Barre Chords

When you played the verse part to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the intro lead riff to "Today", you were "barring" frets- basically holding multiple frets with only one finger. While just using two fingers to fret the strings might seem more easier than "barring", the purpose of it is so that you can do more as you have more fingers available. No more is this more true than learning the F Major chord.

Below is the F Major tab. Instead of just barring two frets, this time you will be barring the entire first fret. Barring is the only way possible this chord could be played.

Here's what fingers to use for each string:

Practice strumming the F Major chord with down strokes 4 times in a row to get a feel for "barring" all 6 strings:.

Now, let's practice chord transitioning from F Major to an open chord- E Minor, which you've already learned. Use downstrokes for this example:

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The secret to learning the guitar as fast as possible: consistency. Don't confuse consistency with thinking this means you need all the free time in the world for guitar lessons. Practising the material I teach you for just 10 minutes per day will be far more beneficial to you than practising once a month for 6 hours in one sitting.

About Us

Contact us at stupideasyguitar [at] gmail.com. The goal of this site is to teach people how to play the guitar as quickly and easily as possible. From what I've found, guitar teachers and instructors often don't teach their students things that will help them learn the instrument as fast as possible. Why? Well, a lot of guitar teachers are classically trained so they will teach their students things like how to read music which can be very time consuming, frustrating and boring for beginner guitarists. While there is nothing wrong with learning how to read music, this should never be taught at the beginning of the guitar learning process because its gets in the way of teaching students things that are much easier to learn so they can get playing recognizable riffs, chords and songs on the guitar as soon as possible. The more students aren't learning the simple and easy things first, the greater the chance there is of them quitting and giving up on the guitar altogether.