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A Guide for Beginner - More Major Chords

by Christopher Sung

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10

The F Major Chord
OK, it's time to learn our first barre chord. A barre means that you use one of your fingers to hold down several strings at the same time. In most cases, such as the F major chord, you use your first finger to barre several strings, and then use your other fingers to hold down other strings. The fingering for an F major chord is shown below:

So how do you go about fingering this? Take your first finger and lay it across all 6 strings. Yes, this is hard, and a bit painful, but eventually this will become second nature - trust me on this one. Now place your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers in the appropriate places according to the diagram. Try strumming it. It's OK if some notes don't ring. That's natural. In time, all the notes will ring loud and true. The important thing is that you just played your first barre chord!.

You should get to know this form quite well, because using this form and another form that you will learn in page 3, you can play any type of major chord even without open strings.

Try playing the music example below, set your loop count to "Forever" in your preferences at the bottom of the page, hit the play button, wait for the music to start, and try to play along with the example. It'll help you become more comfortable with the chord.