Play the Guitar: Lesson 15

   In the previous part we've talked about the Feng Shui of guitar playing. Now we will talk a little about barre chords.

   Barre Chords - An Introduction

   What are barre chords? Are they... good? Are they... bad? Do they hurt? We'll have a first look, and for that we will need to talk about how sounds are made.

   A few words about Sounds

    Sounds are what we create when we strike a string. A sound can be high, or it can be low. We can be a tenor, or we can be a baritone (or soprano, or something). We can have more tremble in our voice, or more bass. The height of the sounds depends on three things:

 - how tense the string is
 - how long the string is
 - how fat the string is

   The more tension in the string, the tighter it is, the higher the sound it makes. The less tension in the string, the slacker it is, the lower the sound. We adjust the tension in the string when we tune the guitar, for example, by turning the tuning pins one way or the other. Too little tension and the string will sound too low. Too much tension and the string will break (I really hope you knew that... ).

   The shorter the string is, the higher the sound it makes. The longer the string is, the lower the sound. We adjust the length of the strings when we press down on them with our finger tips, to form a chord.

   The skinnier the string is, the higher the sound it makes. The fatter the string is, the lower the sound. We cannot adjust how fat or how skinny a string is. It just is.

   That's it, for now, I hope it makes sense. What does this have to do with barre chords? Well, barre chords are a way to change the length of the strings; a way to create higher sounds. But we'll talk more about that the next time.

   Meanwhile, if you're interesting in the history of music, here is Victor Borge with his (very short) History of the Piano (Link to YouTube, opens in a new tab).

Add picture here...

To be continued...