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Home ❯ Topics ❯ Barre Chords ❯

Fingerstyle Chord Tip: F#m Without Barring

Lesson #241 • Jun 4, 2019

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It includes all of my notes for this lesson, allowing you to follow along at your own pace. You're free to download, print, and share the PDF across your devices.

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Editor’s notes

In this lesson I’m happy to show you an easier way to play the F#m (F sharp minor) chord without using any barre chord techniques. I stumbled upon this voicing while recently learning “Yesterday” by the Beatles, which features a tricky transition from G to F#m to B7 – and was happy to realize this simplified voicing worked great in that context. Note, what I’ll show is primarily meant for playing fingerstyle (it doesn’t work as well with full strums). I’ll also show a few practice exercises you can use in order to get up to speed with using this simplified voicing in actual context. Finally, I’ll demonstrate how you can use this chord shape to play other minor chords up the fretboard (e.g., 5xx555 = A minor; 8xx888 = C minor; etc). Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoy!

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