Hey, how you doing? Justin here. Today I wanna talk a bit more about the 'F' chord
and give you a little exercise that you might like to try; there's a little bit of
me going, "no, don't show them this; it's too much too soon", but I think for some
of you, could be, you know, a really important thing to get. Now, I'm hoping
for most of you the 'F' chord is going okay, and that you can play the
chord and all of the notes are ringing out. I suspect, for many of you, probably still
struggling a little bit with getting the 'B' string ringing out clearly, which is
the most common problem there with the 'F' chord. If you're really struggling with
it at this point to get the note sounding clearly; it could be to do with the
instrument. Because of the way, the guitar is made, you'll find that it is very
difficult to press a string down, right near the note, okay?, especially if you're
like right near it. Around the 1st fret, it's still likely to be quite hard; at least
harder to press down usually than it might be, say, at the 5th fret, even if the
string is actually further away from the fret there. It should be a little easier
to press down; not all the time. On this guitar actually, it's a little easier here
at the 1st fret but I've got a beautiful set-up done on this. Now, if you're
struggling with your 'F' chord here, you're playing that, especially, if you're getting this
kind of sound, and you're struggling to get the barre down and now you're getting this,
rattle-y stuff going on. It probably means that you're struggling to press down the barre hard
enough. Now, could be just the finger strength thing; in which case, you need
practice it more, but just as an exercise, a good thing to do is to run your first
finger up, even to 3rd or the 5th fret; you might find that it hurts your wrist around
the 5th fret, at this stage, so let's do it for now, at the 5th fret, so literally
it's exactly the same as the 'F' chord, but we're gonna slide it up, so first finger is
in the 5th fret, and trying the same thing. You should find that the barre is a little
easier to press down, although some of you probably find that your wrist feels a
little bit sore as well, because you're just using different muscles again, so it might
be that this is harder. So as we get into moving that chord around, we're really
into proper barre chord territory, I'm sure you've heard that term, and 'F' is a barre
chord but when we start moving it around, we're dealing with the sort of things, you
wanna be dealing with an an intermediate guitar player; not a beginner. The reason
I'm pointing this out to you now is just to kind of alert you to the fact that it
might be difficult because it's at the 1st fret, in which case, you might need to
take your guitar to a luthier to get the nut sanded down a little bit, so that it's
a little less high at that point; it will make the 'F' chord lot easier to play.
Having a good set-up does make a huge difference; much more than the quality of
the instrument; you often find a cheaper guitar with a nice set-up will play better
than a more expensive guitar with a poor set-up, for sure. So, that might be
something to explore, so you might be able to blame the guitar for not being able to
playing an 'F' chord, or it could just be that your fingers are not quite strong
enough yet, and you just need some more practice. It does bring up another question,
which is things like, this is an 'F' chord here; if we move it up one, that a 'F#', and
that if we move it up again, there's a 'G'. So, is it easier to go, 'F' to 'G', or is
it easier to go 'F' to 'G'? Now, probably moving the barre shape is easier long-term,
but again, at a beginner level, I think it's a better idea to be really focused on
those open chords and the 'F' chord and really making them strong, so you're
confident with them that you can do the changes; it will make things, generally, a
lot better when you get to that intermediate level and you start moving around through
your barre chords. There's definitely no danger in exploring this stuff though, so
if you happen to fancy, trying to move your barre chord around and see what
happens, get used to the different sounds, it really does; just move around the note
circle, so you got 'F', move up one, you got 'F#' or 'G-flat', same thing; up one
again, it's 'G'; moving up one again, 'G#' or 'A-flat'; moving up again, 'A';
'A#", 'B', 'C'; so this chord, and this chord, are interchangeable; you can hear
they sound little different, but it is, essentially the same chord. I'm gonna say
it one more time, "I don't recommend that you go full-on into this as part of your
practice routine, and trying to play all of your barre chords, and specifically
practicing this stuff now"; I'm just kind of opening a few boxes for things to
start falling into place later, so that you understand how things work and why
they exist, and what's difficult about barre chords, and holding that barre down, and
why it's important to know the notes on the neck, and some other stuff like that.
This lesson and the next few, are a little bit about that; about introducing the new
things that we're gonna be exploring further on down the line, particularly
with the finger-style coming up, and power chords, and all of these things;
they're gonna be developed a lot more in Grade 3. So, I hope this helps you with
your 'F' chord and that it's actually going fine, and you didn't need this lesson anyway. By
this point, I would recommend that you're working on the chord changes now, so
change between 'C' and 'F', or 'G' and 'F', and 'A-minor' and 'F'; hopefully, may
be even trying to put big barre chord 'F' into a song or two! I'll see you for
plenty more very soon. Bye bye.