Walz Guitar - Lesson Tip Barre Chords

Barre chords are always a hurdle for beginning guitarists. As a teacher, you want to find something that works. Here are the three best ways I've found, so far, to help get through the barre chord trouble phase.

1. Try moving your left arm and thumb around. While keeping good positioning, sometimes using the physics of angles and pressure helps. Put another way, moving around can help you find a better way to hold the strings down.

2. Use your bicep instead on trying to pinch with your first finger and thumb. To do this, think of the guitar as a see-saw on its side. The pivot place is your ribcage. Your pick arm holds one end and your left hand, in this case left index finger, holds the other end. Apply pressure at both ends. The idea is using a larger muscle, the bicep, is better than trying to use the small muscles and tendons in the hand.

3. This has shown to be the best tip of the three. Start around the 12th or 10th fret. Bang your index finger into the fretboard as if applying a barre. Don't worry about being musical not making notes. Worry about getting the finger in between the frets and keeping the finger parallel to the frets. Once this begins to show some progress in fingering better barres, switch to banging around the 3rd or 4th fret.