Fingerstyling barre chords :(

[nightchef]

Originally Posted by JayBee1404

In 60 years of playing guitar, I don’t recall ever playing a barred F or Fm on the first fret, I always use a thumb-wrap because…

1) It’s easier, and I believe in making things as easy as possible,
2) it’s an easy transition from a 1st position C, and
3) it’s an easy transition to a 1st position G.

Of course, I use barres for 2nd fret and above.

The usual disclaimers apply......IMHO, YMMV etc.

It’s only easier if you have big hands. For me, it’s harder.

Barre chords take an investment of practice and (at first) pain. Once that investment is made, they stop being hard, if your guitar is set up at least semi-properly. (At least, they stop being hard in reasonably small/intermittent doses; playing barre chords for three or four minutes without a break can still tire me out.)

You just gotta keep doing it till the guitar stops fighting you. It takes a while.

[nightchef]

Originally Posted by rearis

So guys I did a little video showing the current state of my F and Fm chord. Looks like I can do them but in the Fm chord, the G string sounds buzzing a lot, is that normal, like do I need to fix that or I can move forward?

The F chord I just need to put my fingers in the right position as you can see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtRB...enanRischiotto

One thing I might try, based on watching that video: you keep your left elbow tucked in pretty tight next to your side. Try moving it out just slightly*. The idea is to get your forearm aligned better with your wrist and fingers. Right now it looks like your forearm is pointing up toward the headstock and your wrist is kind of twisting inward a little bit to get your hand in the right position to fret the guitar. If so, then you may be making your wrist and hand do too much of the work. You want your forearm muscles to be supporting your hand.

Also, small thing, but it looks like you’re sitting on a bed — try sitting on a hard chair, like a dining chair, and see if that helps. I find it much harder to play guitar when I’m sitting on anything soft. (I can’t for the life of me figure out how people play sitting on couches.) It’s much easier when I’m sitting up straight, or leaning forward a little, with something solid supporting me.

(Please take all this with a grain of salt — I am neither a guitar teacher nor an expert in biomechanics, and I could be wildly wrong. These are just things that struck me as I watched.)

*EDIT: I do mean slightly, maybe just an inch or two. You don’t want your elbow to be poking out to the side — you just want to free it up so your forearm can get more involved.

[rearis]

Originally Posted by nightchef

One thing I might try, based on watching that video: you keep your left elbow tucked in pretty tight next to your side. Try moving it out just slightly*. The idea is to get your forearm aligned better with your wrist and fingers. Right now it looks like your forearm is pointing up toward the headstock and your wrist is kind of twisting inward a little bit to get your hand in the right position to fret the guitar. If so, then you may be making your wrist and hand do too much of the work. You want your forearm muscles to be supporting your hand.

Also, small thing, but it looks like you’re sitting on a bed — try sitting on a hard chair, like a dining chair, and see if that helps. I find it much harder to play guitar when I’m sitting on anything soft. (I can’t for the life of me figure out how people play sitting on couches.) It’s much easier when I’m sitting up straight, or leaning forward a little, with something solid supporting me.

(Please take all this with a grain of salt — I am neither a guitar teacher nor an expert in biomechanics, and I could be wildly wrong. These are just things that struck me as I watched.)

*EDIT: I do mean slightly, maybe just an inch or two. You don’t want your elbow to be poking out to the side — you just want to free it up so your forearm can get more involved.

Man, thanks so much for all your feedback and tips, I'll try that, I'm almost there, I discovered yesterday that If I move my thumb a little bit higher it gets even easier to do the F chord (some guy here that posted 3 videos said that in one of his videos). The Fm is still fighting with me but I'm getting closer and closer to dominate it. It kinda gets harder the more I get closer do master it, because its all about details now, I mean it always is, but now its challenging.

[Terry_D]

Originally Posted by rearis

Well I think my guitar is decently setup. Funny thing is that strumming is not that hard, but barre chord with fingerstyle...

I'll change the strings tomorrow and see if it helps, even if it's 10% would help. And I'll keep practicing of course.

I've owned several guitars over the years and none of them came setup correctly at the nut. If you fret any string at the second fret you should see the tiniest amount of space between the bottom of the string and the first fret. You can easily see how much space there should be by fretting the string at the third fret and looking at the space at the second fret. If the space at the first fret from fretting at the second is higher than that, your string at the nut is too high. It should be no harder to fret a string at the first fret than any other fret on the guitar. If you find that space to be too high using this method, take your guitar to a good luthier and have him file the nut slots lower.