Learning Bar Chords

Jamie Music History #11

I played the guitar a lot the year I was fifteen, when I was a junior counsellor at camp. The two ways that worked the best for me to learn new things were these;

1. Have your hands on your guitar all the time.

2. Watch the hands of people who can do things you cannot do.

I was doing these things regularly that summer. I learned how to fingerpick that summer by watching, then going home and trying. One time I was watching somebody play and they threw a B chord into their song just as smooth as could be. I had never learned that chord before, and I watched their hands closely to see how they did it. That evening when I had time I sat down with my guitar and tried to do what I had seen them do.

They had laid down finger 1 as a bar in the 2^nd fret, and finger 4 did another bar in fret 4, across the three strings of A. I tried it once and got nothing but thuds. It seemed sensible to me to move it up the neck some, where it was easier to squeeze, so I settled my first finger in fret 5 and my 4^th finger in fret 7.

I tried it. Buzz-thud-thud-thud-buzz. Hmmm. My little finger had never had to bend in that direction before, and it was too weak to hold its own. I reached over with my right hand and hooked my third finger over my pinky to hold it down. That was difficult. But my chord said thud-ring-ring-ring-thud. That reinforcement worked! Buoyed by this knowledge, I tried to reinforce my finger 1 with finger two. I had to strum fast, because that motion pulled finger three off finger four, and that time my chord sounded ring-thud-thud-thud-ring. Reinforcement worked, but not with both at the same time. Hmmm…

I worked on making that chord every day for two solid weeks, and every day it thudded and buzzed. But one morning I woke up and I could do it. It needed the right technique, sure, but that was not all. My fingers needed to learn that shape, and to develop the strength to hold that shape. For me, that took two weeks, and the B chord shape has been my friend for life.