Do'in time in barre chord hell!

[JT62]

Well I guess the time has come for me to finaly get into barre chords seriosly. I'm at that point now unless I want to keep playing out of those "Easy Guitar" books which seem to come up short , I have no choice. I have used Bminor and Fmajor quite a bit and have become pretty confident with them. I now find myself totaly hung up on Bmajor. This chord is by far the most challenging aspect of my education so far. I usually teach myself chords by choosing 1 song the particular chord(s) are in and practicing until confident but Bmajor is literaly kicking my butt! And among the instructional materials in my possesion I have found conflicting fingerings , IE barring the A shape or 3 fingers like an open A. I usually approach this dilemma by deciding which form makes more sense to get to from the previous chord and so far find both equally challenging. This is by far the biggest roadblock so far and I would love to hear some stories by others who have encountered this and also how pleased they were when they broke through. And finally would just like to share some encouraging words with my fellow beginners out there that keeps me going. Don't give up! Good luck to all. Jon.:)

[eische]

hahahaha, you're not the only one. I'm on the warpath with that chord for month now.
I do it from my usual pattern, that I have for all regular chords:

B7
1fret - barré
3fret - pinky on the b-string, ringfinger on the d-string = no problem

bminor
1fret - barré
2fret - middelfinger on the b-string
3fret - ringfinger on the d-string, pinky on the g-string = no problem

BUT THIS F***ING Bmajor
(1fret -barré
3fret - middelfinger on the d-string, ringfinger on the g-string, pinky on the b-string) - NEVER WORKS!!!!!!
sometimes it gets better if I change the positions of the middel- and ringfinger around, but I tend to forget about that, it's also not really a solution......

Is your barré-finger slightly moving downwards too???? - that's my major-problem, I think, and I tryed to strech a bit to get the distance of index and middelfinger better, but it didn't help (so far)

[SixStringMadman]

Bmaj was a problem for me, too, until I realized it is just a big fat power chord (for lack of a better term).

Bmaj - [ x 2 4 4 4 x ]

Since it is pretty much the same as the B5 power chord ( which is: [ x 2 4 4 x x ]), you could treat it as such and finger that chord as a "big fat power chord" and just play the indicated strings for that chord.

Just a suggestion.


SixStringMadman

[JT62]

Yea that method works good on my electric, six, but sounds terrible on my acoustic. Is it true that the masters have had their ring finger surgically altered so the knuclke will dislocate backward to barre this thing? Is it expensive surgery? Ha Ha! But seriously I'm getting better at it SLOWLY but surely! Thanks for the support:) And stay:cool:

[gck]

Hmm, I don't think using middle, ring and pinky for the 4rd fret notes of a Bmaj chord (like eische suggested) is a good idea, it's almost impossible for me to form this shape (and get a clean tone). It's much better to barre the ring finger over those 3 strings, it's really easy once you've got the trick.
I would suggest to play it that way (as some sort of double barre chord :)) than using 4 fingers for it, because stretching two adjacent fingers over a whole fret is hard, especially that high up the neck.

About the ring finger: I think everyone's hands are different, but my knuckles are very freaky :) I can easily play the Bmaj as
[ x 2 4 4 4 0 ] with index and ring, however, for [ x 2 4 4 4 x ] I had to mute the high E intentionally... Well, it fits the chord, so I should consider my strange hands a gift :)

[eische]

@gck: well, it wasn't my own suggestion (I struggle with it, so I definitely would do it differently), I have that fingering out of a book giving »standards« on the chord-grips.......so maybe I try the double-barré next time - keep you reported on success or not on that:D

[Phil]

I might try that too. My problem with that chord isn't the stretching tho, since i have big hands I can bar the first fret with my index finger and stretch my middle to the 3rd fret resonably easily. Problem is, once i get there the frets only just wide enough for me to get my middle, ring and pinky on the strings so close together. D'OH!