Simplify and Shorten Barre Chords (Bar Chords)

Barre chords are very difficult to play in many ways. Especially for beginners, these chords are always a major challenge.
The fact that with a little practice and routine, barre chords can be gripped just as quickly as “normal chords" is hard to believe at first. But it’s true! 🙂

Simply omitting barre chords and replacing them with chords with open strings works in many cases, but not in all.

What you can do in such a case: shorten the barre chord.

How do I shorten a barre chord?

A normal chord diagram of a barre chord looks something like this:

The number “1” stands for the index finger, which extends over the entire fretboard.

As you can see here, the pressed notes on the A, D, and G strings are “useless” anyway, as these notes do not sound because they are pressed by the fingers in front of them (2, 3, 4). Thus, you no longer hear the notes behind them.
Nevertheless, you press down all six strings because it is much easier than bending the index finger so that exactly these three are not pressed.

What is important for shortening a barre chord is that we start from the lowest string. So we don’t leave out a note in the middle or on a high string, but start from the bottom.

So, if we leave out the lowest string, we can also leave out the notes that are not played anyway:

That would look like this as a chord diagram:

If we were to leave out another string, it would look like this:

The chord is still exactly the same. The only thing we would leave out in this case would be the root and the fifth. But since these notes are still present in this shortened version, it is not a problem.

You can download a list of the four basic barre chords and their “shortening” on my Patreon.