re: Official: Guitar beginners question and answer thread.

Great recommendation

This week has introduced me to barre cords, specifically F and Bm. Just when I thought my fingers were getting tough enough, now it turns out I have to toughen up the side of my index finger I think the high E string is slowly sawing my finger in half. I look like someone with CP trying to play. I mean no offense to anyone with that disease, but it's the only way I can describe the contortion of my body to get it right. Once I saw how to use my strumming arm as leverage, things got a little easier. Now comes the even harder part of learning how to transition to and from those chords seamlessly.

Are you stretching before you play?

I definitely stretch the wrist in flexion and extension, and try to spread my fingers out as wide as I can. I also wash my hands with soap and warm water to help the build-up of callouses, and then stretch and warm-up. I actually don't know if washing the hands helps but I've always done it. Regardless, callous formation can help a lot with chording in general.

For barre chords specifically, I would break it into parts by first focusing only on one fret, not the whole chord. I would first just figure out what part of your index finger you want to use to barre the fret. What I did when I was first learning is to set the edge of the fretboard right at the crease where the fingers meet the palm, and sort of roll the index finger upward so that I could get a good sense of each string. Then I turned the wrist a little bit so that the bonier part of the finger was doing the work, and not the fleshier part, if that makes sense. Then I pluck each string, and then strum the whole barre, each time making sure whatever note I'm holding down rings out clearly. After practicing that for a bit until it feels natural, adding the rest of the chord is extremely easy.

Even after nearly 20 years of playing, any barre chord on the first or second fret is pain in the arse, especially as I play almost exclusively baritone nowadays, and the added scale length makes getting the right wrist angle paramount.

I hope this was clear.

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This week has introduced me to barre cords, specifically F and Bm. Just when I thought my fingers were getting tough enough

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Maybe your ready for some golden finger review.


(definitely tongue-n-cheek)

Mmhmm. Yeah, looks easy enough.

Can someone recommend a inexpensive "guitar looper" so I can lay down a basic 3 chord track and then play lead over it?

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Ditto looper

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thx...that is the one I was thinking of getting.

Can y'all maybe help me out with this? I want to learn this song for my son, but I can't figure out the second chord he plays in the main riff. It goes E ? E. I've tried what looks to be the chord, but it just doesn't sound right. He says it's in the key of E, so you'd think that would narrow it down, but I've tried some of those chords and just can't quite nail it down. The tabs I found online do not match what he is playing in the video. I think I have the rest of the chords in the song figured out.

Thanks

The lazy guy in me really likes that C key one. The learner in me likes the one with the Bmaj (man, that's a hard chord for a beginner).