Moveable chords

At what fret do you start hitting problems with the moveable chord shapes and your fingers not fitting in the fret area?

This is going to be down (mainly) to your finger's size; For me, any full barres past the 12th fret are just too hard to do with proper fingering, I have to change to not playing full chords, as my fingers just won't fit.

I'm sure others will be able to go right the way up to the 20th fret (maybe!) while other will struggle past the 9/10th.

Pete

Depending on the shape I start to hit issues around fret 10 for E shapes but I think with practice I can manage to squeeze into things most anywhere but beyond 12th fret it defintely gets harder... A shaped bar chords I hit problems beyond fret 5 (if I really wanted to use that shape beyond that point I'd just have to power chord finger it and slop/mute the little e string).

I've always pretty much neglected bar chords and the other moveable shapes, and of course I've always known this was bad, and the worst of them was this one...

3x3343x
EADGBe


That one drove me nuts for a long time, I gradually improved a little over time but it was annoying to have such a hard time with it. Today, at least partially inspired by the new lesson on guitarnoise (seems like I've read that before... possibly on the authors site) I decided to get me in some practice switching between the various moveable chord shapes I know... For example... there is that shape I posted above, I'm not sure exactly what that shape is referred to but that's a G7 and was one of the main shapes I wanted to work on.

I bounced between the E bar chord, the A bar chord, C7 shape bar chord, open position, down past the 12th fret, anywhere there was a G chord I was going to play it and practice switching. I'll admit that I dind't particularly cre that some of the chord shapes I was using were Major and some were 7th's... I have a harder time with a movable E chord shape than the moveable E7 shape (less fingers involved is always easier for me).

Practice was good, and a few more days this week of that and I should finally have those various chord shapes down pretty pat... I will of course focus on a different chord every day (not shape but for example today I was just playing G and G7 chords... tomorrow I might go after C... though I should go after F and B chords as I hardly know very many versions of those). I just realized I could have been playing B7 shaped chords too. I realize I could also play D and D7 shaped bar chords but I need to practice just the regular D/D7 chords without my index being used, it's a little weird to finger those with my pinky right now.

At what fret do you start hitting problems with the moveable chord shapes and your fingers not fitting in the fret area?

(As a side note I had been practicing the pentatonic scales and have accidently learned the main riff's for a few songs...)

While sitting here I just tried that thing with the 3s and 4 on my acoustic, it sure is tough, especially trying to mute those 2 strings. I'll give it a try on the electric but I don't think its gonna work for me.

Hi :)

That Chord shape with the 3 & 4th fret fingerings is a cool jazz chord.
I don't remember what exactly it is - I'll dig out my antique Micky Baker book, dust it off and get back to you.

It's best achieved by using your index finger in a barre across the 3rd fret with your middle finger ALSO on the
3rd fret - B string
and your ring finger on the 4th fret.

Anything at the 10th fret or higher I switch to a "fake" 7th chord by lifting my pinky off.

Ken

While sitting here I just tried that thing with the 3s and 4 on my acoustic, it sure is tough, especially trying to mute those 2 strings. I'll give it a try on the electric but I don't think its gonna work for me.

Maybe it's because you'd need a 7 string guitar for what's written there. :)

I'm not sure what it's meant to be - but G7 is G, B, D and an F. So there looks to be a typo in there somewhere....

EDIT: Including typos from me! Corrected wrong note. :oops:

As for how far down...

Pretty much what Pete said. Except the A shape. I can't get that any further down than a B, and even that's not all that comfortable. Unless I use a double bar. Index doing the main bar, ring finger doing a mini-bar across the D,G,B strings. Either mute the high E or bend the ring finger enough to clear it.

Good catch.
I guess oldtimers like me should wear their glasses more. :shock: or 8)

Well - Mickey Baker says that it is indeed a G7 chord
3rd fret 1x2 3x
4th fret 4
EADGBEThat's how M.B. says is the correct way to finger it - Good Luck

Ken

Well - Mickey Baker says that it is indeed a G7 chord
3rd fret 1x2 3x
4th fret 4
EADGBEThat's how M.B. says is the correct way to finger

Good one Ken! :)

This other old timer can't read the computer at all without glasses these days... 8)

Old Mickey obviously had more supple stretchy fingers than me too...

As a bar chord 3x3433 looks good to me (G x F, B, D G). I guess there's a choice of playing either G or both, depending on what's going on.

While sitting here I just tried that thing with the 3s and 4 on my acoustic, it sure is tough, especially trying to mute those 2 strings. I'll give it a try on the electric but I don't think its gonna work for me.

With a chord with an unplayed string in that position, the intention isn't always to mute it - sometimes it's to just skip it altogether. A chord like that could be picked in many ways. For instance the bass G strummed by the thumb, then the other three or four strummed. Or they could all be picked individually, one after the other, in any number of patterns.

It shouldn't be too hard as a bar. If your bar finger is lifting a bit, try using the middle finger on top to push it back down! 8)

Cheers,

Chris

Hey Chris :D

It's a horrible thing isn't it???? (old eyesight)

Yeah - the M.B. book didn't exactly say to mute those 2 strings.
I was sorta waitin' to see what came up after I threw that out.
I tried it just as it says - and muted the high E (Quite a feat)
It sounded good - Yes though, since it is indeed a G chord, why not play the E string in G.
Much easier and a bit fuller.

Cheers to you,

Ken

My bad, yeah, that should have been 3x343x and I saw it right away when I read the post about trying the chord out... it was a bugger of a chord but it's nice once you have it. It sounds good with mute strumming, but that may be because a lot of the time I might not be pressing down all the strings correctly.

On a side note I've been having some pretty nifty progress lately, seems like I've hit a few revelations with movable chords though I'm not sure what they were just off hand (seems like the whole relative position of notes on the fret board was particularly handy), but I've also come across a few songs recently just playing around with chords, that sublime song for Wrong way for example I found you could play like this...
c-d-efg---a-b-c-b-a-g-f-efg-a-b-c-abc
Timing very approximate (it's past my bedtime or something)

I play it using the major scale starting with the 15th fret on the A string (from C to shining C so to speak)
Frets 14 - 16
G ab-c
D ef-g
A -c-d

I went to look it up online to confirm what I had, I know it's close, particularly the first set from c to c and then back to the f note, the next few notes are probably correct, the last few notes I'm guessing, I've been fooling with the notes a lot and now it sounds correct in my head, but I haven't heard the song at all since discovering how to play it on accident... so basically what I've come up with sounds right to me if only for having heard it more times than the real song...

There was another little melody of a song I came across too that I can't place what it is...
b-c-d--g---f---
I play the above on the b and e strings. I don't expect those to be the 'right' notes but the relative position of the notes is good

E--------3---1-
B-0-1-3--------

In the above it sounds more familiar if I play the g note very short (which is easy to do unintentially on little e) but holding the note sounds good too, the question is, what tune is that from.

I'm hijacking my own thread, weeee (yeah, it's past my bedtime, by THAT much)

While sitting here I just tried that thing with the 3s and 4 on my acoustic, it sure is tough, especially trying to mute those 2 strings. I'll give it a try on the electric but I don't think its gonna work for me.

Maybe it's because you'd need a 7 string guitar for what's written there. :)

I'm not sure what it's meant to be - but G7 is G, B, D and an F. So there looks to be a typo in there somewhere....

EDIT: Including typos from me! Corrected wrong note. :oops:

As for how far down...

Pretty much what Pete said. Except the A shape. I can't get that any further down than a B, and even that's not all that comfortable. Unless I use a double bar. Index doing the main bar, ring finger doing a mini-bar across the D,G,B strings. Either mute the high E or bend the ring finger enough to clear it.

Man I have no idea what I was trying to do, but it sure didn't work.