Gibson's Learn & Master Guitar Blog With Steve Krenze

Course Walk-Through: Session 7 – Barre Chords on the 6th String

Wednesday, June 1, 2011
It's been over a month since the post on Session 6 and that is more time than is suggested in the Lesson Book so let's move on! Session 7 is all about Barre Chords. Barre Chords seem to give many people trouble and are often a major hurdle to get over. Don't fear though, while they may take a little more time to conquer, you can do it! (est. time 3 weeks)

One secret to conquering barre chords is to strengthen your first finger. Use finger strengthening exercises to improve the strength in your first finger. Simply search Google or YouTube for great finger strengthening exercises. Here's one.

Sixth String Barre Chords

Below are the barre chords for the sixth string. the "1fr." means you play that chord starting at the 1st fret. The arcs across the top mean you cover all the strings with one finger - this is called a BARRE. The diamond designates the root note of that chord and the pivot note to move the chord into a different key.

barre chords on the sixth string

Let me give you a practice exercise. The diamonds again designate the root note of the barre chord. This exercise has you play an F, G, A and B flat. The chord form is the same, but you simply move your root note to the next key - in this case from an F to a G (whole steps and half steps are explained in the book in lesson 7).

Major Scales

Major scales are the foundation of all music. They are the road to learning how to move chords around and switching keys. This becomes very important with barre chords as you need to understand where the different notes are on the strings and fret board. Learning the major scales is critical. In the Lesson Book, we have a couple different worksheets to help you learn the major scales. One good thing to remember when using major scales, is that they are built on a pattern. Using this patter, you can build a major scale starting with any note! The major scale pattern is:

whole-step, half-step, whole-step, whole-step, whole-step, half-step

If you don't understand how major scales, you can get our course, which includes our Lesson Book.

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