Doing bar chords (sometimes spelled "barre") is one of those techniques that many students are never able to do, and many other players, even after learning to do them, do so with varying degress of inefficiency. This is because, even after basic bar chords are learned, students usually remain ignorant of the subtlities of barring, and within those subtlities lies the answer to many of our technical problems. We will take a look at some of those subtilities right now.

The Fingers As Force Directors

In order to penetrate to the deepest levels of understanding regading left hand guitar technique, we must re-define what "fingers" are. We must understand that essentially our fingers are "force directors". That is their job when we play the guitar, to act in such a way as to direct force to the strings. Once we truly appreciate this fact, we will have opened the door to unlimited exploitation of the true potential of our left hand.

As we contemplate this idea, we realize a number of other things. We realize that what we call a "finger" is really a series of four bones, beginning at the wrist. The first bone is in the palm, the second bone begins at the first knuckle, and you figure out the rest! Now, the place where these bones meet we call "joints", and the full expoitation of our joints is one of the goals of left hand development. Our joints should be properly understood to be the "fine tuning knobs" in the process of directing force to the the strings with our fingers. The subtle manipulation of our joints allows us to infinitely vary the amount and direction of force we bring to the strngs. This ability is possesed by all good players, but is one of those "invisible" elements that you cannot really see when you watch a good player Unfortunately, they usually don't know they are doing it, so you are not going to hear about it from them either!.

The Effect of Finger Joints On The Arm and Upper Body

Another realization we have as we examine our left hand technique in light of the understanding that our fingers are force directors, and our joints are the fine tuning knobs of that force is this: the exact way we use our fingers as joints to bring force to the strings directly affects our entire arm and indeed, our entire upper body. This is quite an important understanding, because many, many players are suffering from crippling tension througout the arm and upper body while they play (tension they often do not feel and recognize) that is coming from the way they are using thier fingers on the strings.

If you want a quick demonstration of this concept, do this: hold your arm out straight and place your hand on your thigh, palm down. With your arm held straight, begin to press down on your thigh, applying as much pressure as you can. Notice how that feels throughout your arm and upper body. Also, notice how much pressure you are able to acually apply to your leg. Now, bend your arm at the elbow, make a fist, and start to apply pressure to the same spot on your leg with your elbow bent, and perhaps your wrist a bit bent as well. Then, begin to lean your upper body weight onto your arm, allowing your arm to direct it to your leg. Notice how that feels, and how much pressure you can apply then. Quite a difference, isn't it?

Your shoulder, elbow and wrist are analgous to your finger joints. Using a fist insted of a flat palm is analgous to the exact spot on the finger placed on the string. With each note you play all of these details of finger and joint use make a tremendous difference to the arm, upper body, and consequently to how well you are able to play. The Foundation Exercises in "The Principles" develop the fingers for maximum use of the fingers and joints for single note playing, so, let us look at these concepts in relation to the technique of barring.

The Flat Out Bar Is Flat Out Wrong (Usually!)

People new to the technique of barring tend to think very one-dimensionally about barring. They tend to think that they should just lay that bar finger flat out across the strings, this is usually not the case (I would say "never" but that is a dangerous word to use when it comes to guitar technique!). We will look at one of the most common ways of manipulating the finger joints to bring force more skillfully to the strings when barring.

Instead of placing a flat out bar, what is usually done when performing bars is this: the finger is "rolled" slightly to the left, toward the headstock of the guitar. This immediatley disposes the hand and arm so that the weight of the relaxed arm can be added to the bar to help in the job of getting the strings to the frets. It is the same action as holding your hand up in front of you and separating your index finger from the other fingers. What is really happening is that the muscle between your index and thumb (the first dorsal interosseous) is pulling your index finger causing it to move in a sideways manner from the joint at the big knuckle (the metacarpo-phalangeal joint). This joint, unlike the two other finger joints, has the ability to move in two planes, back and forth and sideways. This is probably the most common use of joint manipulation to fine tune the fingers direction of force during the bar.

What You See Is Not Always What You Get!

One little "secret" that most good players know is that we very rarely need to place the bar so that ALL of the strings are pressed down to the fret. Thinking that you do is probably the cause of half of all bar problems, and many students think they have to do this because it looks like that is what players are doing, but good players are not doing this. When you watch someone do the common 6 root major bar chord, it may look like their finger is pressing equally on all the strings, but their index finger is only pressing the 6th, 2nd and 1st strings down to the fret. Pressure is directed to those strings by using our "fine tuning knobs": our joints. Similarly, in the 5th root bar chord, only the 5th and 1st string need pressure, so we use just the right amount of flex in the joints to achieve that.

Exercises For Training The Joints To Direct Pressure

Below are pictures illustrating the various uses of the Bar. To get very far in any style of guitar, you must master these types of Bar. All hands are different, and people vary in the natural flexibility of their joints, so some folks find these things relatively easy, and for others it seems to elude them for a lifetime. However, your best chance is to approach the development of these Bar techniques with The Principles in mind. If you are one of the lucky people who are using the Foundation Exercises from The Principles, make sure you bring the light fingers to the neck before applying pressure, and constantly watch all fingers for sympathetic tension as you begin to apply pressure to the strings. Monitor the whole body and the breathing during the entire process.

As you will see below, it is possible to place the index across the strings in what looks like a bar, but use the joints to direct pressure so that only one string is sounding while the others are muted by the finger resting on them without pushing them all the way to the fret. If you can do this, you are well on your way to being able to handle all the nuances of barring on the guitar.

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Information & Inspiration!

Hi Jamie,

When I am practicing my songs what is the maximum number of songs I should be working on at any given time? Would you recommend mastering one before working on another, or could I work on two or three, etc?

Also, would you recommend practicing one song a night, or is it O.K. in your opinion to practice multiple songs in one night’s practice? I usually practice between 2– 4 hours a day, as I am working to become a performing artist/singer songwriter.

Thank you for your time!

Best regards,
Joshua Withey

Hi Josh,

Let's work backward here: if you are planning on becoming a performer, you will find yourself needing to play many songs in one evening. So, you will find yourself, when you rehearse for the show, playing many songs in one practice session as you practice your set. That means there will certainly be times when you practice multiple songs in one night of practice.

The fact is, practicing is an extremely dynamic thing, it is always changing, day to day, and week to week. It changes according to three things: where the material is in terms of devlopement, and where it is going and when it needs to be there (performing, recording, etc). At any given time, some things need intense focus, for instance, an hour a day on a new song, or a half hour working on a tough spot, including associated exercises that may have been devised for dealing with it. Other things need only a going over, because they have received the intense practice they needed at some point in the past. So, everything is in a different place, and we do what is appropriate.

Players are different too. I was talking to a lifelong professional guitarist the other night (blues/rock) who told me he never practices. He doesn't need to, he has been basically playing the same stuff throughout his life (although I am sure he must practice if new songs need to be learned). But within the style he plays, not much changes, and he can do what he needs to do. You may find yourself in that place at some point.

Or, you may be like me. I am only happy if I am working on some long range project that challenges me greatly. I always have a number of these going. I also have a number of quicker, easier things I am playing or reviewing. In the classical style, there is never a lack of some monstrously difficult music to learn if you wish! Of course, if a concert is coming up, you do whatever you need to do to handle the music. Some of the music may be receiving Level 1 Practice (Microscopic Practice), some may be receiving Level 2 (shaping), and some just geting Level 3 (playing up tempo) .....see The Principles, p. 75 "The Different Levels Of Practice".

With 2-4 hours of practice a day, I would recommend using some of that time for long range projects of either a technical or musical purpose, as well as working on repertoire.

A certain subject comes up from time to time in our forums. It is a subject that rarely comes up directly; it is more likely to come up disguised as something else, since it gives rise to many occurrences that can claim our attention more urgently. Nevertheless, it is an issue that needs to be talked about, examined, and thought about, because it is often found to be one of the major obstacles to our development as guitarists, musicians, and artists. It is the subject of “how do we keep the music playing”, it is the subject of “how do we keep our enthusiasm for practicing and playing the guitar like it was when we started”, or like it was whenever it was that we felt it so strongly? It is the subject of how do we keep our relationship to music, and the deep and holy part of us it touches, pure, and alive. It is the subject of “why do I sometimes find that I have no desire or motivation to touch the guitar, and maybe days or weeks go by before I really notice that I have lost touch with the desire I had to be a great guitar player”: it is the subject of depression.

I wrote about this subject because it not only is a factor in the lives of many guitar aspirants out there, it was in my case too. It is probably at its strongest at the age I dealt with it, as a teenager (and perhaps a little beyond!). These are the years when we not only feel the strongest impulse and need to create ourselves as a presence in the world, to “individuate”, but we are also the least equipped to deal with the onslaught of fears and doubts about doing so. And those fears and doubts can lead us to that land of desolation called depression, the land in which nothing is possible.

To briefly summarize what I had said in “Deeper”, depression is not feeling bad, depression is feeling nothing. The road to depression will most likely involve a good amount of time spent feeling bad, but most depressed people don’t know they are depressed, in fact, they don’t know anything about how they are feeling, or whether or not they are feeling anything at all. Depression is withdrawal from life, and it can often only be seen by its effect, which is to render a person incapable of acting, creating, and achieving. Many people have a chronic partial depression, which leaves them free enough to act and achieve up to a certain point, but below their true potential. For many of us, depression may be a brief and infrequent visitor, and that is probably a rather normal and perhaps even healthy thing in reaction to some of the severe shocks that life can deliver. Similar to the body going into shock in reaction to severe trauma, we may need to withdraw from life temporarily in order to realign our inner resources to a new demand life has made. The kind of depression we should be concerned with is the deep and lingering kind, the kind that makes us stay away from the guitar and stops our growth, while time and life move on regardless.

Is it a choice? Well, that is a complex question. That question is really asking “is there a power of awareness possible to the mind, a power of awareness that creates depression, and so could penetrate the very state of depression as well, or is it a force unto itself. That question immediately places us in the position of making a whole lot of assumptions, the primary one being that there is some fixed entity we call “I” that we can evaluate, that we can examine so as to determine its native capacity for awareness. Well, who would be doing the evaluation? Obviously another part of us, which is probably as unaware, and as much a part of the problem as the part it is examining!

There is no fixed entity called “I”. Rather, that sensation of having a center of awareness, that sensation in consciousness we call “I” is capable of great change, and this fact becomes obvious to anyone who really pays attention to it. We are all many “I’s” as the years go by, but we all vary in the number and extent of those changes. Also, and most importantly, the degree of self awareness of each individual is different, some people are aware of the changes they go through from infancy onward, most are not. I think the best way to understand this subject is to realize that the whole person, our real self, is like an iceberg. The psyche, the whole mind and consciousness is enormous, and the conscious self we are aware of and give a name to and identify with, is only a small part of the whole, it is the tip of the iceberg. This tip, this small part of the whole self, protrudes into awareness, and we call all the rest “subconscious” or “unconscious”, comprised of unrecognizable contents, and rejected parts of ourselves.

Here is the heart of the matter: the more developed we are as individuals, and the more self-aware we are, the more we will embrace levels of our being that to other people remain below the surface of awareness. If we consistently practice deep self awareness and penetrate below the tip of our iceberg and own those depths as part of our being, what are deemed “subconscious” elements in someone else become conscious elements for us. Once that is done, everything about being a person is entirely different than living only at the top, as the tip of the iceberg.

When self awareness remains only at the surface levels, it appears that things “happen” to us, and moods “happen” to us. And so we react to them as they happen, and our life becomes an endless round of bewildering circumstances happening to a bewildered self that emerges in reaction to them. When self awareness deepens, we realize that all moods, and all feelings in response to outside events, are our own creation. It does not mean they are independent of circumstances, it means that we have no awareness of the cause and effect nature of our outer life to our inner life. Like the person practicing guitar who has no awareness of what their body and mind are really doing when they practice, and no awareness of the dynamics of mind/body learning, the effect of their bad practice, their poor playing, seems to be some inevitable condition from which they suffer rather than a logical consequence of their own action.

Why do most people not penetrate to the deeper levels of their being? That is simple; because it is terrifying to do so! When we make the journey into the snake pit of our deeper selves, all consoling illusions of self are at risk, and usually destroyed. Most people will not risk that, but if they do, there is the possibility of a larger and stronger self emerging. This is the process of growth I have always embraced. It is what I recommend. If we live this way, all the questions brought up here about depression are answered.

To be continued…………..