root 5 barre chords

http://www.drguitarlessons.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/5th-string-major-barre-chords.jpg

I actually do mine like x1333x so I voted "other". I find that when I do x12341, my get all crammed up if I try to get them close to the fret. Doing x13331 requires a double-jointedness that I don't have. Sometimes I feel bad about leaving out the high e-string though.

13331 but I sometimes play A 123 (or 234)

I do the same as you, how's life. Can't bend the ring finger that much to expose the 1st string so the x13331 is out, I'm not Johnny Ramone, and yeah, the x12341 gets kinda crowded. If you play any kind of seventh you have a lot more wiggle room.

xx111x because I am phenomenally lazy

That's a good way, actually. You can add a note on one of the E strings to get a seventh, like the one that starts Jobim's "Waters of March" if you put it on the low E.

x12341

VARIATION: x13341

though the 4 is probably more like 3/4

x13331, sometimes I think it's the only reason it's worth continuing with this instrument. The bend at the knuckle is only (?) 20 degrees (knew this protractor would come in handy one day), it's enough. My first finger barre for F shape chords is fucking shocking though, can't get the second string to sound consistently at all.

I probably do xx111x more often now, because:

• I injured my wrist and now it hurts to hold full barres for too long
• I only play acoustic now and trying x12341 above about the tenth fret is too fussy
• xx1114 (in an open G shape) is an option for a straight major chord, plus it gives you other easy options for sevenths and more
• it's easier to move quickly between chords if you only need one finger
• watching various Nile Rodgers seminars made me realise you don't actually need all those notes - those three are enough

x12341 because it means I can reach with my pinkie and do little flourishes you wouldn't be able to do with just the flat of your ring finger. I find it more accurate, anyway.

Are barre chords pretty hard/advanced, in the main? Ive been trying to learn guitar and the person teaching me is all "yo, you gotta learn barre then everything will be a breeze" but I just cannot make my fingers behave when I have my index finger stretched out over all the frets like that. It hurts and is so clunky sounding. Is he BSing me saying its easy?

He is making an exaggeration that is so distorted that it might as well be wrong. If you really have a good barre you can do a lot of stuff with it because
1) Just the barre in itself is a chord- 3x333x is a Gm7
2) Since you are only using one finger to make the barre it you can use the other fingers to play other notes.

But this is greatly simplifying things in that
1) It takes quite a bit of time to get a good barre. Even if your barre is OK, it is hard to get each note you are barring to sound properly and once you hold down one or more of the other fingers it changes your barre up a bit so that you may lose the sound of one of those barred notes.
2) There are plenty of chords that don't use a barre at all.

3)Trying to make a barre puts a lot of stress on your hand until you really get it right and you don't want to keep your hand really stressed for sustained periods of time.

x1333x out of laziness

Actually a friend of mine who is a pretty advanced guitar player recently told me the secret of getting a good barre. I've been trying out, if it works I will share it with you. It must be a little bit of a secret because: he has had lots of teachers some of them pretty well-known, at least within small circles of jazz guitar players.

OK, I am back. I had heard bits and pieces of what my friend told me his teacher told him but never heard it expressed so clearly. What he said was, more or less
1) You really need to make sure that you rotate your hand so that you are pressing with the side of the index finger.
2) You don't need to put your finger in a straight line, it can and should have a little natural bend
3) You don't want to be squeezing

Some people think that you are kind of clamping the string between your thumb and your index finger, like you are some kind of human capo. But you really don't want to pressing hard with the thumb, that is putting too much pressure on the thumb which is ending up getting in the way instead of helping, your thumb should just be resting there.

Thanks Blecchs, thats what I thought, its good to confirm it and not feel like I'm just being a wuss. I'm still trying to toughen/stretch up my fingers just doing open chords. Ive been slack and havent practiced in a week argh.

1444

No problem, Trayce. Some people really think you need to give your hand some tough love and stretch it out on the rack of the guitar neck like a medieval dungeon dweller, other people have more of an idea of gently, gradually stretching and then relaxing your hand, of getting it to open up.

Of course, you should take this all with a grain of salt, since I myself am not a proficient guitarist, merely a card-carrying jazz d-bag.

Also don't think I made it clear that my friend told me that he hadn't heard this piece of advice until recently.

Holding a lot of barre chords through a simple 3-minute punk song absolutely knackers my hand out, and I'm not too bad a guitarist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60rq6eKBDuA

I'm doing x2341 there (we're talking about putting all three fingers down rather than laying the third finger flat, right?) but I think I'd have trouble pulling off a tune like that by doing x3331.

i also find that barre chords are harder on some guitars than others. i have yamaha acoustic with a very high action which is impossible to play nice barres on.

Been looking at Buddy Holly videos on youtube and elsewhere to see how he would vote, but I can't find one with a clear shot.

1) You really need to make sure that you rotate your hand so that you are pressing with the side of the index finger.
2) You don't need to put your finger in a straight line, it can and should have a little natural bend

i've tried this but it doesn't seem to work so well for me, i have super skinny fingers and using the side only the knuckle parts make enough contact.

3) You don't want to be squeezing

this, but you still need pressure on the barre and that should come from pulling the guitar back into your body with your arm, not squeezing with the hand. (just a tip i read on internet since i'm less than proficient myself, but it works for me.)

I do tend to "clamp" a bit, but it admittedly ends up hurting the muscle just below my thumb on my hand. It does take a while to get used to playing barres, but I guess everyone eventually finds a way to play them that works for them. What I don't get are the people who reach over and play the E string with their thumb - that looks crazy.

Oh that's especially handy for fingerstyle, where you might want to play say just strings 6,4,3,2. Using the thumb is a lot easier to hold and a lot quicker to change.

I sometimes switch to using my thumb if my hand starts aching, can only really do that for E-shape barre chords properly though.

Every grunge tab I ever saw had the chords marked thusly:

---
---
-5-
-5-
-3-
---

I think the title of the thread is wrong

Well, that's most rock from the mid-70s on. Xp

How so?

Meaning that from the title one would think this would be about power chords as you are describing but the options given refer to barre chords based on major triads.

It's pretty common in guitar lingo to refer to a barre chord by which string the lowest root is on, afaik.

I get what you're saying, because power chords are the.root plus the fifth, but then they aren't really barre chords necessarily

I've always called them E or A barres, never heard that one before, but I know shit all about guitar lingo.

Yeah, I just kind of ignored the root 5 and assumed you just meant barre chords. Which usually end up containing those two notes in that order. But was waiting for someone to show up and ask where da power chords at?

Reminds me of this joke: How many Country & Western bass players does it take to change a lightbulb?

(also lol at Puppybowl gag)

Oops. Mixing threads: gotta go.

Lol

1. First time I've ever noticed that this kind of barre chord has an 'X' over the bassy string. Why's that? That note's part of the chord isn't it?

2. How accurate are you at not playing some strings when doing something like e.g. x1333x? I can quite easily just play the bassy strings, or just play the trebly ones, but I couldn't just play the ones in the middle. I guess I could if I was playing tense and controlled, but usually I'm whacking away. Every string gets hit.

Much easier to do fingerstyle although pick players can do it with judicious use of muting.

If root is on the 5th string, fifth is on the 6th string, so it is certainly part of the chord but you don't have to play it.

yeah the x's were kind of confusing me too. i just play whatever strings seem to sound good.

Holy shit! I have just realised that the Xs in chord books are arranged so that the first string you'd hit would be the root note! Amazing!

Yeah, Ijust chose the way I usually see it diagrammed. By all means play the 6th string if you need something beefier.

(note: C&W joke was intended for this thread)

ok lol, I finally looked at the gif at the beginning of the thread and realized that you are talking about FINGERINGS and not FRETS

Dan, who is your teacher again?

haha um... the internet? I have been really terrible at deciding on a teacher

We know: Boston is not a big guitar college town.

Actually over the weekend I stood in room what seemed to be a roomful of Berklee and NEC graduates, both on the stage and in the audience, so maybe they all came here and no one is left there.

tbh there were a few from Queens College as well.

lol that's the problem, there are a bazillion qualified ppl out there and I am paralyzed by too much choice

although I did rule out this one dude for being annoyingly wacky

annoyingly wackyhttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Timmymallettcropped.jpg/180px-Timmymallettcropped.jpg
Timmy Mallet - he'll teach you hammer-ons...

So how you gonna rule out the other 999,999,999,999,999,999...?

IMM poll

AG Keeper to thread

1444

― calstars, Monday, 25 February 2013 00:43 (15 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YES!

Y'all must have mutant pinkies.

Wasn't there some Modern Lovers Live album with a picture of Asa Brebner on the cover in which he seems to have an extra pinky?

x13331

seems literally impossible to me

i do one of three depending on what else is going on:

x1333x

xx111x

xxx341

you do the x13331 by arcing your pointer finger like a bridge over the 1st and 5th strings
then smoosh your finger finger to only nail strings 2,3 and 4
takes some annoying practice to do, generally not worth the trouble to get that extra high 5th

ring finger, not finger finger or finglonger

I met this jazz guitarist once who told me that his teacher had trained him to never barre ANYTHING, like literally never play two notes with the same finger. Technically it's probably better to play that way in the long run, but it's a pretty steep curve to get there.

It also makes more sense for jazz where you often don't need to play the bass note in the chord (and it can even be redundant to do so).

that style might make a lot of sense on an archtop guitar with flatwounds too, idk

Yes, I was going to mention there is a prominment jazz school of thought that you should never barre because either
1) You are only going to play three notes, if that, whilst comping/playing Freddie Green chords.
2) By locking your hand down in a barre, you are prohibiting yourself from doing some Jimmy Wyble-style two-line improvisations( although how many guys do that anyway)
3) The real reason: that is what rock and roll guys do and jazz guys should never ever do what they do or someone will accuse them of not knowing how to play

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

prominment

We gotta rock-a rock-a rock-a nonstop tonight
At the Prominment Center

3) The real reason: that is what rock and roll guys do and jazz guys should never ever do what they do or someone will accuse them of not knowing how to play

Ha, classical guys play barre chords all the time though.:P

Also, anyone with any classical background at all will vote

x12341

right? That jazz third-finger angled bend is so foreign to me.

PS One more important trick to remember with barre chords: you only actually need to apply pressure on the strings that will sound. With this chord, for example, you only really need to press down on strings 5 and 1. Maybe this is obvious to people here but it doesn't come intuitively to everyone. (Didn't for me.)

Still slightly unsure if I entirely understand everything in this thread.

Regular seventh chords - why is the seventh note not from the major scale?

That's the convention. Assume it I'd because the maj7 is already implicit in the (major, or even minor) I chord whereas the flat seventh sort of implies (obviously not always) a V7.

Ha, classical guys play barre chords all the time though.:P

Think not all jazz guys abide by no barre chords rule, especially if they play nylon string/fingerstyle/Brazilian

(xp to self) so it is from mixolydian mode of major scale /SteveGberg

you only actually need to apply pressure on the strings that will sound
Seems like the natural, conscious instinct is to press too hard in the beginning just to get your hand into the correct shape. But as you start to get it you have to ease up on the tension and let your arm do some of the work, as ledge said, and let your actual, unconscious grasping instinct come into play, the one that is the reason you are supposed to touch a suspected live wire with the back of your hand so you don't end up grabbing it.

especially if they play nylon string/fingerstyle/Brazilian
By which I meant to say, more like classical

on electric either is okay, but on classical guitar this is one of the most frustrating things i encounter, loads of songs require this chord shape, usually while doing arpeggio type fingering so you want the top E string to ring out, it's just not possible for me, i have to contort my hand in such a way that's 1) not comfortable 2) fucks up my balance and moving to the next chord

I hate it when that happens

As common practice classical theory goes, the major-minor seventh chord (what jazz/pop guys just call a "seventh chord") is diatonic over the fifth scale degree (e.g. GBDF in the key of C) and nearly always implies dominant function.

Crackle Box, what gives you difficulty? Is it the fourth finger?

I was in a band with a dude who would play x13341 ... although he was a bit odd.

x13331 but it probably sounds pretty bad

xp: I think I've seen that before. I didn't remember it when I started the poll, but that sounds very familiar.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow.

As common practice classical theory goes, the major-minor seventh chord (what jazz/pop guys just call a "seventh chord")

ilxors be all

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c348/spiritofthehorse16/IMG_0001.jpg

brb slamming my hand in a car door to improve my guitar playing...

http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/Bonfa/PHM200-087.gif

As long as your finger is the right size 13331 would seem the easiest and most natural way to do it.

I can do the 1333 way, but really this seems awkward and less controlled, especially if you're going up and down the fretboard quite quickly. Also what happens if you want to switch from a chord like C to this:

|1
|3
|3
|3
|1
|X

|1
|3
|2
|3
|1
|X

or something?

As long as your finger is the right size 13331 would seem the easiest and most natural way to do it.

This is a truly incredible statement to me!

Yeah, its impossible for me to finger that.

I can see this thread being the ILMM version of the Things That Make You Irrationally Angry thread

ILMM? IMM

I actually don't understand the original diagram, can someone explain it for me?

Why a green dot and why a black dot?

the green dots represent the root notes, because money is green and also the root of all evil.

Easiest way is to tune your guitar EAEAC#E and play everything 111111. That's why Jimmy Page had a double-necked guitar, so he could play minor chords on the other one.

Tune your guitar EARACHE - but minus the R

H major or minor?

H as in BACH

EARACHE MY EYE!

I’m not the worlds fastest or cleanest guitar player, but I can move from a C (as in x30210 I assume) to a x13331 or x13231 and without a guitar in front on me I can’t imagine how it would be any quicker with 12341?

I guess thinking it through, 13331 also requires a flexibility to fingers that some people lack?

x13231

How is this even physically possible? The numbers represent fingers, not frets, right?

voted x13331

haven't played standard tuning in years but if I did that's what I'd do

How is this even physically possible? The numbers represent fingers, not frets, right?

er both, i think dog latin mixed them up in his post.

http://i.imgur.com/HR46mAY.jpg

Yeah, I read that as x13231 or x24342 in terms of frets, which I would then play by fingers x12341.

x13231

How is this even physically possible? The numbers represent fingers, not frets, right?

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Thursday, 28 February 2013 16:09 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry, I was talking about frets here. I don't know what this shape is called. but I just think it makes sense if you#re doing variations on the 1333 / 1323 / 1313 shapes to press each string with each finger.

Sorry, that should be fingers x13241. It’s confusing me no end.

1--- or 1--- to 1---
--3-    --4-    --4-
--3-    --3-    -2--
--3-    --2-    --3-
1---    1---    1---
x---    x---    x---

don't really see why one would be easier than t'other.

Yeah, you would still need to move 2 fingers to go from frets 13331 to 13231 with either method I think.

nothing weird about 13331 to me, if you play power chords long enough it seems a natural thing to do tho my fingers are kinda long + slender

I am trying to master 13331 even though I have stubby hobbit hands

Ah, I see, I guess I move 3 fingers looking at that diagram, although I think I would find it easier to move my fingers if they are all off the fret when switching using the other method. I need to get my guitar out tonight and experiment.

it's the 5th on the high E string i can't get to sound in that fingering (the last "1")

i've never been comfortable with a two-fret stretch with my first and second fingers either

I don't know what this shape is called.
Looks like a Bflat major 7

Sorry, I was talking about frets here. I don't know what this shape is called. but I just think it makes sense if you#re doing variations on the 1333 / 1323 / 1313 shapes to press each string with each finger.

these are different chords!

Yup.

On another note somebody told me a fancy term yesterday for when you just move the exact same chord shape up and down the neck, by a whole step, say, but I can't remember what it was. Perhaps Sund4r can enlighten.

planing

Yeah, thanks. But I had heard planing before this was a longer term. Harmonic parallelism, maybe as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_planing

yeah, one of those things that's easy to do on guitar but gets pretty weird on keyboard on in an ensemble

haha that is all that I've been doing for the past week

oh i was misinterpreting these diagrams too and wondering how what the hell chord x12341 was supposed to be. i guess i usually do X1234X which isn't really a barre chord.

oh good it wasn't only me

I was seriously sitting there looking at the frets on my guitar thinking "wtf there is no way ppl use this ridiculously dissonant mishmash of notes on a regular basis" for two days before I thought to look at the opening picture

I tried building that up as a chord on chordbook, but it was unable to find a match.

it's a b5 sus4, or dim sus4, i think

though idk if using the suspension nomenclature with a diminished is kosher

So, with a guitar in hand. Going from chord shape x13331 to x13231 or x13131, my third finger just has to lift off the G and B strings, but stay on the D string, in a pivot motion.

Holding a x13331 chord shape as x12341 just seems incredibly uncomfortable for me, so either that’s just how my hand works, or would need a lot of practice.

how does x13131 even happen

i tend to like chords where my fingers all clump up together. i don't know why.

barre across with your first finger, ring finger on the D string, pinky on the B string

xp

Wait are we talking about fingers or frets now aaaaaaaaaaargh

In a nice turn of events, fiddling around with those chords it suddenly morphed into 'Harry Irene'.

how does x13131 even happen

― my super interesting Kant story (DJP), Thursday, February 28, 2013 1:31 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's no way this makes sense if it's not frets!

DJP, x13131 is the chord shape, as laid down in Dog Latin notation. Fingers I use for this are 13141, I guess other people might use 12141? Seems very uncomfortable for me.

okay now I am confused by which terminology is in use, have we switched from numbers being fingers to numbers being frets? because I would say based on the terminology established at the beginning of the thread that that would be x13141

there's no way this makes sense if it's not frets!

hence my original question!

xped all to hell now, oh well

yeah people are flipping back and forth btw notating frets and fingers. i've read so much shitty tab in my day...

incidentally, the "C shape" barre chord is the same no matter which one you mean!

x43121

I play all chords 123456

...or the "G shape" chord too

43111x

-9- My first teach yourself guitar book
-9- showed this ninth chord as being what
-9- you should use to play funk, as good
-8- for damping, but tbh I've never seen
-9- anybody use it in my limited times
--- watching funk bands on telly.
Fingers were x21333 iirc.

I like the layout of that post. :D

If you look in Funkmasters:The Great James Brown Rhythm Sections almost every chord is just the top three notes of that chord.

I was in a band with a dude who would play x13341 ... although he was a bit odd.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Wednesday, February 27, 2013 10:14 PM (2 days ago)

this is what i do and i'm not odd :(. i guess it's more x1333(4)1 or something, the 4 reinforcing what's going to be a sloppy 3 if i don't want to risk having my ring finger brush off of the high e. or something.

it's a b5 sus4, or dim sus4, i think

If you're talking about a chord Bb-E-Eb-F, it's not even a diminished chord. I'd just use set theory for something like this: it's an [0126] set. Maybe jazz guys have some way to analyse this?

[0127], my bad

It looks like what you'd design for maximum dissonance with E

Three semitones in a row and then a note a fifth away from the first one. Wouldn't even try to name it.