Your Online Guide to Playing Better Jazz Guitar
Barre Chords
Once you’ve mastered all of the Open Position Chords, you’re ready to dig in and get some Barre Chords under your fingers. These chords require you to play more than one string with one finger, the Barre as it is called, and this is what makes these chords tricky to learn. If you find that your fretting hand is cramping up, hurting or feeling uncomfortable, then take a break, stretch your hands and come back to the guitar when your hands are feeling better. No point in hurting your hands just to learn a new chord!
Feel free to use this page as a reference point, coming back to it when you need to find that Gm7 voicing for the Stevie Ray Vaughan song that you’re learning, rather than trying to memorize all these voicings in one go.
The chord dictionary contains voicings for the following chord types:
- Major
- Minor
- 7
- Minor 7
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Barre Chords for Guitar
2 Responses to "Barre Chords"
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Just found your site!! I am blown away, wow, what a resource.
I am learning Barre chords using the circle of fifths as a launching point. My piano teacher says he won’t play with me until I can play ‘single note’ melodies of songs (example Blueberry Hill) rather than Barre Chord strumming. Is there a method from moving from Barre chords to knowing where individual notes are on the fretboard?
The single note runs take time (years) I realize; but I want to have a method to learn them.
thanks Matt
Dave
Hey Dave,
Glad you like the site! I just posted a couple articles on cycle of 5th and reading
http://www.mattwarnockguitar.com/practicing-dominant-cycles
http://www.mattwarnockguitar.com/jazz-guitar-sight-reading-skills
But the reading article might not be what you’re looking for.
I would start on the 6th string, try and find all the notes of C major, the white notes on the piano, then do the same on the 5th string.
After you can do that, you already know the 1st string, since it’s the same as the 6th string.
You can then start to learn the other three, but the lowest two are very important since that’s where your roots are for chords, and the top E and even B are also very important for finding melody notes.
Feel free to write out notes on the music you are learning, so write fret numbers, finger numbers, string numbers, whatever helps you get it down. Over time you can stop doing that, but to start it might be a big help.
Hope that helps, if you have any more questions feel free to ask any time!