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Play Bar Chords On The Guitar
Bar chords are a way of playing a chord that is based on moving various chord shapes up and down the guitar neck. The concept behind this, is that if you move a series of notes that form a chord up the neck, then the name of the chord will change as we move it.
This is similar to what happens if we move a single note. If we move a G note up one fret, it will become a G# note. Likewise, if we move all the notes (including the open strings) in G chord up one fret, it will become a G# chord.
The pattern for moving the notes or chords up and down the neck is the chromatic scale. As you may know, the chromatic scale consists of all twelve notes in our western musical system. They notes are as follows:
A, A# (Bb), B, C, C# (Db), D, D# (Eb), E, F, F# (Gb), G, G# (Ab), A
Every note and chord that we play on the guitar has a letter name. If we move those notes or chords up and down the guitar neck the letter names of these notes and chords change according to the chromatic scale. The letters you see in the image below are the notes for the 6th string, which is E open. The first fret is then F, the 2nd F#, etc.
The chords that we traditionally use for bar chords are the A family of chords and the E family of chords.
Watch the video below to see how to play bar chords.
Visit the next page to see illustrations of the guitar chords (with the correct fingerings) traditionally used for bar chords on the guitar.
