Bar Chords - 4 Best Practice Tips - Play These Exercises...

Learn to play better sounding bar chords on acoustic guitar with these 4 practice tips. You'll also find some useful open to barre chord exercises at the end of the video. Keep on playing!

Keep on playing :)

00:00 - Introduction
00:31 - Tip 1: Finger Order
02:00 - Tip 2: Finger Position
03:02 - Tip 3: Thumb Position
05:46 - Tip 4: Open To Barre Chords
06:50 - Using a chord progression as an example
09:57 - Recap of the chord progressions

[WolfRanger]

I don't know what day it was that I went from being unable to play an F Major Barre Chord to suddenly playing it consistently well, but I know that I still need to improve, and I will practice this exercise.
PS, I can play "O'Carolan's Journey to Cashel" and I'm not hen pecking. You're a fine teacher! THANK YOU 🎉

[sketchy.meagher]

Great video Drue. Love that you mention the open to Barre progressions, so many people just teach how to play the barre chords and ignore the difficulty experienced playing them in songs when you go from open chords to barre chords. Another common change that occurrs in many songs that I try is between open D and barre Bm.

[traceyjkirkby]

Love this lesson and your emails 😊.. thank you!

[SPV]

Hi Drue, do you know of the YouTube guitar teacher Tom Hess? He says he's the teacher of teachers and the best there is on the entire planet.

Well Tom Hess actually says, in his videos, that the thumb must be straight up behind the index finger with the neck wood in between them, that it must be absolutely always be vertical no matter what the size of the player's hands.

He says it cannot, should not and absolutely must not point diagonally towards the headstock.

Kind of confused here between the various instructors styles, should I listen to him or to you?

My hands are just medium sized, not too small and definitely not large either. Just regular fries.

What do you reckon? Love to hear your thoughts on this. Cheers mate!

[birdblackbird]

ok James, here's an interesting problem for you, when I hold the thumb like that for my bar chords I get a soaring pain through my wrist. Is that normal?

[davejames]

Hi Drew long time no see. That was without a doubt one of the best explanations I've ever seen about bar chords. Keep the great work coming Drew

[Charlie-ijee]

Ok, I'll admit it. Bar chords have been the hardest thing about playing the guitar for me. It's taken me 50 years to learn how to play a good, clean bar chord, and I still booger them up more times than not. I suffered a bad cat bite in 2017 that seriously damaged my hand a fingers, the ligaments and muscles got damaged in my hand and middle, ring and baby finger. That has made it seriously difficult to play a D chord and all bar chords. Some power doesn't want me to play the guitar.

[bathroom]

just a quick question for anyone in the comments; I'm having trouble with the sound of the barre actually coming out when playing most of the chord. I know my strength is underdeveloped because the area under the thicker part of my index finger isn't being pressed down enough on the string, however, does anyone have any tips?