Some of these voicings are hard! Will it really get better?

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by Wyllys

I wouldn't say "thin out" but rather "clean house". Full 5 or 6 string chords contain redundant notes and are never as clear and clean. There is little reason to have the same notes an octave apart unless you're emulating Wes Montgomery.

As a general rule both guitars and musical arrangements will suffer from excessive "overtone clash" when chords are too thick. The art of playing and arranging music is in saying more with less. I constantly run into people who know all the chords in the book and have decades of experience yet comment that they want to "sound like that" when they hear tunes arranged with triad voicings.

Clear, minimal note groupings (chords, if you will) can sound as full and rich as can be. Again, less is mo'...

Easier to get a clear sound with less notes ringing at any given time, though you may not get the color one would want. I have noticed that a classical guitar (nylon string) can have denser note structure than a flattop guitar without loss of clarity due to shorter treble note sustain and less higher frequency content. Dense note structure on a flattop can be particularly difficult to get a clean recording of.

[RustyAxe]

Some of those hard to handle chord shapes are just a guide ... what I mean is that you don't have to always play the full 6-string chord. When playing fingerstyle (or any style other than a strum) those shapes can show you the "safe" notes on that chord. If you played just those dotted strings (or a subset of them) you'd be fine. And you can move them up the neck if you stuck to only those strings. Of course, there's much more to fingerstyle than just playing the notes of the chord, but you get what I mean.

The C and C7 shapes are great examples, since if you play it on the inside strings (A-D-G-B strings) as a four note chord you can move it all up and down the neck. The E chords (major, minor, 7th, minor7th, 6th) are VERY useful, easy to barre, and therefore very movable.

It takes practice ... lots of practice. But once you master some basic chord shapes (look up the CAGED method) you'll have a decent chord vocabulary.

[Wyllys]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

Easier to get a clear sound with less notes ringing at any given time, though you may not get the color one would want. I have noticed that a classical guitar (nylon string) can have denser note structure than a flattop guitar without loss of clarity due to shorter treble note sustain and less higher frequency content. Dense note structure on a flattop can be particularly difficult to get a clean recording of.

That's why I prefer ladder bracing. See my signature...

[Pitar]

The B chord consists of my index finger placing a full barre and the pad of my ring finger covering the balance of the notes (open A shape) - without muting any strings. In time (practice) the range of backward bending of your ring fingertip will increase and no muting will be experienced. I play all the B-Chord shaped chords that way, because that's the only way I can, and it keeps the middle and little fingers free to add color and dynamics when needed. I also play the open A chord with the pad of my index finger alone for the same reason.

You have to be part contortionist, part masochist to attempt to totem three fingers in close proximity in the manner books illustrate. Unless you have dainty digits, physics can't be argued with. Furthermore, the many chords one can define on the fretboard are illustrated in the chord books simply to show a complete collection. Using most of them is unnecessary and, using the Bm7f5 as an example, probably not a practical shape to choose when transposing points to something more manageable. IOW, if at first you don't succeed, try something easier.