Hey it’s Nate Savage here again and welcome to video 5 of the Rhythm Guitar Quick-Start Series.
In this lesson, we’re going to learn another very important bar chord shape, one
that’s based off of your open A major chord and it just uses the top 5 strings of the
guitar. This concept here is going to be very similar to when we took your power chord shape
and moved it from a sixth string root note to a fifth string root note. We’re basically
going to be doing the same thing. From your six string bar chord shape, we have another
one that has the fifth string root note bar chord shape. Getting the shape underneath
your fingers is going to be really important because just like your power chords, you don’t
want to be jumping all around all the time; same thing applies here. Once you get this
shape down, you don’t have to jump all up and down the fret board to play your bar chords, right?
Before we get into the actual shape that we’re
going to learn, let’s just take a look at the note names on the A string or the fifth
string. Those are going to be your root notes for this bar chord shape. So you have your
open A, and then a B here, C, D and so on. What we’re going to do is start by making
an open A chord. That’s going to be kind of your foundational starting point but just
like when we did our other bar chord shape, we have to make this with our second, third,
fourth fingers instead of our first, second and third fingers. So that’s really your first
step to learning this new bar chord shape. All of your fingers, all three of those fingers
will be on the second fret. Your middle finger will be on the D string, third finger will
be on the G string and your pinkie will be on the B string. And you can leave the sixth
string out. Just strum the top five strings. That may take a while to build up that dexterity
and it may feel really awkward at first but that’s what you got to learn how to do.
Once you get that down, what you want to do is come back with your index finger and kind
of fake a bar right here and just get used to that shape and how it feels. Once you’re
comfortable with that, what we’re going to do is move our bar up to the third fret
and make a bar chord here using this shape. Now, what I want you to do is remember all the
tips I gave you about making a good sounding bar. Be right behind the fret. Don’t come
down on just the middle part of your finger right here, the fleshy part. You want to come
down on the bony edge right there to make it a little cleaner sounding and then mess
around with your placement this way to get the cleanest sound. A lot of times on a five-string
bar chord like this, I won’t fret the low E string but my index finger will brush up
against it, just to keep it muted in case I accidentally hit it.
What you want to do once you have your bar in place there on the third fret is come down
with the rest of your shape with your second, third and fourth fingers and play the top
five strings, leave the sixth string out. So, was your bar chord clean sounding or is it
a little…was it a little dead sounding like that? If so, just double check yourself. Make
sure you come down on the tips of your fingers on the rest of the shape. Make sure your bar
chord is real strong right behind the fret and just work on that. Again, for this shape,
you can train yourself kind of cross train. Put the bar on first then put the shape on,
then do the opposite – put the shape on then do the bar. And eventually you’re going
to want to get to where you can put this bar chord on all at once, bar and shape all at
the same time. And Alternatively, here’s another shape for this chord. You can use your third
finger as a mini bar too to hit all three of those strings and that is a little bit
harder and it feels a little bit different but that’s another fingering for that you might
want to check out. Play around with this shape. Move it all around
the fretboard and remember that the lowest note you’re playing here on the fifth string
with your index finger with that bar is where you get the specific name for whatever bar
chord you’re playing. So like here, I’m playing a C bar chord because this note right here
on the third fret of the fifth string is a C, C major bar chord. Same thing if I moved
up to where my bar is on the fifth fret, the note on the fifth fret of the A string is
a D, if you look at the graphic. So if I make that bar chord shape here, I will be playing
a D major bar chord using the A major shape. Once you get this bar chord shape down, what
you’re going to want to do is start mixing it up with your sixth string bar chord shape
or your E major bar chord shape and just like the power chords we learned, instead of jumping
all around like if I wanted to play a G, C, D progression using bar chords, I could use
my six-string E major shape to play a G, C and a D but again that’s a lot of moving
around. You can use your sixth and fifth string root notes mixed up to play a lot more efficient
version of that. If you want to play a G major bar chord using the E shape, because this
note here on the third fret of the low E string is a G, right? Then what we can do is use
our fifth string shape to play a C instead of jumping all the way up here and what’s
cool about this is you can leave your bar where it is and just switch from your E shape
to your A shape and this note right here on the third fret of the fifth string is a C
so that gives us our C chord using the A shape. That’s one change you’re going to want
to get down really well is going from your E shaped bar chord to you’re A shaped bar
chord. Just back and forth, that’s a really important change that every rhythm guitarist
should have down. So if you want to finish your G, C, D progression,
it’s really easy. All you have to do is move your C bar chord that you’re playing
here up two frets and that puts your index finger on the fifth fret on the A string,
which gives us our D bar chord. So, instead of jumping around to play G, C, D using all sixth
string E shapes, we can mix up the sixth and fifth string root note shapes to play that
chord progression a lot more efficiently. Take as much time as you need to get these
shapes down individually before trying to switch between them, right? If you try to
switch between these bar chord shapes before you really have them down, you’re going
to cause yourself a lot of undue frustration and if you really have them down, it’s going
to be a lot easier to just switch in between them like that.
Now we need to apply this to some real music. Pull up the jam track for this lesson, the
same jam track that we used to work on our power chords with. It’s a G, C, D progression
for one measure for each chord and you can keep the strumming really simple if you want.
If you just want to do a whole note and just concentrate on the chords and making the changes,
that’s fine. If you want to do quarter notes for each chord, that’s fine too. Let me
just give you a little example of what that will sound like over the jam track.
So do you see how knowing your sixth and fifth string major bar chord shapes kind of keeps
you from jumping all around the fret board? We stayed in one small area to play that G,
C, D chord progression. Thanks for watching this video. I really hope you enjoyed it.
In the next lesson, we’re going to go over some minor bar chords that you need to add
to your chord library. If you have any question about this lesson, you can leave them here
in the comments or email me nate@guitarsystem.com. See you.