Learning The Barre Chords

One of the important part of beginner lessons in guitar is familiarizing our fingers to the barre chords. These chords are important to learn in order to be able to play music in all its path. We have to exert patience and effort to execute these chords as these requires combined efforts of pressing the strings, checking correct finger positions and producing the clear tones. It really pays to be patient here cause at the end you will make your musicality reach its point of versatility. As you get familiar with these well, you will find it later that you're not exerting effort anymore and so the full freedom of achieving good performance is just a few steps away.

Lets start with the F major chord. This is the complete chord in F major and the number on the side indicates first fret of the guitar where the chord will start to form.

  

But for the meant time if you want a much easier chord position in Fmajor, you can do this one below.

As you can see your forefinger here is pressing two strings simultaneously. The first and the second string at the first fret. Learn to apply an extra pressure on these 2 strings to make it sound clearly. Don't let your forefinger be placed on top of the metal line because it will muffle the strings. Your middle finger here is pressed at the third string, second fret and the ring finger at the fourth string, third fret. The two "X" signs signifies those string not included.

Another frequently used chord as a beginner is the F#m (F#minor) chord. In the following illustrations are the complete version of the chord which is done at the second fret as indicated by the number beside the box.

  

Now here again is the more simpler version of F#m if you wanted a more gradual or easy learning. Check that the pressing force you apply to your forefinger is enough to let those 3 strings soundly clearly. As you practice this frequently be observant on the equality of all the tones produced. When you've familiarized your fingers in executing this barre chord, i recommend to shift your playing to a more complete chord version as the one posted above to be able for you to achieve some fuller and heavier tones in playing.

Another frequently used is the Bm chord (B minor). Here's the complete version

  

And here is the more easier one. Curve your fingers middle, ring finger and small finger a little to make the fingers apply a perpendicular direction of force upon the strings and to avoid muffling other strings.

Now here is another form of barre chord that is also important to learn as this form can be adjustable anywhere in the fret board. This is the Bb chord (pronounced as B flat major).

  

Another important thing to keep in mind is all the barre chords can be adjusted in either high or low which means you can move it a fret lower or higher without changing the finger positions. In this case you can know all the corresponding barre chords by analyzing it. 

In the guitar fret board, at the first fret, we can do two positions of barre chords and these are the Bb major position and the F major position. If you're on Bb major position, you can see at the table above that if you adjust your position on the fret board higher by one fret (means you're at 2nd fret), you are now doing a B major chord at that unchanged finger position. The rest of the chord names on the table follows as you move in the next fret and so on. Here you will find that another form of D major chord in this finger position is at the 5th fret and E major at the 7th.

The same goes with the F major position on the first fret. If you look at the table, adjusting this position to the next fret will give you the F# or Gb major chord, G major on the 3rd fret, A major on the 5th and so on.