Open to Barre Chord Transitions

[SprintBob]

As a beginner-intermediate, I can form and play barre chords cleanly but now the challenge is playing songs that include both open and barre chords. It has not been that difficult at all to do a progression from a barre to an open chord but vice versa is more the challenge. On the songs I am working on the, several of these progressions are:

D - Bm
G - Bm
G - F#m
A - F#m
C - F

In a perfect world, my index finger, middle, ring, and pinky fingers would all lay down on the fret board in perfect sync and that is a goal worth pursuing. I do believe it is probably best to set the barre first with the index finger but not pressing down until the other fingers are in position so that if you stay in time, you hear (at worst) a muted percussive strum that is in time and still seems to work OK in most cases. I don't want to make that a habit but I think I am correct in the sequence of setting the barre chord.

Is this a good approach? Thanks in advance for the feedback.

[Earwitness]

The great teachers on here will no doubt chime in with practice advice, but especially since you are using a pick, you need to be aiming to put all the fingers on the fretboard at the exact same time. If in an imperfect world some fingers hit before others, you want--in the Bm--for the three fretted notes, that is, the "Am" shape on 2-3-4 and the top note (F#) to be there. (For me, the dicey one is cleanly catching the 5 string, the bass note B in a Bm barre, but since I play with fingers, I can just play a 4-finger Bm leaving off the top F# and get a solid bass B with the index if it's crucial.)

On F#m, make sure you get the pinky strong on the 4th string F#, and the rest of the barre follows pretty easily.

[mistigri]

Originally Posted by SprintBob

Is this a good approach?

I think it depends what you are trying to achieve. Getting all the fingers down at once is the longer-term goal, but in the short-term it may not be achievable, so you may need to look for workarounds so that you are able to play in time. It depends whether the goal of your practice is to "play the song" or to "do open chord to barre chord changes in the best possible way".

I'm a fairly bad player and I regularly find that I can't get to a barre chord fast enough. In this situation I'll look at two possibilities. The first is determining whether there's an optimal way of making the chord change that allows me to stay in time - for example, in one song I'm working on, I need to move from Am to F very quickly, but I only need to play the root note cleanly on the first beat, so I get the index finger in place first and let the others follow slightly behind.

I also look at alternative fingerings for the previous chord, because sometimes the problem isn't making the chord shape itself, but the distance your hand/ fingers have to travel in order to get there. In one song we are playing in my guitar class, there is a change from G to Bb and if I play an open G I'm not quick enough to hit the Bb in time and make it ring out clearly. It works better for me if I play the G with a barre on the 3rd fret and then just slide the chord shape up.

[rick-slo]

Plenty of prior threads to read. Generally you do want to shape the hand position while moving to the next chord to land with all the fingers at once. It will come naturally with time and practice. Check that the guitar's action is set up for easy fretting.

[Hotspur]

Originally Posted by SprintBob

In a perfect world, my index finger, middle, ring, and pinky fingers would all lay down on the fret board in perfect sync and that is a goal worth pursuing. I do believe it is probably best to set the barre first with the index finger but not pressing down until the other fingers are in position so that if you stay in time, you hear (at worst) a muted percussive strum that is in time and still seems to work OK in most cases. I don't want to make that a habit but I think I am correct in the sequence of setting the barre chord.

Is this a good approach? Thanks in advance for the feedback.

Two thoughts:

The first is that this is a problem which is going to go away with practice, so I think putting a bunch of effort into figuring out how to work around it is largely wasted. By the time you figure out and practice your workaround, you'll have solved the real problem, so just spend that time practicing your regular changes instead.

Secondly, you almost certainly have more wiggle room than you think, so long as you do one thing: leave the prior chord early so that you can hit the barre chord right on the beat. Inexperienced players tend to do the opposite: they hold the old chord as long as possible, and then scramble to reach the new chord in time, and it comes in late and weird, and sounds terrible.

But if you leave the old chord early, yes, you get a moment of silence in there while you switch chords, but the new chord comes in right on time and it turns out that sounds just fine. If you listen to really good guitarists you'll hear that this is what they're doing, since it always takes some non-zero amount of time to change chords. Leave the old chord early enough to get to the new chord in plenty of time. As you get better, that moment of silence gets smaller and smaller but it never fully goes away. We're used to it, and it sounds just fine.

[Bingoccc]

Just a side note to what has already been said. It always helps to take a few minutes and watch your hand very slowly make the chord changes. In the example you gave I would be playing the F as a barre too. All three chords would have the same barre (either on the first or second fret). The difference between the shape of F and F# minor then is reduced to either picking up or dropping down the middle finger as you slide up or down a fret. F# minor is then just moving the same finger shape over a string from from B minor and lifting the middle finger. You do need to relax your grip just a bit as you make the changes.

[SprintBob]

Thanks for the great advice. YES my goal is to eventually reach the point where my barre finger and fretting fingers all touch down together and it is slowly getting better. The advice to leave the open chord a touch early before the barre chord is something I have thought about and need to execute. That will be a good woodshed exercise for sure.

[EoE]

ok in open d your root of d is open. d is the third of BM let the open d ring as you make your change that is if your not wanting any quiet space .. just saying