I started noodling around with a neglected guitar of my sons about 2 yrs ago.However I made very little progress until I joined GTricks. My problem is the Fchord and small stubby hands, of course it had to be an indispensible chord. Is there an alternate way of building it or a substitution? If someone could give me a boost on this maybe I could start increasing my repitoire. I am a 63 yr old dog trying to learn some new tricks!

There's a couple of different ways of playing an F chord.
Try this lesson:

http://guitartricks.com/lesson.php?input=9039

You can also learn to play it using a barre chord if you have enough finger strength in your first finger.

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Kevin's Guitar Tricks Lessons
Schmange Music U.K./Canada - Home Page
Schmange's iTunes

Hi Gene,

I work with many students for whom the F is troublesome. In fact, come to think of it, I've never met a guitar learner who DIDN'T have trouble with the F in the beginning (and beyond!).

While it is good practice to set a goal of mastering the F chord over time, not having it down yet is not always a reason to avoid any song you want to try to play, just because it contains the dreaded F.

Honestly, the F Major Chord is physically more challenging and difficult for most guitar learners than the other basic chords. You can continue to work on the F, while also advancing your playing with the other chords you know at an appropriate, and faster, pace.

I'll come right out and admit that I'm about to introduce the idea of a short cut (which some would consider cheating), but in SOME cases, this suggestion can be a reasonable substitution to an F. Especially in certain genres of music. (What genres/styles interest you most?)

The chord "F Major Seventh", (Fmaj7) is a little less crowded and athletic than the F, and can be a reasonable substitution in some pieces.

Important to understand: the Fmaj7 has a different "chemistry" in terms of it's sound and mood than the F major you've been grappling with. It will have a different feel in the music than a true F chord.

It's fretted like this, low to high: XX3210

In some song-styles, like folk, country, pop, acoustic rock - this can be a reasonable, if not interesting and welcome at times, substitution.

I offer this temporary suggestion only because I've met so many guitar learners who steer themselves away from learning a song that they love, only because deep in the arrangement somewhere, lurks the dreaded F.

Keep at it. You'll get there. Meanwhile, keep chipping away at it, and also meanwhile, keep advancing and enjoying the skills that are coming more easily to you right now.

best wishes, Lisa

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Lisa McCormick, GT Instructor
Acoustic, Folk, Pop, Blues

Full Catalog of Lisa's Guitar Tricks Tutorials

I dealt with this issue extensively in this thread:

http://www.guitartricks.com/forum/s...ead.php?t=28207

Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes for you!

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Christopher Schlegel
Guitar Tricks Instructor
Christopher Schlegel Lesson Directory

I learned to play barre chords by playing "power chords" or just the three bottom notes.

You can fake F for a bit by just playing the "power chord" F as 133xxx. Use your index to play the F on bottom, and your ring and pinkie to play the C & F (the "3 3" part.) Mute the 1, 2 and 3 strings as best you can.

After you get used to that, you can start putting your index finger across all the strings and add your middle finger to the 3rd string for 133211 - which makes a barred F. This gives you a big fat sounding F chord.

Still in F - if you lift the middle finger for 133111 you get F minor.

Once you've learned that trick, the whole guitar neck starts opening up, moving the F pattern up two frets give you G, and so on.

From there you just keep learning.

Good luck,
Neil

Another method I find myself using quite often is like this:

-------------x-------------------------------------------------------------
-------------1-------------------------------------------------------------
-------------2-------------------------------------------------------------
-------------3-------------------------------------------------------------
-------------3-------------------------------------------------------------
-------------1-------------------------------------------------------------

... especially when changing from a C Major to an F chord...

You just play the bottom 5 strings and use your thumb on the sixth string.
You can also optionally leave the top E string open and get an FMaj7 to add a little flavor to a song. Again, once you learn this fingering you can move it anywhere up and down the fretboard.
If you can't use your thumb to properly hold down the sixth string... just use it to slightly mute the string instead and play only the 2nd, 3rd 4th and 5th strings.

__________________
Kevin's Guitar Tricks Lessons
Schmange Music U.K./Canada - Home Page
Schmange's iTunes

Don't give up. Keep insisting that your fingers cooperate and eventually they will. You're just a child. I'm 81 and believe me when I say that there is no better antidote for aging fingers than the neck of of a guitar. I used to play the dance circuit but now I just play for myself because I really love to play. have fun and keep the music playing.