barre chord practice is fun.barre chord practice is fun.barre chord practice is fun.barre chord practice is fun.barre chord practice is fun.barre chord practice is fun.barre chord practice is fun.
keep telling myself that, but ouch is it painful to my thumb. loving that berklee method guitar book though. learning a lot.

Google the thumb over barre technique ala Jimi Hendrix, I find it easier then the standard way after a couple weeks of practice. And finally was able to get an F to ring out properly.

jmitch that's that "baseball bat" grip I've talked about ^


try to fret that bitch ass low E with your thumb and see how it goes imo

i do that on a couple of chords. more to dampen the e string than anything. it is just a strength thing and i will get the endurance on it. i injured that muscle in college (no joke playing upright bass) and it tends to hurt and cramp easier than it should, but i will get it the right way, but thanks. also though:


this can't be right, right?
i have been racking my brain and can't figure out how there is an E7 chord on the 5th fret like the notation says. i am thinking it is a typo, but wtf? thanks.

Yes, that E7 is fingered like an open C7 chord but at the 5th fret. Then move it down to the 4th fret for Eb7 and 3rd fret for D7. The chords in those sections are moveable, so match the quality (dom, aug, etc) with the form and move it to the corresponding position indicated below the staff.

first finger at the fifth fret? then like a C7 with the 4th finger added? dammit, i thought i was on a breakthrough with thinking that the root note of the chord was the name on either the 6th or 5th strings on these movable chords (like the F on the 6th and C on the 5th). dammit. back down a couple of notches i guess.

The E is both on the 2nd string and 5th string, so yes, it is a root 5 chord form with the 3rd finger being the root. It's the dominant 7th choice for country ass **** so don't sweat it too much, lol.

dammit. it is a root 5 chord. didn't see that at all. thanks mang.

np

it's a hendrix special dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know this is obvious but with the barre chords, sometimes you need to move around your barre fretting finger because the finger joints have a hard time completely fretting when a string is under it. I think Hendrix chose to play chords with the thumb on the 6th string because he wanted the freedom and flexibility to play melody or lead lines along with the chord. It was a trio and that's really what made his style stand out, playing lead and rhythm like littlewing. Anyways stay with the barre chords, everyone hated them at first but you have to learn them.

planning on it. thanks for the feedback.

the thing with them (barre chords) is that you may hate them while you are learning them, but once you have them down they are just easy, second nature stuff

just look at how many people go on about the open F chord on guitar and how it is so difficult to form cleanly, it is the same in that respect. I mean it's not much of an extension from a C to and F chord.

also if the F is a pain then once you get the barre chords you can forget about ever having to play an open F again!! wooh!

I think one thing that makes the F chord so infamously difficult for beginners is - a lot of beginners are learning to play on acoustic guitars. And acoustic guitars are a lot harder to fret than electric guitars. The strings are like ****ing rolls of pennies or some ****.

I rather play an acoustic guitar over an electric guitar 99% of the time. Seems more pure to me.

yeah but obviously bryan adams learnt to play on a steel string acoustic if his song "Summer of '69" is to be believed!

said it before, say it again:

acoustic guitar, electric strings

I tell you what, this is not such a bad idea.

My Brother-in-Law has a 70's Ibanez (Japanese) Acoustic strung up with electric strings and OMFG it is such a sweet guitar to play.

I have never tried that before but I will now. Sounds like a great idea.

I wonder though if from a physical stand-point that it may have some detrimental effects on the neck, due to the difference in tension?

Maybe one of our budding/fully fledged luthiers can answer that?

I'll assume he means nickel wound strings instead of bronze when he says "electric guitar strings" but nickel wounds have less tension than bronze. However, that shouldn't be your reason to use nickel over bronze on an acoustic, as you can always get "electric" gauges for your acoustic in bronze qualities. Nickel sounds much warmer than bronze, which is why most people stick to bronze on acoustic (or phosphor bronze if they want a little warmer).

So would you think that the lessening of tension could affect the neck at all?

Or is the tension difference just so small that it would be an imperceptable difference to the neck?

I have read that if you let all the tension go in guitars (remove all strings at same time - one after the other obviously!) that it can cause warping etc.

Electric strings on an acoustic is not a good idea. The strings will sound like garbage.Good way to make a great sounding acoustic sound terrible. The neck will most definitely warp over time, so you would need to adjust your truss rod. Just get a cheap electric, it will make learning way more fun. On a side note make sure your amp has reverb. Nothing sounds worse than a beginner with the distortion turned way up and no reverb.

Once again, nickel can be used on electric or acoustic.

This is what you see inside a set of D'addario XL's electric guitar strings (the reg pack with strings individually wrapped):





Then you have manufacturers that decided to market to players that think there's a difference between electric and acoustic strings (outside of nylons, you nit - whoever you are), and wouldn't put a set of nickels on their acoustic because they are "electric strings":





Also, why in the world would you think a guitar with the same gauge strings (but nickel wound) would warp the neck over time? Also, warp is probably not the term you are looking for because that can not be rectified with a truss adjustment.

Bottom line is nickels sound different than bronze. I don't like the sound of nickels on acoustics, nor do I like those dental floss wound nickels either, but it is preference and nothing else.

Thanks for clearing that up Mitch Evans.

God I get D'Addarios and have never seen that before.