Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

Most of my practice time has been spent on learning how to read sheet music while playing — not something that is coming easy for me. Thus far, I’ve worked my way up to the D string (from high E). It has taken me about four weeks to get to there. In retrospect, I think that is terrible… I wish I had gotten further faster…

Anyway, tonight after I finished going over about 45 minutes worth of note reading practice and some finger work [this exercise] I spent time looking at barred chords. Right now, as I write this my left hand is hurting me… I really worked the barred chord. I spent about 10 minutes playing a Bm, A, G, Em progression.

After which I started playing a A, G and then a D, C progression. I was playing these using the following chords.

I believe that this is good barred chord practice. Using the A, G progress as an example I was playing:

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4/4 A / / / | / / / / | G / / / | / / / /|
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Repeat that 4 times and then play the same rhythm for D, C progression.

I noticed in the history of search terms that some one attempted to search for “barre chords straining fretting hand” on this site.

If you are straining you fretting hand while playing a barred chord (in my experience) your hand is probably not positioned correctly.

All of your fingers, from the finger doing the barre to the fingers doing the standard-single notes, should be just above the fret wire. (Above is relative to the guitar being stood up.) If you position your hand like this, you will need some pressure to hold down all the strings but not too much.

Experiment with a different amount of pressure. You should then be able to figure out how much pressure you actually need to produce a clean strum [using as little pressure as possible].

Do a google search and you’ll find plently of articles discussing this topic with a similar solution. (So this just isn’t my thing.)

A reader, Staci, is trying to learn to play Bm and had requested pictures.  Below are the pictures I quickly took. I hope these can help Staci and others…

Tip Related to These Photos: Notice how close my finger is to the fret wire. It is pretty much on top of it. Putting your barreing finger just behind (not on, but behind) the fret-wire will help to get a clean sound from the guitar.

These were taken quickly with a iPhone.