How To Play Easy Barre Chord Shapes For Guitar

What's up guys, Taylor? Thank you very much for watching this video. This one is about

easy

barre

chord

s, so if you've been

play

ing

guitar

a little bit, you've probably heard of

barre

ports and they're sturdy and not. Don't worry, they're hard for anyone, so don't beat yourself up, they're hard for everyone at first, so I certainly want to encourage you to keep working on those bar

chord

s and you'll learn them. I promise you it just takes practice. and a little patience, but what I want to do in this video is show you some alternative ways to

play

those same bar chords.

They're going to be a little bit easier for you, so I call them

easy

bar chords. They're great ways to It's kind of a substitute for the normal barre chord

shapes

that are a little bit difficult and they make the easier versions of those and the nice thing is that these easier versions can still be moved anywhere on the neck and today We're going to learn four easy versions of barre chords. a which can replace our four regular time signature chord

shapes

, so let's go ahead and dive into that. There's a lot to cover here, but this will be a great way to replace those hard bar chords with easier ones. and I hope it helps you learn some songs that have these chords and then you can work your way up to those full bar chords.

Let's do this right guys, so let's go ahead and learn some easy bar chords, so in a way, To give you a quick summary of our kind of normal bar chords, we basically have four different bar chords that we can play, for which we have two bar chords that are based on uh e chords, so if you think about your old regular E major. chord and its E minor chord paste our bar chords of those two chords. What we would do is we would normally cross our index finger. We could do this on any fret of the

guitar

.

I'm going to go ahead and stay here. on the first fret we would occasionally put our other fingers in the shape of an E chord to have the bar plus an E chord and if you think about these fingers, it's the same as a normal E chord, even though the fingers that I'm using are a little bit different, they have the same shape and the same kind of pattern with my fingers, so we have bar chords based on an E chord and then also an E minor chord where you would just remove the second finger. and we also have the same idea with chords, we have our major chord and then we have a bar chord based on our major chord, so we use that same shape and we can move it and then the same thing.

The idea with a minor is that we have our minor chord and normally what we would do is take the same shape and just add the beat, but these chords can be a little difficult, so let me give you some easier ways to play those essential four. bar chords, so let's go back to the E chords, that's how we would normally do it right, bar with our index finger and then again we would do that e shape with our other fingers and that can be played anywhere, but if that it's a little bit difficult for you, let me give you an alternative version that will be a little bit easier to play and then you can use these alternative types of easier time signature chords when maybe you're learning songs and eventually you can continue. go ahead and lower those full bar chords too, but let's try the easy version here guys, so again here's our normal version and this is the E bar chord and this is how you would do the easy version, so let's stay here.

On the first three frets I'll also show you how to move them, but up here, on the first three frets, we would do our ring finger on the third fret of the D string, our second finger on the second fret of the G string, and then we would play with our index finger the E and B strings at the first fret, so essentially you still have to play a little bit, but now you only have to play two strings to the right instead of playing the entire guitar. So now we're just excluding two strings, just those top two strings, uh, the E and B string with our index finger, second finger on the second fret of G, ring finger on the third fret of D, so this chord can essentially replace this entire chord. bar chord will be the same chord um and it's a little bit easier to play so many of you may have already seen this in F chord form so maybe you've learned F this way and , yes they did, yes they did.

I've seen this before, it's totally fine, but remember that this is not limited to just being an F, so, because we are blocking, meaning we have no open strings in the chord, we keep all the strings down, we can move it so that shape just Like a normal bar chord, it can be played anywhere on the guitar and the way you identify which chord you're playing you basically just identify the root note and in this case the root note is going to be the lowest note of the chord. which for this chord shape is the D string, so whatever note you're holding down right there on the D string, that's the chord you're playing, so let's do a quick example, in this case we're playing an F chord if you play it right here on the first, second and third fret and the reason is that this note is an F note, so if we were to count our strings and in our notes we would have our D open it would be zero Sharp e f, so The reason this is an F chord is for that F root note there, but remember you can also move it, so if you moved it up to the second, third, and fourth fret, now you're playing an F sharp, whatever that root note is. that ring finger is pressing down on the D string which is your uh what chord are you playing if we move it up again this note is now a G so now it's an A G chord this note would be a G sharp which is now an A G sharp chord like this You may have seen this before in terms of learning f, but remember that you can actually move it and play essentially any chord anywhere on the neck, all you have to do is identify when your ring finger is held down, identify that note and that's what chord you're playing, if you need help identifying the notes, check out the link in the description below where I have a little tutorial on how you can learn all the notes on the fretboard in less than five minutes, so I won't go into too much.

There's a lot of detail about that right now, but basically for this lesson just understand that your ring finger for that chord is the root notes, whatever note it is, that's the chord you're playing and you can move it anywhere on the chord. guitar and that can essentially replace this full bar chord and it's a little bit easier to play, a little bit easier to work with and you could use it to maybe learn some songs that might have bar chords and then work on those full bar chords , let's talk. about the minor version, so that was the major version that we just covered, that's the normal major version, when we do the minor version, we just stick out our second finger, so again, this is kind of a bar chord version normal, so how can I?

We make it a little easier, basically the same idea: we'll start with our ring finger on the 3rd fret of the D string again, this can be moved anywhere, we'll just start here and this time we'll have to Sweep a little more, let's have to Sweep these three strings here, so the G B and E strings, so you're still doing some restrictions, they can't completely avoid it, but it's a little bit. It's easier than probably to play this entire chord correctly or get some strings out of the mix. A little more manageable to have to grab these three strings uh here and that can replace the shape of your minor chord, so when you have your bar chord in the shape of E minor you can replace it with this foreign version and that can be moved back to anywhere, so this is a minor chord, but we can play it anywhere on the guitar and the same principle applies to any note you hold down your ring finger, that's your root note and So that's the chord you're on. playing, so if you play it right here on the first and third fret or with your ring finger on the third fret, you're going to play an F minor, so f is that root note and then We're making this shaped minor chord to make it an F minor. if we raise it, one that would be an F sharp minor if we screw it up again is now G minor, so whatever this note is, the ring finger note determines which chord you're playing, so those are two substitutes for your chords. normal time signature again, we have our regular time signature chords, we are excluding the six strings and we have them in the form of E major or E minor chords and you can substitute them.

For the easier versions, there is the major version and the minor version, which work very well and are great ways to play bar chords. If playing those full bar chords is a little difficult for you, let's go ahead and talk about the other two. barre chord forms that are based on chords, so we have our major chord the same way we would normally do a barre chord, for this we would actually have our ring finger barring the D G and B strings and then we could have done it. move it so that as soon as we move it, we just have to bring our index finger closer and that would grab the a string in this case at the first fret, so that's the normal version, so let me give you the easy version of that.

So that one's a little bit difficult again, we're trying to give you some options to make it a little bit easier for you, so the way to make it a little bit easier would be like this, so this would be just a three. string chord uh again. I'll start here at the first uh and third fret, but you can move this anywhere so you have your finger on the third fret of the G string, your ring finger on the third fret of the B string, and your index finger on the E. the first high fret and you can just strum three strings with that and for this one you don't have to make any barre, it's pretty good, so again this will substitute or replace this normal shaped barre chord, you can make a nice three string chord here without any restriction and again it's movable so we can move it to any fret, we just have to keep the same distance, we have that space between the frets, so we have to keep our fingers spaced the same way. but we can move it very easily thanks and the way to identify which chord you're playing is again by the root note, except in this case the root note will actually be the note on the G string here, so again it's your lowest note of the chord because we're only playing three strings for this chord, we don't want to play E A or D, so it's the lowest note there and that's going to determine which chord you're playing, so if I'm playing this here on the first and third fret.

I just have to identify what this note is on the third fret of the G string and I'll know what chord I'm playing, so we have G G sharp a a sharp which can also be called B flat. They're two names for the same note, but if I go ahead and play that chord I'm now playing a B-flat chord, so it's a lot easier if you're having a little trouble getting those normal time signature chords. There's a much, much easier way to play B-flat than this way, so that's our goal here: we want to replace some of these harder time signature chords with something that's a little easier to play that way.

We can still do it. I know how to play songs that could have these chords and not have a terrible, horrible hand cramp, uh, so again your root note is the G string and it's movable, so here's a high note, also known as a B flat, which makes the A flat B chord move that up now that's a B note now that's a B chord if I move it up again that's a C note now that's a C chord and you can do this again anywhere on the guitar, so whatever the ring finger is, sorry, whatever the note on the G string is the lowest note of the chord that is your root note, you can also switch fingers, so yeah you want to play this a little differently, you can play with your ring finger and Pinky here if you want, I'll let you decide. whatever is most comfortable for you, the same principles apply, whatever the ring finger is, excuse me, whatever the note is on the G string, that's the chord you're playing and then one more bar chord, guys, so normally we would have the minor version, we would take an A.

Chord in minor form and then we would do the same thing: we would add our index finger to the measure and we would have these fingers in the form of an A minor chord, so again that is the normal form and the easiest version of that will be a ring finger on the third fret of the G string, a second foreign finger on the second B fret, and an index finger on the first fret of the high E string again, just a B chord. three strings, but that will replace or be a substitute for that normal barre chord in minor form and,again, you can move it to any part of the guitar, it will always give you a minor chord and the way you identify what chord it is is again the same by simply identifying the lowest note of the chord which in this case is the G string so yes I'm playing it on the first three frets here my ring fingers on the third fret uh we've already covered what an A sharp or B flat note was, so now I'm playing a B flat minor chord before it was B flat major when we did it this way that was the major chord now it's the minor chord but it's still a B flat because that root note is the same note so it's a B flat and it's minor because of this little chord shape that we're making, that makes it a B flat minor if we turn it up one that is now a B note now we have a B minor if we screw it up again one that is a C note that we now have a C minor and so on so you can move this anywhere , all you have to do is identify the ring finger note, so let me give you an example of how you can use this in a song, so one song that comes to mind is Wild Horses by The Rolling Stones.

The first type of chord transition in that song or a major one is B minor, G, but let's say that B minor chord. hard, right, that's the kind of normal version, it's kind of hard to put all the fingers in there, uh, right now, it's hard to make them all sound, so you want to make an easier version so we can use our easier version from this. chord uh and do it this way so now we're going to identify a root note b we have a we want a correct B minor chord so we have G G sharp a a sharp B and then we just do our little easier version so Now that gives us B minor, we can still play G and now it's a little bit easier to deal with those bar chords, at first, so you don't have to play these full bar chords, you can substitute some of them. of these easier chords, easier versions and then work your way up to the full bar chords, so just to recap, we basically have our easy version of the e-shaped bar chords that looks like this for a major chord and this for a minor chord and all we have to do to identify which chord we are playing is simply identify the lowest note, so whatever the note of the D string is, that is the chord we are playing and if we do it this way it is a major chord if we do it this way it is a minor chord the same for the other two easier ways first we have this one we identify the lowest note which is the G string when we do it this way with this way that gives us a major chord chord when we do it this way gives us the minor version and again you're just identifying which chord you're playing by identifying the lowest note which is the root note so I hope that gives you some ideas of how you can substitute these regular bar chords for some easier versions and maybe go out and learn some songs that maybe you were struggling with a little bit before, try those easier versions and then work on those full versions, okay guys, there you have it.

If those are some easy bar chord shapes you can use, you can substitute them for the regular bar chords again. We have four main types of time signature chords. We have two bar chords that are based on E major and E minor and two bar chords. which are based on major and minor chord shapes and now we can take what we learned today and replace them with the easier versions that will help you maybe learn some songs that use those chords, you can still move them up and down the neck in anywhere you want and then again you can work your way up to those full bar chords as you continue to progress, so I hope this lesson was helpful, definitely let me know in the comments.

Thank you very much for watching this video, guys. Don't forget to like and subscribe to help support the channel and I'll see you in the next lesson.