Foxy's Guitar Lessons

Lesson 2

- Moveable bar chords.

Welcome to the second lesson. If you're having trouble switching between open chords. you should review lesson one. As always, start off by warming up. The warm-ups in lesson one are suggested. This one is good, as well, although it doesn't have a name:

|------------------------6789-------|   |
|-------------------5678-----78910--|   |  and so on...
|--------------4567-----------------|   |
|---------3456----------------------|   \/
|----2345---------------------------|
|1234-------------------------------|

What I'll talk about in this lesson are bar ('barre'?) chords. Bar chords are chords fingered with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers while the first finger is fretted across all (sometimes only five) of the strings.
The most common bar chords, and the ones I'll be discussing are made using the E chord fingering and the A chord fingering. Let's take a look.

bar   1  3  5
   E  F  G  A
e|-0--1--3--5--
B|-0--1--3--5--
G|-1--2--4--6--
D|-2--3--5--7--
A|-2--3--5--7--
E|-0--1--3--5--

Notice the fingering is all the same.
For the A string, use your 3rd finger. For the D string, use your 4th finger. And for the G string, use your 2nd finger. As you move the chord, your first finger replaces the nut and you make an E chord. The same is true for A chords. Look at these:

bar   2  3  5
   A  B  C  D
e|-0--2--3--5--
B|-2--4--5--7--
G|-2--4--5--7--
D|-2--4--5--7--
A|-0--2--3--5--
E|-------------

There are two ways to play these chords. The first way is to bar with your first finger and use your third finger to fret the D,G, and B strings. But it's hard to sound the high E string. The second way is to fret with your first finger and play the rest with 2, 3, and 4.

To find out how to find what chord you're playing, refer to the note chart. For the E form chords, find what fret you're barring on the chart and read what note is on the E string and that's what chord you're playing. For the A form chords, do the same thing with the A string.

Here are some more open chords that you can use as an E form bar chord or with the A form.

E form:         A form:
  E7  Em  Em7           Am  Am7
|--0---0---0-------------0---3-|
|--0---0---3-------------1---1-|
|--1---0---0-------------2---2-|
|--0---2---2-------------2---2-|
|--2---2---2-------------0---0-|
|--0---0---0-------------------|

Example:
Take the Em and bar the 5th fret (A). That's an Am.

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