Originally Posted by: JoeTatLike most beginners I am having problems with the F Major. I can play it cleanly if I use the base of my index (Like a bar chord). Is this a bad habit to get used to? I don't want to effect things later on.

You're playing it the exact way I was adviced to try playing it. By using the tip of your index finger as a "capo" over the B and e strings, while using the middle finger and ring finger to fret the other two notes needed. And even if it's the wrong way to play it, the way I see it, any comfortable way to play a chord is a good way to play it (I'm not an expert, though).

No point in playing a chord in a way that causes you any kind of pain :) Doing that will become a bad habit. Playing it in whatever way you find comfortable is not, even if other people would consider it painful. It's your fingers after all, not theirs (I remember that simply fretting a C-Major chord, the most comfortable chord to fret in my opinion, was nearly excrutiating, because I didn't have the callouses that I have now).