How To Play Barre Chords With No Strain

By Chris Glyde

The bar chord is one of the most useful and versatile chord types you can play.

At the same time, for the majority of guitar players, it’s very difﬁcult to play these chords

for a long period of time without the hand cramping up, straining or getting tense. In this

article, we’re going to talk about all the aspects of your playing that are causing you to

strain when playing barre chords. By the end, you should know how to free up your

hand and get the most from this chord type! Without further ado, here is problem 1:

1) You press to hard with the barre ﬁnger.

The biggest problem for most players is the amount of pressure they use on the bar

ﬁnger. If you apply too much pressure on the barre ﬁnger, you will cause your wrist to

come out farther than it should, thus making the barre chords more tense. If you

struggle to play the barre chords for longer than 10 minutes, this is probably your

primary problem.

The Solution:

You need to start scraping the side of your ﬁnger the barre is laying on. Scrape the

ﬁnger by simple taking the area of the ﬁnger on which you place the strings and scrape

it against the strings. Make sure your scrape is vertical, or from the ﬂoor to the ceiling,

like the arrows in the picture below demonstrate.

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