The Half Bar
In Lesson 11 you learned to hold down two notes simultaneously with the flattened first finger of the left hand. This is called barring the strings. It is important to be able to use the first finger (and sometimes other fingers) to hold down anything from two to six strings. When playing four or less strings, it is referred to as a half bar.
The chords F and F minor (shown in the following diagram) require the use of a half bar. For the F chord, the first finger is flattened across the first two strings. For the Fm chord, the finger covers the first three strings. This technique may take some time to master, so be patient with it. When playing these chords, strum only the first four strings.
F
Fm
Play this example slowly and listen carefully as you play. Try not to get any buzzes or dead notes. Once again, be patient if you can’t do it straight away. You are training your fingers to do something new, so work at it for a few minutes each day and your persistence will pay off.
Here is an example which makes use of the F chord.
This one uses the Fm chord. Remember to stop the strings with the right hand where rests occur.
The half bar is also important in lead guitar playing. Keep the first finger across the first three strings for the whole of this example.
The Full Bar
The term full bar means that the first finger bars across all six strings. When the full bar is used, the chord itself is called a bar chord. The fact that there are no open strings in a bar chord means it is possible to move the one shape to all positions of the fretboard and play in every key.
The following diagrams show the two common bar chords – F which uses a full bar at the first fret, and B minor which uses a full bar at the second fret. Practice changing between them as shown in the next example.
F
Bm
