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Hi my name is Gayle! Every time I see a barre chord I let go a deep sigh and go pass! I cannot do it! It is almost impossible to play it. So I was quite disheartened to hear Andrew say don’t play cheat and use your middle finger to press down your index finger! It is incredibly hard to press down your whole finger on all strings and make a clean sound. Any other advice other than keep practising? I highly doubt the barre chord sound will improve over time… unless I play cheat!
Hi Gayle! With barre chords, most of the time, folks struggle with one of two things: finger strength or form. If the former is the issue, than one or more notes in the chord will not ring out. If the latter is the issue, than it can be corrected by adjusting your form. I’d recommend checking out this lesson and this one. They cover the fundamentals of barring.
This is a good exercise that you can run to practice barring:
This will give you something fun to play while also helping to build finger strength. You can switch up the exercise by using different barre chord shapes. The exercise simply involves moving a shape up and down by half or whole steps. 🙂
If you’re still having trouble with barres, feel free to share a video here. I’d be happy to take a look and offer further advice.
In addition to what Andrew suggested, it could also be that you have high action and/or high string tension on your uke. Have you tried playing other ukes to see if they are any better?
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