Lauren Bateman says beginners should skip full barre chords for the first 9 to 12 months and focus on open chords, strumming patterns, and fingerpicking instead. She shows easier alternatives like F major 7 from a C shape and power chords as a stepping stone.
Hey, guitar enthusiast, Lauren Bateman here. And in this video I'm going to tell you why you shouldn't be learning bar chords if you are a beginner guitar player.
Now, I see this with a lot of students. I've been teaching guitar for a very, very long time and there's this big rush to get into bar chords. But if you are an absolute beginner or on the beginner scale of playing guitar, I wouldn't even recommend touching bar chords. Most of my students, most of my guitar students, we don't start doing bar chords until maybe nine months, nine to 12 months into their guitar playing. Why? I'm going to tell you why. Because there's so much other stuff that you can do and work on as a guitar player to build a great foundation for learning bar chords. So for example, I will usually teach people simpler versions of bar chords to get them by because they do pop up in songs. You got an F major chord, you got a B minor, F sharp minor. And usually I'll show them three easy fixes for those chords so that they can at least play the songs. And I'll show those to you guys in a little bit. But what we do as a beginner is we focus on open chords first. Working on your C chord, your D chord, your A, and getting those down pat to the point where you have them memorized. You can play them with your eyes closed, alright? And you can switch between them with your eyes closed. If you can't switch between a C chord and a G chord with your eyes closed, don't even attempt a bar chord. I'm telling you, you're just going to get frustrated. You'll hit a plateau point and you'll give up. And that's not the point of playing guitar. The point of playing guitar is having fun. And there's so much stuff you can learn without doing bar chords. So for example, with students, I will focus on strumming. We'll work on doing 8th note strumming, 1st.
Or 16th note strummings, you know.
And syncopated things and other cool things. But in or fin picking, there's so much that you can work on outside of bar chords because there is a strength component required for bar chords and a lot of beginners don't have it. And it's very awkward. Bar chords are very, very awkward chords. And most students don't have the finger flexibility in place to do bar chords yet. Which is why I don't teach bar chords in the beginning. Instead, I'll show you some of these Easier forms. So for example, a very common chord that comes up is F sharp minor. Okay, well if you can't play bar chords, how do you play an F sharp minor? Well, if you know an A major chord, all you have to do is move the A major chord down to the bottom three strings. It's not as nice sounding as the full bar chord, but at least it's playable. So now you can use it in a song. Another one is the F chord. So F chord is like this, probably one of your hardest bar chords to play because the bar happens on the first fret of the guitar. So oftentimes I'll show students how to play an F major 7, which is basically a scrunched up C chord. So if you have a C chord, you move your top two fingers down one string each, you got F major 7.
So that's an easy way to play an F chord chord. Some people don't mind. They try doing a mini bar. They'll bar with the first two fingers.
And they'll play F that way. For a beginner, I still think that can be a little bit tricky. But some people find that one not so bad to do. But if you don't want to do any barring F major 7 works perfectly well. And the final one is B minor. And all you have to do is take this F major 7 shape, slide it up to the the second fret, and then move everything down one string. That's B minor. Okay. And if you want a slightly fuller sound, if we go back to F major 7, we can add the pinky. All right, so it's the first finger on the first fret, second string, second finger on the second fret, third string, pinky on the third fret of the fourth string, and then the third finger on the fifth string, third fret. So that's another way to play F major 7. You can also move this to B minor.
It's another way to play B minor. But usually for most students, we'll stick with the A major shape. The three finger F major 7 and a three fingered B minor chord, do they sound as nice? Does that sound as nice as a full B minor chord? It does not, but it makes it accessible to you. So if you're getting frustrated over over bar chords, don't worry. It is a rite of passage. I think there is a process. There should be a step by step process for you learning how to play bar chords, which I do go over in my guitar course. But usually before I even teach someone bar chords, what I will do is teach them power chords because it at least gets you comfortable with the top half of the shape of the bar chord.
And then you can build from from there. So don't jump into bar chords right away. You will get there. But make sure you got your strumming down. Make sure you got your open chords down and that you're feeling comfortable with all those chord changes before you jump into bar chords, because it's going to get crazier, it's going to get awkward. And if your open chords are awkward and you're jumping into an awkward bar chord, it's just going to be even more awkward and more frustrating. So don't let bar chords frustrate you. It's a major stopping point for a lot of guitar players. Have fun with all these open chords. There's so much stuff you can do without bar chords. Focus on that first. Focus on enjoying that and then jump into the bar chords. Hope you guys enjoyed this quick video. YouTube's gonna pop up a couple other videos over here. Make sure to check those out. Don't forget to, like, comment and subscribe. Let me know that this was helpful for you guys and I'll see you in another less video.
