Hi. I'm Jim Deeming, instructor for JamPlay.com. Welcome to lesson ten.
Today we're going to go beyond the CAGED chords we've talked about up until now, the C. A. G. E. and D.
That's an excellent foundation, we're going to build a lot of things on that but we need to go just a little bit farther.
To review you should be getting very familiar by now with these chord shapes.
The C… A…
G… E… and D…
So those are the things you want to pay attention to, the shape of the chord, how many strings are ok to hit with your right hand
because remember sometimes it's not all of them.
Then remember we've talked about keys and which of those chords go together.
The three keys that we know so far are the key of D.
When D is our key chord, it's the one chord. Remember when we talked about roman numerals.
Number one is D, it's four chord is a G, the five chord is an A and back to one is an D.
So our keys are built on one, four, five when you go through the musical alphabet of letters A through G and then start over again.
Hopefully you're getting familiar and comfortable with that by now.
We've also for every chord that we've learned now we've paid attention to the fact that is has a root note.
So when you're strumming these usually the lowest note that you want to hit is a root note of that chord.
So the root note of a D chord is a D note, in this case it's a D string.
The G has a G on the bottom. The A has an A on the bottom.
E has an E on the bottom. C has a C root note.
Hopefully you're comfortable with all of those and remembering that you are using it every time that you play these chords.
Ok, we've also talked about timing.
Right hand remember sets the groove, sets the timing, sets the feel so as you've been faithfully tapping your foot when you're practicing.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
We've talked about how this is 4/4 time and then there's a little variety of that you can do it's 3/4 time.
Where each measure, each repeating pattern only has three beats instead of four.
It sounds like this: One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three…
Ok, now the CAGED chords that we've talked about up until now are all what I've showed you and it's in first position and by that
what we typically mean is your first finger is in the first, fret, second finger, second fret, third finger, third fret, fourth finger, fourth fret.
For the most part. This is the zone we've been playing in down here, first position.
If we were to slide up, move the first finger up to the third fret and then start building chords here we would call that the third position.
We're not going to go there yet because there's a couple things we need down here in the first position to round out the rest of our chords.
We have five chords in three keys.
If we can add a couple more chords we can get a couple more keys out of this and really be in business.
However these two are not typically thought of as being in the C. A. G. E. D., caged system.
What they actually are, they're the beginnings of how we actually use those chord shapes to do other things with them.
Let me show you what I mean by that.
First we're going to introduce the F chord, the F is considered a first position chord
but it's actually, probably the most common bar chord everyone learns first.
We have a problem, this wonderful chord called C and if you're into music theory you probably love this key because there are no sharps or flats.
It's all straight up C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. No sharps or flats.
That's the one chord.
The five chord for this is our old friend the G but we don't know the four chord for this key yet.
C being number one, D, E, F. F is new to us.
Where do we get an F from down here in the first position?
Here's an F note or here and to build a chord down here that we can use that is an F chord, we're going to need to learn about bar chords
and that's a word that strikes fear and dread in the hearts of guitar students everywhere.
It's not that bad, we're going to ease into it a little a give your hand a chance to develop and you can bite this off in as big of chunks that you can handle.
What it is thinking in terms of our CAGED system what this is, is we're taking our friend the E chord.
What's next after an E? An F. If you slide that up half a step.
Well this is the beginning of our F chord.
So here's the E and the three notes that we've fretted are in the F chord.
Unfortunately, no one else around it is correct for this chord.
That's an E chord actually but it's not an F chord. So what we need to do is fill in the gaps.
Here is all a bar chord is, I'm going to cheat a little bit and change how I'm fretting the E chord. See this?
That's an E chord still but what's happening is, I'm going to slide it up to where it makes an F and I wish the nut would come with me
but it doesn't move so I'm going to make my own nut right there with the first finger.
When we talk about a bar chord what we typically mean is we're barring across the entire fret and then playing one of our old friends,
one of the CAGED chords right in front of it.
I'm making that look a lot easier than it's going to be for a beginning guitar student so let's back up a step now and look down here.
If I were to play a little E chord, say this much. Here's the full E chord, focus on the first three strings for a minute.
If you want to take that up to the next fret, this guy's going up here, and these two open strings need to go to here.
Some people call this a partial bar.
What we're really going to do is make a baby bar chord here but we're only going to bar two frets.
What I'm hoping is that if this is hard for you you're first finger might be able to handle two at a time rather than all six.
So if you get those two. The first and second string in the first fret and then add this.
Whoops only play three please.
That's a little three string F chord.
If that's ok for you, try adding this third fret. That's going to feel like a bit of a stretch I'm fairly certain.
There's a four string F chord and by the way what we just picked up is an F note.
That's makes a pretty good, complete sounding F chord.
Alright.
Now if you want to go build the rest of it remember our old friend the E chord was a six string chord it's the full boat, everything you've got.
So if you're going to bar it you've got to bar all six of them.
So maybe the thing to do is go back and try playing the E chord like this and see if you can get that fingering, that picture it's a little bit different looking
than you might have learned on your E chord, see if you can get that fretted and then bring it up and bring the nut with you.
Typically the first problem spot other than hand cramps,
the first problem spot on a full bar chord like this for some reason is almost always the second string.
I think it's because your bar, if you analyze what you've got here your finger kind of wants to curl
and you're really pushing hard to get the big F on the bottom and that's good and you've got an F on the top.
That's actually two octaves, here's the middle, we have three F's in that F chord
and as you're laying your finger down here as hard as you possible can to try to build this bar there should be a little bit of an arch there.
Well the arch would be the worst then right in the middle but we don't notice that
because we've got other strings fretted but where that arch rats us out is on the second string down here, the old B string where it might tend to buzz.
I don't know how to help you fix that other than be aware of it and build some muscle strength up over time.
Check by the way and make sure that you're fretting this relatively closely to the wire fret.
If you get too far back in the fret you will have trouble. It's very hard to fret especially right next to the nut.
That's what a barred F chord looks like.
What we've done is we've taken the E, slid it up and brought the nut with us.
Just to give you a little glimpse of what's coming.
This one goes all the way up the neck as do all bar chords, that's why we like them.
If you know the names of these notes on this first string for example then you know how to build a chord for every one of those notes.
Watch this.
Open on the sixth string is our E string and open this chord, let's fret it this way for now, that is our E chord.
Open E string, now if I know this is an F and I bar that and I play that chord there, I've got an F chord.
After F comes G, A, B, C and now I automatically know a chord for every one of those.
Here's E, F, G, A, B, C and the same thing is going on here.
We’ve got a C note on the bottom, we're barring this and playing the E shape, the CAGED E shape right in front of that bar.
Not forgetting that you're probably new to this and your hands may be getting tired, work into this easy
and you'll probably notice that the lower down on the fret that you're playing the harder some bar chords are to do.
That's typically because you're getting closer to the nut and you're having to bend the strings at a little harsher angle coming off of the nut.
Especially in that first fret. There's really not a shortcut here.
Exercise, practice and repetition are what are going to get you through bar chords.
I wanted to get you to this one though because the F on here is really important.
Lots of songs, lots of guitar songs and lots of sing along songs, C turns out to be a nice key to be in.
Also for the reason that I told you before, there are no sharps or flats in it. C is a key that you need, F is the toughest part about it.
So for now if a four string F chord is what you can do that's fine. You can still strum that.
If you can get all six of them even better.
Ok, take some time with your new bar chord the F, work on transitions, remember that just learning the chord picture
and learning how to fret it is only half the battle.
What you need to be able to do is transition in and out of that chord from somewhere else and to somewhere else
So for example look at your C chord here.
Probably one of the most common transitions you're going to be doing is from C to F.
Doing our minimal movement analysis one thing we can see is that this finger is already in the fret that it needs to be in so all it needs to do is flatten out
and get ready to do a bar.
This finger is already where it needs to be, doesn't need to move at all.
This one just drops down one and this one tucks underneath here.
That looked like that went by fast for you I'm sure but if you do this yourself think it through.
Ok, I know what this one looks like, I know what this one looks like.
Who moves and who doesn't and what is the minimal amount of movement I can do.
This one stays put, this one flattens out, we're already almost there, drop, we're good.
From an F to a G we've got to move a couple of them here.
This one comes back off and we're glad because that's tired already, this goes here so watch what that looks like here, not a lot of movement
but don't when you lift your bar, don't be tempted to really wing it off of there
because you're tired and can't wait to get rid of it that's a lot of unnecessary movement.
There's a song called "Doctor Guitar" and it's made in the key of C.
It's a really fast song and it's a good way to practice these transitions and it looks like this.
There's more to it than that but you can see that especially in bluegrass.
Minimal amount of movement because if you start thrashing around down here you're going to run out of time to get the transitions done.
Ok, here we now have C and either the small version or the full version of an F and your friend the G chord.