Unit 1: Barre Chords Part 1

What Is A Barre Chord?

A barre chord is quite simply a chord where you play multiple notes using just one finger. These can range from 2 notes all the way up to 6 notes at a time with one finger. What this means for us as guitar players is that we don’t need to rely on open strings and, therefore, open-string chord shapes anymore. This opens up a new world of possible chords that were unavailable as open chords.

Building Up Strength Excercise

To help us learn barre chords, we will do a simple exercise that will help you build up strength to barre 6 strings. Remember to play all the notes with just the first finger and be sure that your finger is tilted to the side and is all the way up against the fret.

The E Shape Barre Chord

We will start our barre chord quest by looking at the E shape chord. It is called E shape because it is based on the E major chord, just with a barre behind it. It looks as shown in the fretboard diagram. Notice that the 5th fret is totally barred with your first finger!

Moving The chord

When practising this chord, make sure you push down hard and it sounds as clear as possible, we will also move it around the neck. Remember that this chord shape is always a major chord, but depending on what fret you place it on, you get a different root note. For example, if you put the shape on the 3rd fret you get a G Major chord. If you put it on the 7th fret you get a B Major chord, and so on! Here is the chord progression to play:

If you are unsure as to where these chords are, take a look at the fretboard diagrams.

The Notes On The Neck

It is very important to have a good understanding of the notes on the neck in order to really be able to use barre chords effectively. For the E shape chord, we only need the E string learnt, but we will learn it back to front! You must know it in sharps as well as flats as you will see both in chord charts.

The Song

Check out Dan playing through the song we'll be focussed on for the next two lessons. Notice his technique on the barre chords too! We have the backing tracks and tabs available here too!

"New Groove" Part 1

Watch the full playthrough video before moving onto the video below to start to learn how to play it!

"New Groove" Verse

Here we have our first barre chord song! Firstly, just because we are playing a song with barre chords, this doesn't mean the whole thing has to be using barre chords. We will dip in and out of those shapes alongside open chords to create dynamic and texture for the track. In the intro/verse the chord progression is:

The Rhythm

The main groove of the song comes from these muted hits on the 2nd and 4th beat. The main rhythm pattern is shown below, but you must remember to mute the 2nd and 4th hits as shown in the video.

The Bridge & The Chorus

We will now take a look at the rest of the song, which should be nice and simple to put together. Firstly, take a look at the fretboard diagrams for all the chords used in the bridge and chorus.

And here's the strumming pattern: