Hey, how are you doing? Justin here.
Today we're going to checkout an alernate fingering for your A chord
where we just use the first finger. It's gonna be a mini bar.
It's gonna hold down three strings and mute one.
I found it a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I know students
that pick it up real super quick, so you might be one of those lucky
people who are playing an go "Oh man, this is so much easier
for me to play an A chord than that other one where the fingers are all
cramped together. Or you might be like me and be like "Well, the other
one is kind of easier most of the time for me."
Give it a go and see. Do give it a bit of practice as well because
you might find it real super difficult for a fee days and then it gets easy.
So I wouldn't just wipe it off if you, you know, if you struggle
the first few days. Let's get... enough talking. Let's just
play this thing.
So here is our A mini bar. We're not going to play the tickest string.
It's an A chord. We want the A to be the lowest root note, the
open fifth string. First finger is holding down the
fourth string, third string, second string. Now the thinnest string,
some people have a joint, this first finger joint here is just the
right length to be able to kind of lift up...
and get the open thinnest string, so this one is ringing out open.
Now I don't like the sound of that most of the time. So I would choose
nearly all the time to mute the thinnest string. So I'm going to
left my first finger up just a bit. Now looking at the camera angle here
from the front it's not very clear about the angle of the first
finger and I should also point out that these other fingers would
rarely be tucked away like that. I'm kind of doing that so you can
see clearly the first finger. But when I play that normally it would
look more like this. But that looks a little confusing having all of
these fingers hovering around. But there just sort of sitting above
the strings. OK? Now I'm going to give you Justin's special overhead
cam now. Here we go. We've got lots of good feedback about
overhead cam before. So let's get that rocking again.
So there's the chord. Now you can see that this is the knukle that
needs to come forward to be able to release that thinnest string. OK?
If it's muted, like if I go like this with the finger flat down,
I'm going to be playing the thinnest string. So I need to move
that knukle forward a bit to mute it and if I wanted it to be open it's
gotta move right further foward. You can see there again the
finger position for the rest of the fingers. The normal way of
playing it would look like that. So the fingers would be not
touching the strings of course but just back a bit, they'd just
be hanging around. There not going to be doing this. OK?
If the're tucked away like that, that might be kind of, you know,
it's nice and clear when I'm teaching but that would be what it would
look like when I'm playing it for real. The fingers are just hanging
around at the top. One thing you might notice when
you see me playing an A chord this way is the thumb sometimes
sneaks over the top and mutes the thickest string. Now it's something
we're gonna talk a little bit more about in the course but if you
find your thumb sneaking over there and muting that thickest string it's
kind of OK at this point. The whole idea of keeping the thumb at the
back of the guitar neck was to make sure that you strenghtened
the muscle between your thumb and first finger to help you get to
grips with the F chord. That was a good pun getting the grips for
the F chord. Ah that was the point of that. But now that we're actually
playing the F chord, it's kind of OK if thumb wants to sneak around a
bit more. We're going to talk about the thumb positioning and deliberately
using it to mute strings a little later in the course. If you happen
to find that, particularly with this A chord, just because of the fingering
sometimes you might find that you want to grab it a little bit more
with your hand. You don't want the thumb to be stuck around the
back. It wants to be a little bit more over. The danger of that is
that it might pull the knukle around. So when you go from here
you can get that knukle nice and far forward, this one here, you
can get that knukle further forward to mute the string and when you
grab the thumb over it kind of pulls it around. So I wouldn't
be going, focussing on trying to do it but if you happen to find,
again of course these fingers might--are more likely to be just
hanging around like that, you might find that the thumb wants
to reach over and mute the thickest string and that's OK.
What you want to avoid, the one thing you really want to watch out
for is playing the second string here.
OK? It's kind of a cool chord, it's called an A6 chord and it's great
if your doing...
as an ending. That kind of thing, it's kind of cool but it's not the
sound you want most of the time when your playing an A chord and I
really--I think most of the time you don't want to hear that thinnest
string. It just sounds--the chord to me sounds better without the
fifth at the top. The fith is the scale degre. You'll get into that
if you start learning about your music theory. I just think that
note--it's not necessary in the A chord. Even when I'm playing
an A chord with that, I often mute that thinnest tring with
the edge of my third finger there. I just let the third finger lay a
bit flatter. To deliberately not have that note because it's like
the G chord, that low note in the G chord. I'm like just the sound
it isn't so hot for me. Now when it comes to practicing this one,
there's lots of times that you might think that this chord would be
more cumbersome. For example if we're doing something that is
going E, A, D, A, that kind of chord sequence, you've been doing all
your practice with the anchor finger so using this fingering is going to
feel a lot easier probably. But I do find that this one, even though
it's more movement,
here like going for the D, the first finger it is kind of easier
to go A to D, because the first finger doesn't have a lot to do
compared to this were all of the fingers have to jump around a bit.
To the E chord, again you'd think...
that should be easier, right? It kind of looks like it's less movement.
But there are times where this mini bar chord A just feels so much
better to use than the other fingering of the A chord. Probably nine times
out of ten if I'm playing an open A chord I'm going to be using
that mini bar one. Alright? So it is really useful.
It's one I didn't get to grips with for quite some time.
I played the regular A, actually I played with the fingers all
in a line which I don't think is a great way of playing it. But I
played that for the first five or ten years that I played guitar
and I didn't get into the mini bar thing until I already conquered
most of the rest of the bar chords. It's worth working on.
Find the songs where it feels good and have a go at inserting it even
if the one that NITSUJ was working on was Dance the Night Away,
just going D to A, D to A for the whole song and experimenting
with using that little mini bar. Its a nice way to kind of juge for you
where it might feel confortable. Because it's only got those two
chords. I think D to A using the mini bar is quite a nice change
to work on. So have a bit of a go. See how it works.
Avoid doing the full bar...
because that just sounds weird.
You can choose to either mute the string or if you want to experiment
with puting the bar right up and getting that thinnest string.
The fact is for my ears it's not the best choice but experiment.
See what feels good for you and what sounds good for you.
Because we're all different, we all like different things and some
of this is, you know, about making choices and, you know,
finding the chord grips and the ones that feel confortable and
sound good to you. That sort of stuff is pretty important too.
So when it comes time to practice it, start by learning to just be able
to play the chord and get the fingering in the right place and
work on the positioning of the first finger to either mute or let
ring that thinnest string. Once you've got that, find the chord
change to work, either D to A, or E to A. Some chord change
and then work on doing the chord change to it. You might even
want try playing a weak fingered G chord to this A chord.
That's also a nice change to work on. G and A chords commonly
paired together as well. So find the ones that feel good
for you and practice it.