Barre bear of Seville

[jere7my]

One of my goals for this three-month sabbatical is to finally learn to play barre chords, which I really should have done about ten years ago. For those not up on their guitar lingo, a barre chord is one in which you use your index finger to form a "bar" across all six strings (or, sometimes, fewer) while your other fingers do their usual doings. This has the same effect as a capo, or making the neck shorter. It also makes for "movable" chords—since all six strings are fretted, you can slide a chord up the neck without moving your fingers' relative positions: A becomes Bb becomes B.

One basic chord shape, the E-shape, looks like so:

1 1 1 1 1 1
| | | 2 | |
| 3 4 | | |
| | | | | |

(The numbers indicate which finger is doing the fretting.) If your index finger is on the first fret, that's an F. Lift your pinky, it's an F7. Lift your middle finger, it's an Fm. Lift them both, it's an Fm7. And you can slide it up two frets to make G, G7, Gm, and Gm7, or four to make A, A7, Am, Am7...and so on. They're quite handy, as you can imagine; you can play 90% of western folk music without ever learning more than two chord shapes. (The other one, the A-shape, looks like this:

1 1 1 1 1 1
| | | | | |
| | 2 3 4 |
| | | | | |

That's a Bb at the first fret, and a Bb7 if you lift your ring finger; switching to the minor is slightly trickier, since you can't just lift one finger to drop the third a half-step, but still pretty simple.)

The trouble is, it's a lot of work for an index finger to smush down six strings all at once, with even pressure so each string rings clear. It's hard to build the strength to do it at all, and it's particularly hard to do it quickly and accurately—you need to pinch the neck between thumb and index finger, with more pressure than it takes to break an egg. It's like you're just starting out again, trying to build enough finger strength and toughness to make one nice C chord that doesn't squeak or thump. This is probably why I never got around to learning them; when I play barre chords, I sound like the typical beginner trying to play Freebird: "If I...I...if I...leave here to...morrow..." It's embarrassing to sound that bad again.

But it's important, and once I can do it I'll open up a whole world of accompaniment that's currently denied me. So, for fifteen minutes each day, you can hear me struggling again and again through the verse of Lay Lady Lay, which conveniently moves down the neck, switching chord shapes each time:

     A                C#m                G                Bm
| | | | | |       | | | | | |       | | | | | |       | | | | | |
| | | | | |       | | | | | |       | | | | | |       1 1 1 1 1 1
| | | | | |       | | | | | |       1 1 1 1 1 1       | | | | 2 |
| | | | | |       1 1 1 1 1 1       | | | 2 | |       | | 3 4 | |
1 1 1 1 1 1       | | | | 2 |       | 3 4 | | |       | | | | | |
| | | 2 | |       | | 3 4 | |       | | | | | |       | | | | | |
| 3 4 | | |       | | | | | |       | | | | | |       | | | | | |

And then back to the A, so I can get used to moving my hand quickly up the neck. For variation, I sometimes transpose it into B or C#—which is, of course, trivial with barre chords—and that brings me brief joy.

So I sit here, with sore hand-muscles and a brand-new callus developing on the outer edge of my left index finger, reminding myself that it will get better, it will get better, it will get better. And I take comfort in knowing that I am surely the very picture of seduction: "Lay lady...lay...lay across my...big...brass...uh...bed..."

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Pardon my ignorance, but isn't this why God invented sawed-off bottle necks?

[andele.livejournal.com]

Oops. That was me.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Good question. But no. :) You use a bottle neck for slide guitar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_guitar)—it acts not as a capo, but as a movable fret. This gives you a continuous range of tones, like a fiddle, but it gives the guitar quite a different sound, and means you need to worry about intonation.

You also need to tune your guitar to open D or something (so all of the strings are in the D chord: D A D F# A D), since all of your chords are going to be one "barred" fret straight across (unless you want to mix the slide sound with the fretted sound by fretting with your fingers as well).

[andele.livejournal.com]

It was the "fretting with your fingers as well" part that I was wondering about. I was thinking that one could use the "slide" without actually playing slide guitar style, just to give one's finger support. I guess, though, that in addition to being "cheating," people would look at you all expectant-and-disappointed-like if you didn't actually make any slide guitar sounds. Slide guitar being the bestest guitar of all (said the Elmore James fan).

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

I, however, am enjoying imagining God inventing the sawed-off bottle neck.