Yo, what’s up everyone? Walt Rebeiro here, and let’s just jump right into the idea of the bar chords, here’s my para mac.
And right here, I’ve got a question from May Merry. Let’s work on bar chords because that was from the comment response from my previous video which I’ve got about 40 comments on what I should cover. And, you know, you guys asked and now I’ll answer. You know it’s a good day, it’s a nice day, I’m full. I already had a good breakfast. I’m very excited for the New York Tech Meetups and TechSet and all of the cool stuff going on in that internet week, NYC. It’s actually going on today. Nice day, I’m full, so you know all of the school, I’m teaching music class, and so I’m very excited. If everyone is going to ask me of what I had for breakfast, it was a couple of egg muffins. They’re not my sponsor, isn’t a sponsor. So you know, that’s what I had. It was really good.
And, let’s just jump—I’m doing a foot day today. Oh, by the way, I was thinking like why isn’t McDonald’s breakfast all day? This should be all day. It ends up at 11. I got there at 10:57 and I just made it. But three more minutes and I would had an empty stomach or I would went to somewhere else, but that’s like the one thing I was kind of upset or not, I’m not upset, it’s just like, man like—whatever.
Okay, so there were a couple of things that I want to talk about with the bar chords. Hey, there are two kinds of bar chords. Here’s a full bar—there’s no view fanner, I can’t tell if like—if like you’re looking at my knee or above my face, I can only guess so I apologize. But anyway, so there’s two kinds of bar chords, there’s full bar chords and there’s partial chords. Full bar chords are all six strings. Partial bar chords are just five, four, three or two strings, and that’s it. One string of course would be a note, two notes is a chord. So this chord here is actually a partial bar chord. This is also a chord and there sounds that bar. Can you even see it? I’m going to say yes.
So now, you have a—so here’s your bar chord, and then here’s your full—here’s your bar chord. But it’s not—these fingers aren’t the ones that are barring, it’s these fingers that are barring. So when I play my bar chord, [demonstration], those fingers are doing all the work, and so I can actually do a full pattern like any pattern on the guitar.
[Demonstration]
Okay, so a cool little trick when you’re working on the bar chord is that when you play bar chord like this [demonstration], this actually is my GM bar chord, but check it out. This, if I were to lift up my first finger, I actually had here my EM chord. So [demonstration], here’s my EM [demonstration]. Okay, but now, instead of one, two and three, my one, two and three fingers, I’m going to be using two, three and four. So here’s our two, three and four [demonstration]. And one more to do is that you’re going to move up your fingers. But what’s going to happen is that when you move up your fingers, you actually have to move up—do not to, right.
So before this was your E [demonstration]. If you move this up, this finger, this bar chord takes the place of this knot right here okay. So we have E [demonstration] and here’s the bar chord [demonstration]. Okay so, why is that important? Well, check this out, we know that this is my EM chord okay [demonstration] but this here is actually my F chord, and the reason why it’s F, it’s because I went up a half step. G [demonstration], F [demonstration], F# [demonstration], E [demonstration]. Well, [demonstration] I’m going up in the next step, okay. This is my E chord, this is my F—E, F, F-sharp, G. And then you knew that this is D [demonstration] and as you know is because you need your chord E on the open string [demonstration] or E on the 12th fret and it get on to, E, E-flat, D [demonstration].
Okay, so how do you play a bar chord now that you know where a bar chord is. The way that you play, this is simply—you just have to develop the strength within your first finger. And probably you wouldn’t bar chord with your second, third or fourth fingers. I see at times when like people will play their chord like this and that’s cool [demonstration]. That’s supposed to be played like this [demonstration]. That’s fine. You’re partially barring your third finger, but other than that, I wouldn’t really, I mean, I’ve seen this I guess in a multiple way [demonstration], but nothing crazy.
But really, if it’s your first time of that, you wanted to concentrate on. So, you put your first finger all the way across the fret—it’s actually the 3rd fret and maybe something simple like 6th or 7th fret—6th or 7th fret and [demonstration], make sure that when you play it, everything is playing [demonstration] okay. And then, you put your first finger or your second finger on the eight—we’re on the 6th fret now. Put your second finger [demonstration] on the 7th fret of the G [demonstration]. Put your 3rd fret on the 8th fret of the A [demonstration]. Put your 4th fret on the 8th fret of the D [demonstration]. And so now here, you’ve got that same pattern that you have when you’re playing your E chord, but you move it up to the 7th fret and you bar the 6th fret. So [demonstration].
Okay, so then there’s your bar chord now. A cool trick with bar chords, I actually gets extremely fun—we’ve gotten blown up. Cool trick with—busy day with like the New York Tech Meetups and TechSet and Diggnation are the stuff going on today. Let’s see who it is, who do you think it is? First, we’re going to be upset—okay, so the reason why this is important of where you play it because the strings are lighter in the beginning and they’re heavier in the end. What I mean by that is the string tension. So you know, right here, it’s really tight, right here, it’s really tight, and right in the middle, it’s really loose, right.
So, take that a step further, that when I play here on the 1st fret [demonstration] to up here on the 10th fret [demonstration], it’s really kind of difficult. But then when I play in the middle like this, it’s the 5th, 6th or 7th frets, not 5th, but like 6th, 7th or 8th frets [demonstration], it gets really, really, really simple.
So as it gets stronger, as your fingers gets stronger and you get better dexterity and all of that stuff, then when you learn to play the bar chords at the 7th fret [demonstration], just move down [demonstration], everything [demonstration] here, everything of the days [demonstration]. It will be on the 1st fret.
So the real trick is that when you’re playing these bar chords, don’t just play the bar chords, play it, play it, play every chords. So let’s go from like a D chord [demonstration] to an A chord [demonstration], bar chord [demonstration], D [demonstration]. Let’s do the G and other strings [demonstration]. D [demonstration].
Now, the reason why that’s good is because you’re playing different patterns, so you’re teaching your hands, it used to get from D to A [demonstration] as opposed to like E [demonstration], you know like bar chord E [demonstration] to a bar chord B [demonstration]. Because you’re playing the same pattern and you’re maybe getting stronger at the bar chords but you’re not getting stronger or getting more dexterity in terms of squishing your fingers. So play every chords, like go from a D [demonstration], E [demonstration], D [demonstration], A [demonstration] and a G [demonstration].
Okay, so I just—cool that stuff, have fun with it, play it slow, don’t ever try to play super fast, be patient. You know, the strength is going to happen, it might take you two months, it might take you three months, it might take you a week. Another trick is to learn how to play bar chords on an acoustic guitar, so when you get to play on an electric guitar, it’s that more simpler and that’s another trick. But the best trick I think is to take it slow, learn by the people, try—if you learn bar chords, try to teach it to someone and then go to the realm of trying to play the chords [demonstration] in the middle of a guitar [demonstration] as opposed to the end where it’s really high in tension.
All right guys, so there you have it. Any questions about more bar chords or anything, just let me know. I love teaching you guys, you guys are awesome and we’ll see you all back here tomorrow. Make sure that you eat well, rest well and you practice everyday, and I’ll teach this to someone. Be patient guys. Well, we’ll see you all back here tomorrow. My name is Walt Rebeiro. Thanks a lot for watching and peace.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services