Conference napalm::guitar

    
    
    
       I have been hackin' away at an acoustic 6 string for awhile
    now.  Just recently it has been collecting dust as I have been 
    beating up the 12 string.   The 12 string laughs at me if I 
    even think of a barre chord.  What I have been able to do is 
    to voice them at either 3 or four strings, but never a barre.  
    With the 12 it sounds rich enough.  When I try the same with the 
    6 string acoustic, it sounds like crap.  Can't get the full barre to
    ring true, not rich sounding either.
    
       Grab the electric and things begin to work with funcky, abnormal, 
    where in hell did *THIS* ever come from - chords. (Though not very 
    well since all my time was spent with the acoustics.)
    
       Add to this the acoustics that I have been playing are beaters
    and the action is not very good at all.  So I tend to play to, ah, err,
    "hard"?    When I plug in, the electric doesn't want me to force 
    things, it wants me to be a little more subtle. (Or maybe ALOT more
    subtle.)  So I have never liked playing the electric in the past.  
    But I think most of my problems are going away soon.   8^)  
    
       I am close to buying an amp.   Most of my home time will be 
    pluged in and the acoustics will be treated as they are suppose to be
    treated - beaters from hell.   ('cept the Guild which has a very nice
    action, but I never play it.  Duuuuh.)  My goals are to learn this 
    electric thang and be as comfortable plugged in as I am with the
    acoustics.   Bottom line is I think the electric will open up new 
    horizons for me.   Tone and neck_savvy!    (Which the acoustics just
    wouldn't allow - 'least for me in the past.)   Add to this I'll drag
    out the Guild and strickly play *that* in the house, and things should
    get better.
    
       To me, what you described, is what I have experianced from playing
    acoustic too much.   But what the hell do I know.  You've been playing
    for twenty years.  Me, only two - and I still stink.
    
       Your note just struck a chord with me.
    
       Get it!     WAAAaaaaaagagagagagagaga.  I crack myself up.
    
    
       Rick.
    

    Barre chords! I haven't played one in 6 or 7 years! Learn to
    play less dense chord inversions further up the neck; to me they
    sound a lot better. For example, play the following D and G chords
    in place of 10th position D and G barre chords:
    
    		D				G
        x   x               x           x   x               x
    	|   |   |   |   |   |		|   |   |   |   |   |
    7th         1   1   1                           1
    fret|   |   |   |   |   |		|   |   |   |   |   |
    					                2
    	|   |   |   |   |   |		|   |   |   |   |   |
    					        3
    	|   |   |   |   |   |		|   |   |   |   |   |
    
    I guess bare chords sound better if you're doing Won't Be Fooled
    Again or some Ramones tune. 

    
    	Addressing .0's point about figuring out chords, I see it as
    	it's easier because you're hearing it thru the bass notes of
    	the barre chords.  I always hear chord progressions by going
    	off the bass player.  Once you have the 'bass'(ic) notes, 
    	determining whether it's minor, 7th, etc...  is easy.
    
    	I'd even use just the low E and A strings to start.
    
    	Tom
     
    	

    I agree with Tom in .3; I think one of the best ways to learn about the
    relationships among chords, from a practical point of view, is to play
    bass.  It's the same sort of thing as .0 says: the chord "goes up", the
    fret "goes up (or across by a known amount)".  You start to see
    patterns in the songs and they start to get organized in your mind. 
    Especially if they're Chuck Berry songs, y'know?
    
    Dave

    re Dave Clark
    
    	How can you play for 6 or 7 years and not play a barre chord?
    I guess you only like to do leads....so what do you do if somebody
    else ios playing lead? Stop playing? Play louder?
    
    	Anyway,. that D chord you tabed out is a barre...FWIW
    
    	The idea that barre chords only sound good for Ramones toonz
    is pretty ,. um,.. well its a pretty narrow minded viewpoint.
    
    	For those of you who may be discouraged from learning barre chords
    based on what Dave said there,.. I'd say ignore it and learn them...
    
    		Remember ,.. there are two rules
    
    	1) Learn everything
    	2) Forget it all and PLAY!
    
    								/Cat
    

    Barre  chords area little "big" for most ensebles ... you end up
    stepping on either the pianist's or bassist's toes with your voicings!
    I've turned into a 3-4 string kind of guy when it comes to chords.
    Sounds better with distortion, too!

    You know, now that I think about it .... I rarely use barre chords
    either.  Not even on fast blues boogie stuff, 4 strings tops ...
    
    Jerry
      

    are we defining "barre" here the same?
    
    I call any chord with any two strings fretted by the same finger
    a barre...
    
    Hence many three/four string chords are "barre"d to my definition...
    
    If you guys are saying a baree is only a barre if you barre across
    the whole neck,, then I agree,. rarely use those myself...
    
    							/?
    

    can someone give a few examples of barre chords, so that I know 
    A) what everyone considers a barre chord, and
    B) what the h*ll I've been playing!
    
    8^)
    Chad_the_Confused

    BARRE CHORD #1		BARRE CHORD #2
                                
    ===========                 ===========
    O-------O-O   F7            | O---O---O  Bb7
    | | | O | |                 | | | | | |
    | O O | | |                 | | O | O |

    I use those guys all the time....when appropriate.  There are just some
    styles/tunes that call for it....many Classic Rock type tunes for
    example...however, I don't always play ALL the strings/notes that I'm
    fingering.  I may play a 6 string barre chord and just use the last two
    strings to play a 'power chord', or I'll finger a 6 string barre chord,
    and just play the first two strings.....for me it's a habit and many
    times a shortcut to play a voiceing that doesn't necessarily use all
    the strings mee fingers press on......I have developed (out of
    laziness, probably) the ability to form the barre chords, and only let
    the desired notes ring, while I deaden the others.....old habit, FWIW.
    
    I also learned to play all the 'regular' chords in barre format (maj,
    maj6, maj7, min, min7, 9th, 7th, 6th, etc...); Most frequently, I tend to 
    use the following open chord formats as barre chords by playing the open 
    chord format with my 'other' 3 fingers, and then 'barre-ing' with my index 
    finger as I climb the neck....E, Em, Em7, A, Am, Am7, Amaj7, C, Cmaj7.
    
    FWIW,
    
    Steve
    Dawg

    re: .10
    
    Geez, Buck, I know I'm only a bass player, but isn't your F7 really an
    F?
    
    Dave

    Yeah yeah...It's a F (major).
    
    
    Braid_Dead Buck

    re: slash-mon
    
    I play chords on 3-4 strings. What I think of as Barre chords are those
    ones where you lay your index finger across all 6 strings and configure
    your other fingers to make up the rest of the chord. I remember when
    I'd been playing a few months I went up the street to hear the local
    garage band practice/get some advice and they told me I needed to learn
    barre chords to learn rock and roll. So I learned them (hard on a $29
    acoustic) and went through that whole phase. But it's so hard to switch
    from having your fingers all committed like that to doing a little
    fill or something. 
    
    - Dave

    
    As a rank beginner I'd have to say I'd be lost without my barre chords.
    As a matter of fact, it was shortly after I learned them that I 
    considered myself over the beginner's hump.  That is, it was further 
    than I had ever progressed before (quit at least twice before) and I 
    really felt like I had moved forward.

    OK,.. 
    
    Thats where the misunderstanding comes from
    
    FWIW,.. I still think every student can benefit from learning
    all the barre chords,.. even if in the end they don't use them
    directly for the style/songs they play.
    
    As far as playing a barre across all 6 strings,.. then Buck's
    notion of crowding the bass player or keys player comes into
    play if your in the ensemble situation,....
    
    But for you solo acoustic types,... I say,.. strain those index fingers
    harder!!!! :-)
    
    							/Bill
    

    oooh, 'e's playing a Grande Barre chord; pardon me while I play the
    Graaaahnd Piaaaaahno!
    

    The term "Barre chord" generally implies the use of a Grande Barre: a
    six-string chord with the index finger laid straight across the neck.
    Many chords can be fingered with partial barres, but they aren't called
    barre chords.
    
    Barre chords are useful in some forms of music, but tend to be shunned
    in others. Rock, Country, Pop & Blues use them, Jazz, Folk & Classical
    generally don't. All guitarists should learn them and then promptly
    stop using them :-).
    
    The good thing about barre chords is that they make it easy to
    transpose basic chord forms up and down the neck. The bad things are
    that they have weak voicings and produce poor voice leading. Moving
    parallel intervals don't make for interesting chord progressions. This
    is a virtue for some forms of rock and pop, but would quickly get you
    kicked out of the rhythm slot in a big band. The weak voicings come
    from having duplicated intervals that water down the sound. No piano
    player would play an F Major triad with three f's and two c's, but
    guitarists do it all the time and think they're hot s(tuff). Freddie
    Green, the best rhythm guitarist who ever lived, almost never used
    anything but three and four string chords to provide the Basie band
    with the best foundation possible. 
    
    For an example, try playing F Gm7 Gm7 first with barre chords, then
    with four-string chords using the 6, 4, 3, & 2 strings. Even though the
    voice leading is similar, the latter progression is a lot more solid.
    This style of voicing also makes it much easier to provide harmonic
    variety--this progression could easily be changed to F Ma7 Gm7 Am7 Am6
    D9 D9b5 or any similar variation with almost no effort.
    
    A versatile rhythm player should be able to play any form of any chord
    anywhere on the neck, use barre chords when they're called for and use
    other forms when they're not. Many players learn open chords first and
    then think they have arrived when they learn barre chords. They
    haven't--there is a whole world of movable three and four string chords that
    bring rhythm guitar playing to completely different level.
    
    Danny W.
    

    This is a very interesting string and I have learned a lot.
    
    I think .19 sums it up the best: open --> barre --> partials for
    chord voicings as the guitarist progresses, never wholly abandoning
    'earlier' voicings.
    
    In answer to .0, yes, knowing barre chords at this point in your
    'training' should make it more intuitive (easier) to figure out songs
    and play by ear.
    \Gary

    Well, this certainly generated some discussion. A few points to add to
    my base note.
    
    As someone mentioned pop/rock songs played using barre chords tend to
    have a physical pattern associated with the chord progressions which
    makes them easier to remember. Another useful facet.
    
    Now to 3/4 string 'barre' chords or, for want of a better phrase,
    'chords played up the next'!. This type of playing seems fine for
    finger style. In fact I play classical sometimes and this, in fact, is
    all I play. However when playing electric and usually on my steel
    acoustic I play with a pick 'by default'. Can you effectively play 3/4
    string chords with a pick? 
    
    An exponent of this type of playing seems to me to be Mark Knopfler who
    I have never seen use a pick.
    Richard

    re: .6 (Buck)
    
>    Barre  chords area little "big" for most ensebles ... you end up
>    stepping on either the pianist's or bassist's toes with your voicings!
    
    Amen.
    
    The mark of a "garage band" is two guitarists playing barre chords.
    
    One of the things I learned as a keyboard player is that one of the
    most important things that separates tight sounding bands from garage bands
    is the voicings you choose for chords.  
    
    It really boils right back down to whether you listen to just yourself,
    or the band as a whole. 
    
    Bar chords sound great when your playing in your room by yourself
    because they fill a lot of space.  When you're playing with a band,
    particular bands with other guitarists or keyboards, there's much less
    space and if everyone is playing "full" chord voicings, it just
    sounds muffled.
    
    The guitar players I have played with are used to me asking them to play
    very "open" voicings (wide intervals).  My ears also seem to have a
    fixation on the third.   I often ask guitarists to either leave
    out the third, or play it on top.
    
    As a guitar player, I also know that the less notes you use in a chord,
    the more effective they are and the better they sound.  Perhaps its
    the same sorta thing as the classic "how many notes do you play" in
    a solo.
    
    BTW, you want a real lesson in how cool 3-note chord voicings can
    sound, listen to Steve Morse:
    
    	o "Take it Off the Top"
    	o "Kat Food"
    	o "Broad Street Strut"
    
    Geez, you probably can't put on two tunes in a row and hear some neat
    3-note voicings that sorta "fool" your ear into thinking it's something
    more complicated than it is.
    
    In fact, I think he did a column in Guitar Player magazine very
    recently that touched on this topic.
    
    	db

    Yup, a great string...
    
    re -.1: I play those three and and four note shapes using a pick,
    either by using an abbreviated stroke so that I don't cover all six
    strings, or, more commonly, by using the pick in conjunction with my
    other fingers to play chords.  
    
    re Danny W. and Freddie Green: Definitely agree the best rhythm player
    ever.  I heard a saying that if they uprooted the tree of jazz, they'd
    find Freddie Green at the roots.

	One way of maneuvering with 4-string voicings that I've been
	trying to nail down lately is connected to the symetries and
	movability of diminished chord forms. Diminished chords repeat
	every third fret. Take this one:

	EADGBE
	||||||
	||x|x|
	|||x|x

	Since every note of a diminished chord is a root, it's these chords:

		E dim, Bb dim, Db dim, G dim

	Move it up 3 frets and it's the same 4 chords.

	So what? Here's what - another chord composed of all minor 3rds
	is a 7b9 without the root. So the chord above is also these
	chords:

		Eb7b9, A7b9, C7b9, Gb7b9

	Move it up 3 frets and it's the same 4. chords. Knowing this, there
	are lots of 4 chord voicings that can be derived. Drop any note in
	the chord by 1/2 tone and get 4 dom7 voicings:

	EADGBE		EADGBE		EADGBE		EADGBE
	||x|||		||||||		||||x|		||||||
	||||x|		||xxx|		||x|||		||x|xx
	|||x|x		|||||x		|||x|x		|||x||

	Eb7		A7		C7		Gb7

	And derive anything else you want - take 3 down 1/2 step for
	minor 7 voicings, raise 7 1/2 step for major 7 voicings.

	This principle can be applied mechanically across a set of
	"string groups" to provide a large chordal vocabulary. The
	examples shown above work with string group 4,3,2,1. Here's
	a set of string groups to poke around with:

	5,3,2,1		5,4,2,1		5,4,3,1		5,4,3,2
	EAxGBE		EADxBE		EADGxE		EADGBE
	||||||		||||||		||||||		||||||
	|||x|x		||||||		||x|||		|||x||
	|x||||		|x||||		|||x|x		|x||||
	||||x|		||x|x|		|x||||		||x|x|
	||||||		|||||x		||||||		||||||
					(hmmmm)

	And on to 6,4,3,2 etc. Remember that all of these forms are
	movable.

	And there's always more.....

    Most movable chord forms can be played either with a pick or finger
    style: using a pick requires that you be proficient in damping unused
    strings. A variety of techniques are used, depending on which strings
    are used. The easiest are played on the 3, 4 or 5 highest or lowest
    strings--these merely require skipping the unused string. The others
    have some  combination of interior strings that will need to be damped
    with some portion of an adjacent finger. 
    
    There are many useful 6 string chords that don't use a grande barre. I
    often use them for intros and endings--they include voicings of Ma7s,
    11ths, 13ths, 6/9s and various alterations of these chords. Many of
    them appear to be barre chords but are not, since the index finger is
    generally only sounding one note: for example,  a first position
    FMa7spelled F C F A E A.
    
    If I am working without a keyboard player, I rely mainly on chords that
    use the 6 4 3 2 or 5 4 3 2 strings. With a keyboard, I'll put more
    emphasis on using the upper 4, and play chord fragments when possible.
    Good examples of outstanding comping on the upper 4 abound on Wes
    Montgomery's records--he was a master of using 4-string m6 and m7
    chords to add interest to an otherwise static progression.
    
    A Jerry Hahn album from the '70's (Moses?) has a short section of a
    jazz blues done with one chord change per beat  done in 3 & 4 note
    chords. GP and downbeat magazine were inundated with letters from
    amazed guitarists looking for transcriptions. Strangely enough, one of
    the early Mel Bay books has this style completely documented, since
    this was a common technique in the '40's and '50's, but to many
    guitarists who learned during the '60's, it was something new and
    startling.  
    
    db's comment about open voicings is interesting. Progressions using
    close voicings are very difficult to play fluently on the guitar
    because of the long stretches involved. Many guitarists use such chords
    only for color, or rely on open strings or alternate tunings for
    progressions. One guitarist who developed a unique style of closed
    chord playing is Johnny Smith, whose stunning 1952 rendition of
    "Moonlight In Vermont" is still the standard to which all such playing
    should be compared. Johnny's voicing of a C6, spelled C E G A starting
    at the 4th string and ending on the 1st is not easy to play by itself,
    no less integrating it smoothly into a progression of similarly voiced
    chords. Smith developed this technique so he could more closely emulate
    the voicings of piano players.
    
    
    Danny W.
    

    Just curious, but how does one *make* a chord?  For instance, a C chord
    has a C, E, G, C, E in it.  How did *they*(?) get the idea to put the
    other notes in it?  Or, are the major chords all made up of root, 3d,
    5th, octave, etc?  This is one thing that's always gone way over my
    head...  So, if there's any little equation for chords, I'd like to
    know!
    
    Chad

    
    
    To make a MAJOR chord you need to use the Root, the 3rd and the 5th
    notes out of the major scale (what scale will depend on what chord,
    ie C major scale for the chord C major..or C, E major scale for
    an E major chord)
    
    	In fact all chords are built up using this idea...a minor chord
    has a b3rd (flattened third) a 7th uses the b7th, a major 7 would use
    the 7th....there are lots of books available that go into this in some
    detail...I'd recommend the guitar handbook by Ralph Denyer. It is handy
    to learn this stuff....that way if you get stuck and don't know a chord
    you can always work it out...
    
    J

	Danny - thanks for the pointers...

	Chad -About chord construction - get a copy of

	"Scales, Intervals, Keys, Triads, Rhythm, and Meter" by
	Conley and Clough. Published in the US by WW Norton. It's a
	programmed learning text on music theory that'll get you
	literate mighty fast.

    RE:-1  
    
    Thanks, I'm already music literate, 'cept for chords... (Played trumpet
    for 8 years!)  Never had a use for a chord- kinda tough to do on ye
    mighty horn!  
    
    Chad

	-.1 cool, you'll be able to skip the first 3 sections of the
	book, it's just review of major & minor scales and key sigs.