The dreaded B

Hi all,

My first post since joining last night. I have to firstly say how impressed I am with GT and the quality of the lessons.

At the age of 10 I had about a year of lessons and mainly learnt major chords and TAB to play melodies. I stopped playing and have just started again 23 years later. It's suprising how much I remember and I've had about 8 weeks of lessong but didn't enjoy them so I'm going it alone ith the help of GT.

There were 2 chords I feared... F and B. I've pretty much mastered F and just need practice until my fingers remember where to go but the dreaded B is killing me. The biggest problem is my index finger not wanting to stretch back to the second fret. I've worked through Chris's video in the fundementals but wondered if there's any suggestions that might help me with this chord?

Thanks all.

Martin

Keep in mind that you don't always have to play all the strings. If you can't reach a note..just rest your finger on that string instead so that it mutes it.
Now you can play the chord without worry about missing the wrong note.

I use this technique all the time. I'll go to play a chord and hear one of the strings starting to buzz so I let up the pressure on the finger that's causing it.
Then when I get a chance I'll try to reposition it or just alter the strumming style so I'm not hitting that string anymore.

There's also alternative ways of playing the same chord. An F chord has 4 including the barre chord. A B chord has 3 different fingering methods.

I've included them in my lessons but I haven't updated the old lo-res quality of those ones yet so the quality on some is pretty bad. Plus I didn't really go into the detail they required and only covered a couple of finger positions because of bandwidth issues. That section of lessons is next on my list after the Major Sevenths tutorial so figure on a couple of weeks and they'll all be lovely Hi-Res videos with proper lighting instead of a 60 watt bulb :)

Plus I'm adding backup music to most of my lessons now, with Jam files and MP3's so you can practice until it hurts.

http://guitartricks.com/lesson.php?input=9033&s_id=123

I've found that working a chromatic scale from the 12th fret down to the 1st is a good way to a) get my fingers used to moving period and b) helping you develop "the stretch" in your fretting hand you need for things like that B chord. Running a few scales should help, too.

I play B major as a barr chord (look up major barr chords root note on the A string) But to put it quickly, the important part is to put your fretting finger over the D, G and B string, 4th fret, then barr the 2nd. In a B chord your don't play the 2 E strings so it doesn't matter that they're covered.