OT – Guitar… How to measure progress, 1 Year in

To learn the barre chords in E position first is how I teach them….but within four lessons or so (massive generalisation obviously) I’d introduce A shape barres. For a bit of context, on the 2006-2012 rock school syllabus, barre chords are introduced at grade 3 and one piece uses both E and A shape barres. Whether or not people on here can/do use them is irrelevant, all good players that I know , even ones that have been playing for only a few years would be able to do them with ease and a little perseverance will see an extremely useful tool learned.

plays smoke on the water in A barre chords. sounds good 🙂 Oo plays it up at 7th fret with open e for added drone.

Oh and name decent tune that uses them?!! Really! Off the top of my head, The Boys Are Back In Town, Layla ( verse), More Than A Feeling?, Under The Bridge, Scar Tissue….in fact loads of Chili’s stuff, tons of Oasis tunes, She’s Electric is a great example of mixing both yes. The list could go on for a while!

OK … What chord shape are you using for muddy winter trails ??

Enough of the A barre bashing… 🙄

E,A,Em and Am7 Barres are pretty standard electric guitar fare.

btw learning B will make F easier.

the intro to Smells Like Teen Spirit uses an A barre though it can be played just as easily with just E barres.

Isn’t it just power chords?

depends on what tab you look at and how loose you are with your strumming 😉

Well I appreciated ems’ advice – as well as the other advice on here :wink:… it’s all good.

Specifically, I think emsz was spot on with the getting fluency with the main chord progressions and getting the strumming patterns off.

It’s only recently that I’ve started to pay more attention to what my right hand is doing!!!

… and still need to speed up that C to G chord change 😡

ETA – To start with I did find getting a clean sounding A chord quite dificult – large fingers, and getting all three into the space on the fret was tricky… moving up the board to the shorter frets is even more tricky – deffo one for the 3 strings under 1 finger approach!

I enjoy playing C and G shape barre chords but thats just me.

Learning E, A and power chords based from the D ang G strings are incredibly useful – none are more or less important than the other

OP – if you fancy a skype guitar lesson for free let me know

Plum

It’s only recently that I’ve started to pay more attention to what my right hand is doing

we have all been there

deffo one for the 3 strings under 1 finger approach!

dont recomend it as it makes changes [from it] harder/slower IMHO – only used it you want to free up othe rfingers for embelishment

Rkk01

Alternative method of playing an A chord is first finger on g second finger on d third finger on b , it also means that your first finger stays where it is to do changes from A to D. it’s sometimes a bit easier to cram in fat fingers that way rather than straight down.

Probably get flamed for it though 🙄

Open A for me is from the nut … index finger on the G, middle finger B and ring finger D.

This way the index finger can stay on the G for when/if you change to a open D chord

Probably get flamed for it though

jebus, grow up.

Emsz – Wouldn’t that be A major with a flat 7th?

breakthrough for me was finding just how many learn to play so and so song on youtube. simply think of a song you want to learn and go search, someone will have done it. there’s tons of pap, but also some real gems. martyssongs in particular.

I’ve been playing for the past 16 years or so but still not that good. In the beginning I obsessed over learning chords, barre chords, scales etc. Whilst important, as important if not more so, is right hand technique (if you’re right handed) although I realise this depends on the style of music you play. Also I don’t think anyone has mentioned “the Blues” which is the basis of a lot of music is very useful to begin to learn.
I understand what Emsz was saying re:the A shaped barre chord although an old school favourite (showing my age) “I Don’t Want To Know” by Fleetwood Mac includes this shape chord.