• Join the A7X Discord!

    We're updating the community and moving all social content from the community to the Discord. All lessons related conversations will still take place here though! Join the Discord below and view the full announcement for more details

    JOIN THE DISCORD VIEW THREAD

Guitar CAGED barre tips

Msh

Garage band Groupie
Aug 17, 2022
1
2
I just can't seem to make my barring finger cover everything without lifting the rest of my hand, or muting. Particularly the A chord. G is a problem, though not as bad. C, E, and D just need time. How can I fix my barring? A side note- I have 20 frets on a 25.5 inch scale, so my frets are slightly larger. Could this be making a difference? I'm upgrading soon and it should be 22 or 24 frets on a 25.5 scale, but I don't want to rely on that
 

Ed Seith

Supreme Galactic Overlord
Staff member
Legend+
  • Nov 11, 2019
    3,882
    15
    6,602
    53
    Marana, AZ USA
    soundcloud.com
    35
    I just can't seem to make my barring finger cover everything without lifting the rest of my hand, or muting. Particularly the A chord. G is a problem, though not as bad. C, E, and D just need time. How can I fix my barring? A side note- I have 20 frets on a 25.5 inch scale, so my frets are slightly larger. Could this be making a difference? I'm upgrading soon and it should be 22 or 24 frets on a 25.5 scale, but I don't want to rely on that

    First things first, the number of frets won't change the spacing of the frets. Only the scale length does. 25.5 is the same whether you have 12, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27 or 30 frets. It's the distance from the bridge to the nut, and ALL frets are done off that full measure.

    Second, you don't need to learn how to play the CAGED shapes as full chords all over. They're not really intended that way, and some are damn near impossible. Ask me to make the G shape on the 3rd fret and I'll just walk away. My fingers will not fit for it. The intention of knowing the shapes is so you can make small chords/fragments from them and also understand how scales fit into the chord shapes. For example, if you do:

    8
    8
    5
    x
    x
    x

    You're playing a variation on the C power chord by using the G shape. Conversely, you could do the same like this:

    x
    x
    5
    5
    7
    8

    And you're doing a C major chord, still in that G shape.

    Hope this helps.
     
    Upvote 0