Learning To Play The F Chord

F Chord – A Real Challenge?

The F chord. Exactly why have we created a blog post about one specific chord? Well, it’s kind of synonymous with so much about learning guitar in this day and age. It also provides a neat correlation with lead tutor Ged Brockie’s own learning in the early days of his playing guitar. When he started out learning guitar in the mists of time all I had to help him was a book of chords. He was doing okay but then I came across the

dreaded “F chord”! That’s when things started to get hard and that’s when he began to wonder if it would be a good idea to get a guitar teacher as he just couldn’t seem to get things going.

THE BENEFITS OF HAVING A TEACHER

With a guitar teacher he began to see exactly how to do things and importantly, got feedback on what he was doing wrong. Eventually, over time and with no small amount of practice and perseverance he gradually mastered the chords strings and all. It is obviously tricky when trying to get the string fingering correct, but it can and will work for you as it did him. That’s why finding a good guitar teacher is always a good idea.

The good news is that if you learn chords such as this one, the techniques carry over to other chords. Problems re fingering string difficulties will disappear as your technique improves. Try playing each string one at a time when playing the chord so you can hear each note clearly. If you want to improve, play chords guitar exercises and keep at it.

PLAYING THIS CHORD AS A BARRE CHORD

The chord form that you can see is just one way of learning to play this chord. The other way is to use a barre chord. The following video will help explain how to achieve this much quicker than by text alone.

As you can see from the video above, it’s a great way of playing the F major chord for two reasons. It is built from a simple open string chord you already probably know; E major. Also, once you get a good sound from the form, you can then start moving the shape up the neck. The chord simply renames itself using the chromatic scale as you go up.

We have a complete barre chord course that you may want to check out. Professional guitarist Gary Clinton’s five lesson playing barre chords covers a huge amount of ground. It will help clarify how all chords work, but also help you understand how chord progressions work. This is vital knowledge that you need to get your head around.

USING THE F CHORD AS A PRINCIPLE FOR FURTHER LEARNING

So, what has this all got to do with learning guitar on the Internet and GMI? Well, one of the reasons that GMI came into existence was because we felt that although there is a huge amount of resources out there for guitarists some of which is excellent, a lot of it is either giving people poor advice or not showing them clearly what they need to do to achieve the best results. The F major chord is like so many levels in guitar playing, you need to have new concepts and materials clearly explained and demonstrated. Also, we allow feedback and we would encourage you to leave comments on the site for us to comment on.

WHAT IS YOUR STORY REGARDING LEARNING CHORDS ON THE GUITAR

We’d love to hear your stories about this and other guitar chords that you find are really tricky. We can then create ideas and tools to help you get your fingers around the hardest of chords. The main thing is that you do not give up or become dispirited. It’s important to remember that every day you practice your guitar, especially when you find things challenging, your getting better.

CHECK OUT OUR OTHER GUITAR TUITION MATERIALS

So, if you’re struggling with your guitar playing or you have a gap in your knowledge, then please sign up to GMI. You can either join the site, or you can just add your name and email and get updates of news, guitar lessons and hints/tips when we send them out. We have a growing resource base of lessons and courses that cover a wide range of topics not only for guitarists, but musicians in general.

ABOUT GMI – GUITAR & MUSIC INSTITUTE

We hope you have found this article about playing the F chord of use. GMI creates video lessons, articles, printed and electronic publications for guitar players around the world. In addition to this, we also produce a podcast which can be found not only on this website, but on all major podcast download sites such as iTunes, Andriod, Spotify and more.

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