to use as a bar chord is the A shape. I have left this until lat as some people may find this a bit of a tricky one as it is in fact a double bar chord! What do I mean by this? Well, basically, with the usual A shape played in the normal open position we use three of our fingers to fret the chord. Whilst it is possible to swap all your fingers around as we have with the other chords, you will most likely find it quite uncomfortable to turn it into a bar chord, if not impossible. Take a look at the chord shape below:
The reason I have said this is a double bar chord is because we are in fact only going to use two fingers to play this chord. Obviously our first finger will be used to create the bar then using our third finger we bar across the B, G and D string to create the A.
Now this may fee very awkward at the moment, and you may struggle to get the top E string ringing out. I normally advise my students that, to begin with, do not worry too much about ringing out that string but it is worth a long term goal of achieving all 5 strings sounding correctly.
As with the other bar chords this can be moved around the neck to create other chords. Bearing in mind that the A chord is only a 5 string chords, the A bar chord also carries this property so no matter where on the neck you play this shape, you will always only play 5 strings. Another point to note is that the bass string of the A chord is the open A string. This is the root of the chord. If we canted to play a C chord, for example, the you would need to position your first finger (doing the barring) on the note of C. If we could up from the open A string we have:
A - A# - B - C
(Of course there are no sharps between B and C along with E and F)
So to create a C chord using the A shape we start the chord on 3rd fret.
Try this -
You now know how to play a C in three different places. The first is the open position C that we learnt way back.
The second is the A bar chord shape on third fret that we have just discussed.
The last place you are able to now play a c chord is using the E shape from the last lesson. Lets again count up the notes to find where the root is on the E string.
E - F - F# - G - G# - A - A# - B - C
So it is on the 8th fret.
Hopefully this all makes sense to you but ever, please leave a comment if there is something that is unclear or something you would like me to explain further.
