Am I the only one...

Am I the only one who, upon trying the first lesson on barre chords, immediately went and googled, "Do I have to learn barre chords?" LOL

Yikes.

LOL, it sounds like we are at the same place in GF2. My plan is to keep plugging along with the terrible noise I'm making and hope they are right that it will come. I googled it too, but I'm determined to learn the damn barre chords. Hang in there, I think we can do it if we are patient and persistent.

They are hard to master, it takes time.

Practising then for to long too can cause pain in your forearm.

Much easier to get right on an electric than acoustic, but if that's all you have, light gauge strings will help also

As Austin says it is much easier to do on electrics, but if you don't have one have the action (distance between string and fret) lowered as much as possible and putting the lightest gauge strings you can find will help. The guitar shops can do that for you. Otherwise it will be a struggle getting good clean tone. Also take it slow. I would suggest working on them for short durations at a time or you'll experience some hand pain. It's just another one of those things that is gonna take time for your hand to stretch and strengthen to get them to sound right, but once you do your gonna love Barre chords.

Good Luck,

Moe

Thanks, all! I have a weak wrist from an old injury and I don't think full barre chords are in the cards barring (!) some creative solution. I posted a funky workaround idea in Lisa's forum, but it's pretty funky... LOL.

Weird thing is, it's the one skill I retained from my first attempt to learn guitar back in my teens. Ask me to play a scale at the moment, though, and I'm lost. I think we're all just plugging away at different things. Once you've got barre chords, though, it can make life a lot easier on tricky changes.

Originally Posted by: faith83

Am I the only one who, upon trying the first lesson on barre chords, immediately went and googled, "Do I have to learn barre chords?" LOL

Yikes.

I thought they would take forever but 1 day it just started working. They sound decient but I have a ways to go to really nail it.

Originally Posted by: faith83

Am I the only one who, upon trying the first lesson on barre chords, immediately went and googled, "Do I have to learn barre chords?" LOL

Yikes.

Try to find alternative to barring the fret, there are some variation where you use your thumb to fret the 1st 2 strings and your index to grab the other strings. Some barre chords can be done without using the index to fret all strings.

When I started 1 year ago I also straight away said to myself '' ok well at least I know that barre chord will never be something possible for me '' But I was wrong, with persistence and training your fingers and wrist get stronger. Even when i could get a decent tone I couldnt hold the position for more than a few seconds, it would hurt too much but now it s fine (even though it still is hard to do a full songs playing barre chord only).

My advise is take a song you love that has barre chord, it will motivate you to try to get it ! I dont believe that just working over and over again the barre chord lessons is enough to motivate people to work on it. You need real music to pump you up !

However even after 1 year working on it daily, i never found a position where the G string would not buzz across ALL fret. After fret 4, the G strings always buzz, just can t find a position

Originally Posted by: faith83

Am I the only one who, upon trying the first lesson on barre chords, immediately went and googled, "Do I have to learn barre chords?" LOL

Yikes.

Probably not and judging from the responses thus far it would appear not. But I did not immediately think that. I took me a while.

But what I did do, after months of trying to get them to ring out clearly (and cursing), was to question if I would ever learn them. And I do mean months. I am guessing 9 months. I should look in my log. I worked them too long at the expense of learning other techniques. It became very discouraging and frustrating. I wish that I had moved on continuiing to work them "on the side".

They will come. I think they do for everyone that continues to work them. Be smarter than me and just don't stay on them too long as I did.

Originally Posted by: mathieurevel

Originally Posted by: faith83

My advise is take a song you love that has barre chord, it will motivate you to try to get it ! I dont believe that just working over and over again the barre chord lessons is enough to motivate people to work on it. You need real music to pump you up !

This was great advice, thank you! Some Days Are Diamonds, a current favorite of mine to play, has an F#m and I've been skipping over it. This was great incentive and it worked!

I seriously have been stuck on open chord songs only for 2 months because I can't do Barre chords! Makes me wonder if I'll just be an open chord player only and just use a capo, every Barre chord song even an easy one is a killer for me 😬 has anyone else gotten stuck on open chord songs only forever?

Can you do any barre chords.

Try nearer the neck.

Maybe fit a capo and work away from the head.

revert to normal or move back down the neck over time

You should look at Faith 83's other entries on the subject, titled "A barre chord work around" and "Yea Me". You questions are answered in depth there

Originally Posted by: snojones

You should look at Faith 83's other entries on the subject, titled "A barre chord work around" and "Yea Me". You questions are answered in depth there

Ooh, I'm so glad my posts are helpful. Here it is again:

I played around with all the suggestions and some of my own, and the thing that works great is to set my other fingers down first before the barre -- the opposite of the "right" way, I suppose. Changing the sequence of how fingers are set onto the fret seems to change how the muscles flex and interact with each other and puts less strain on my wrist.

The other alteration that made a huge difference for me was NOT trying to twist my index finger so that the boney part was on the fret -- that alone was a big ouchy ouchy. Instead, I'm keeping the index finger straight with the fleshy part on the fret and instead of twisting it, sliding it further forward on the fret, so that the bottom edge of the fret rests against the very bottom of my finger where it meets the hand, and the tip of the index finger is hanging over the top edge unused. Scooting the index finger offsets the loss of the "boney part" advantage and adds the strength of the whole hand/arm to the mix.

Having figured these two small adjustments out, barre chords slid into place pretty quickly. Tone is good, though not perfect, but all six strings are more or less ringing out, and it's easy and quick to reach for. I'm back in the game.

Thank you, all, and next time I bitch and whine about not being able to do something, feel free to remind me of how wrong I was, LOL.

And the second one:

Yay me, because I just finished learning my first barre chord song, Back Home Again, which includes F#m and B, and a quick chord change between them in the bridge.

Sharing to offer encouragement -- it is possible to get this. For me, it required some breaking of rules (putting my barre finger down last was key) and then practicing with a song with barre chords in it that I love and ached to be able to play, and then playing along with one of John Denver's live album versions to learn it -- so that, yes, full confession -- I could pretend I was on stage backing him up, just for some extra spice.

Good motivation. Maybe someday I'll be good enough to play the guitar licks on Rocky Mountain High...

But for now, yay me and yay all of us for being on this crazy path.