barre chords? (Page 2 of 3)

Well like I have said before it is my grandpas guitar and it is older then me so I am in no position to break it. O.o

I cranked on the truss rod as best I could, but it doesn't seem like it wants to go any further, so I am not going to force it.

Frankster, about 2 hours North of you in a small town of New Philadelphia.

For the barre chord stuff, my thumb started to cramp badly, so i stopped and tried to shake it off. When I looked down at my thumb it was BLACK!!and hurt like CRAZY. No worries I think I just locked my thumb straight for to long and cut ALL blood flow to it and it was starving for some O2.

Still taking baby steps in getting them to ring out, but it is coming along no the less.

Hurmm.. It could be, we are right off of I77, so it is a good possibility.

If you where going to Detroit from Columbus you shouldn't have went East to go though Phila.

If you go east out of Columbus on I70, when you get to Cambridge take I77 north about 45 minutes and you will be in New Phila.

Ya I think I was just pressing way to hard. When my thumb was locked straight for that amount of time I had now oxygen getting to it.

No, like I have said I have been wanting to play the guitar for quite some time. We have it set up that in the next few weeks, hopefully I will be able to get an electric guitar which is what I want to play. While talking with my family about it my Grandpa said he had an old guitar I could play around with starting to learn guitar. The action is quite high on it, so I adjusted the truss rod as best I could with out the possibility of breaking it, it is older then me so breaking it would not be a good thing. So I will live with a higher action to not break it for now, until I have the go ahead from my wife to go get a new electric guitar.

I think we're doing it wrong.

Like many folks on this forum, I've been struggling with barre chords for months.  I've gotten to the point where I can do about two 10-minute sets of barre exercises in a two hour period, and then my thumb is DONE.

So, last night as I was massaging the web between my thumb and index finger (I've never had my thumb turn black, fortunately) I got to thinking about what I was doing.  When I first unpacked this guitar (Gretsch 5120), I laid my fingers on the neck in an E-form barre at the third fret (Gmajor), and it rang so effortlessly that I was stunned.  I knew that I had found MY guitar.  So why couldn't I do that all the time?

I decided to just put my fingers on the fretboard as lightly as I could to get a good ring.  To minimize ingrained bad habits, I stood up.  When I laid my fingers on the fretboard, I found myself not sqeezing with my thumb so much as pulling back with my upper arm and shoulder (which had to be counterbalanced by my right forearm on the body of the guitar).  The chord rang, just as it had that first time.  I ran through my entire ten minute set of excersises--no cramps.  I took a short break to think about what was happening, and did it again-- no cramps.  I ran through a set of power chords, some blues rhythms, and did the barres AGAIN-- no cramps.

Finger precision is now the whole ball of wax, since trying to muscle the chord into sounding is out; but that's just a matter of practice.

Boys and girls, I feel like I've found the Holy Grail!

Ya. While I was practicing today I found something out about my problem. How I would do a barre chord was take the fattest part of my finger and put that one the 6th string and lay it down all the way up so the tip of my finger was hanging over a little bit, with that I could get all but the 4th and 5th string to ring out, and it turns out the string where at the first joint of my finger where there is not as much meat to it. so I moved my finger down to where the tip of my finger was on the first sting just enough to get it to ring and what that did was took the problem part of my finger off the fret board and they all rang out. I still had to apply quite a bit of pressure so that I will need to fine tune yet. But like I have said before its a working progress and it's coming along, slowly but surely.

I hosed myself when I first started, two years ago.

I had a Mel Bay book from which I learned my first three or four chords, and it showed the "F" chord played on the first four strings, so I never even knew there was such a thing as a barre chord.

Once I learned about this whole world of pain, I had learned "F" and "Bm" open chords, and just "cheated" my way around them.

Now I am going back and learning how to play the barre chords, because I have realized that I am missing a lot of music by not being able to play them.

A professional once told me that there is no "illegal" way to make a chord, so there is no such thing as "cheating". I live by that!

que522,
Don't get discouraged about not getting the good sounding barre chord, if you noticed that all or most of the people that are giving you tips have been in your shoes when we all started to get into barring chords.  We all felt the frustration and sometimes the pain in our hands from trying.  Eventually, we got it, just like you'll get it.  What kind of strings are you using?  Are they heavy, medium, or light?  Because I found that it was helpful to use light strings.  Be aware that using light strings mean that they can snap easier.  Lastlty, try to look at playing your axe as means to relax, express, and/or just having fun.  When playing music becomes frustrating, it can really affect your abilities hidden inside.

I got my electric guitar and barre chords are 100x easier. Not Mr. Joe Lightning at them, but then again I am not fast at any of the chords yet. I can now get B allot easier then I can get A now, big sausage finger make A a little tricky for me. But its coming along nicely.

As far as the strings on my Strat are light 9s. I bought a replacement set for when I am playing at 2A.M. and there is no place to get strings and I have one go TWING!!!! But I got 10s. going to try a little heavier strings.

EDIT: my raw-some grammar kicking in. O.o

ok put your thumb directly behind your first finger and use lighter strings untill you get used to barring after a while you will be able to play like that all day
but i prefer electric when barring

I noticed on a song that I printed out from here, a few barre chords.  But, I'm going to suck it up and learn them.  As several people have mentioned, I need to do this, accept the challenge and practice.