F major is a barre chord, and it’s usually the first barre chord that guitarists are introduced to.  If you haven’t played any barre chords before you may feel that this will be a hard chord to learn.   Barre chords certainly have that reputation, but it doesn’t have to be so.   If you work your way through the following material, you should have no problems.

The goal of this session is to get you to the point where you are clear about how the F major chord is constructed.   You will know which strings are played, which frets, and where each finger goes.   The next session suggests exercises you can do to get to the point where you can change smoothly between F major and other chords.   If you already know how to finger an F major chord, you may wish to go to the next session at this point.   (Then again, you may wish to briefly review this session anyway to make sure...)

So let’s begin!

Figure 1 below shows an E major chord, in both tab and diagram views.   In the tab, the first column of numbers is the fret that you need to play for each string.   The second column in brackets is the fingering that you should use.

You probably know this chord already.   If not, take the time to learn it before you continue this lesson.   You should be able to change between E major and other chords that you know.

If you are not familiar with the E major chord, you may benefit from looking at the starter chords session first.

You may think this is a strange place to start, but there is in fact a close relationship between the E major and F major chords, and it is helpful to relate the two.

Step 2: Change the fingering of your E major chord

The changes from step to step are marked in red on each chord diagram.

Note that the chord hasn’t changed.   You are still playing exactly the same E major chord.   What has changed is the fingering.   We are going to play the E major chord up the fretboard, and to do that we need our first finger to stretch across all 6 strings.   So we need to play the E major chord with fingers 2, 3 and 4.

If you find this step difficult, start by taking all your fingers off the fretboard.   Then place the fingers in place as marked, one finger at a time:

• Finger 2 goes on string 3 and fret 1.
• Finger 3 goes on string 5 and fret 2.
• Finger 4 goes on string 4 and fret 2.

We will call this chord “Open F”

Note that this time the chord has changed, but not your fingering.   You should still have finger 2 on string 3, finger 4 on string 4 and so on.   You should have the same “E” shape on the same three strings, but now the chord is 1 fret closer to the body of the guitar.

Congratulations. You have now played your first barre chord!

Take a moment to understand what you have created.   The chord you are playing is called F major.   But it can also be thought of as an E chord, played in a different position on your fretboard.   In a sense the first finger is not actually part of the chord.   It’s a device that allows you to play your E major shape up and down the fretboard.   In fact some guitarists call the F major chord a movable chord, rather than a barre chord.   You can try that out by sliding your full F major chord up the fretboard by 1, 2, 3 frets.   Same chord shape, different names depending on where you are on your fretboard (we will explore this further in another lesson).

If you strum your F major chord, it will probably not sound as good as you would like.   Don’t worry about that.   It’s a natural part of learning any new chord, and in the next session we will look at some practice ideas to improve your playing quality.