How to Make Barre Chords Sound Better on Acoustic Guitar

Hey. I’m Will. I’ve been working really hard on some free
videos to provide all you guitarists scouring the internet
for their next free guitar tip. I’ve got a lot of people that
have been coming in for lessons on Skype and all that kind of
stuff that have been developing some bad habits when learning
online. So what I’m doing for you guys is I’ve got all the
cures to the common mistakes that a guitarist makes from
learning right here on the internet.

I want to show you guys today some barre chords. I won’t
be able to go into barre chords in full detail, and I’m
sure you can find barre chords on some other place on the
internet, but for now I want to show you how to get the
barre chords sounding clearer and sounding a lot better
and I want to do that from your point of view and provide
the cures. So let’s spin it around and take a look.

That opening line that I was just using was kind of a Limp
Bizkit or George Michael bass. That, guys, is our major barre
chord and then take off the 2nd finger; that makes it minor.
We have our happy version, then we have our sad version. Then
we also have our major and minor chord starting from the A
string. We’ve got this one right here. I’m playing them at
the 7th fret. You can play them anywhere. I’ve just chosen
the 7th fret. Here’s our major. We’ve got that 3rd finger
crossing three strings. And then our minor looks like this.
Just go through them and try them out for yourself.

The first thing I want to point out is this. The first common
mistake that I see a lot of people doing is that they get their
1st finger flush with the wood of the guitar. I can see how you
might do that. You know, you see it written down somewhere and
say, okay, I need to put my finger there. Now, check it out.
Whenever I do that this always happens and it’s because I’m
not getting enough pressure on that B string. Now check it out.
If you just grab this finger and pull it up, notice that that
made my wrist change a lot. I’m going to go into the wrist in
another video, so keep your eyes open for that one. But a big
thing here is getting that finger so it’s hanging over. I’ve
got it at the first knuckle. That’s where the wood is. So I
can actually wrap my finger around there a little bit. It’s
clear every time and that’s helped-out tons of my students.
So that’s the first thing.

Now, the second thing I want to point out is this thumb.
This guy has a huge amount of strength. That’s where all
your strength comes from. What you need to do is you need
to experiment with your placement of your thumb. What I make
sure of is I use this really tough part of my thumb right here.
It’s soft all around here, but right on the other side of the
knuckle we’ve got that really hard part of your thumb. So you
want to put that part into the back of the neck. You’ve got to
experiment with where that’s going to go.

For me, I always think about it as like I’m picking up the
guitar. If I were to pick-up the guitar with these two fingers,
that’s how I’d do it. I’d have to have one on either side so
they can pinch, just gripping that way. But like I said,
you’ve got to experiment for yourself.

I’ve really got to be clear about this. There is no correct
way to play barre chords. Like this guy; this guy right here.
That’s E major. That one is really tough, too, and you’ve
got to experiment like crazy with this one. You’ve got to
get that finger down, you’ve got to mess around with this
thumb placement, you’ve got to make sure your wrist is right.
But between your finger hanging over the edge for these barre
chords and your thumb placement, that’s going to get you –
just experiment, tweak them and just have some fun with it.
That’s going to get you some nice, clear sounding barre chords.

I’m going to be releasing more videos like this, more cures
to the common mistakes that a guitar is going to make from
learning right here on the internet. So until then, keep on
ripping it up.