Difficulty Barring chords

amnesiax

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Hello, I'm a newbie to the uke but I started playing recently and I've noticed that I have a very difficult time barring chords and I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing wrong. As everytime I attempt to barre a chord I tend to get some strings that mute or buzz.
I looked for advice and I saw something about lowering the action, is it something I should look into?
Also my uke is a Lanikai Lu22gcg if that helps in anyway
 
I looked for advice and I saw something about lowering the action, is it something I should look into?
A low action will help with the overall playing of your ukulele in general, not just barring chords. If possible, compare your instrument to another and/or get a second opinion. I'm not familiar with your specific instrument, but it would appear to not to be the cheapest option available so it shouldn't be unduly unplayable "as is".

Barring chords is a technique that does take practice ... quite a deal of practice for some chord shapes, and, IMHO, is possibly not something an absolute beginner should be spending too much time worrying about. Having said that, the advice in the video above is perfectly good, get your thumb behind the neck and barre with the second and third joints of your index finger. NB: This may involve "sitting up properly" and even using a strap to support the instrument so's your hands can get on with the business of playing without worrying about dropping the silly thing ;)

Good luck and remember, they call it playing the ukulele ... it shouldn't be hard work ;)

YMMV but enjoy the journey :)
 
http://youtu.be/gDpa5RJIK7E

drop Baby Drop is a great tune, and I ask you to youtube search it...everyone cool plays it. See their videos. Lol. It has three simple barre chords. The toot for it I have linked above. Just play it, over and over, and have fun and the barres will come. :)
 
PostScript.

Why the young teacher in the toot doesn't also barre the 3rd fret during his march down I don't know. Perhaps making it easier.

This young lady shows that a unique bridge, barre 5th and 4th, sounds great, too (at 0:16 seconds).
http://youtu.be/NT4aZVKrKcU

Unfortunately, you can't play along with her bc her uke's out of tune. Lol. But, plenty of great versions to play along with on youtube. Like these guys (who also don't barre third fret...hmm, maybe I'm playing it wrong...lol).
http://youtu.be/RAYiDcGlc0Y
 
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Rev

Sorry, me again. I had to make sure I wasn't going bughouse.
http://youtu.be/fou1JgaUqPE

Here's pro musicians Dominator and Lil Rev playing it with three barres, I.e. Incorrectly just like me. Lol. Lol. I note, only now, that Dom plays e7, Rev seems not to. Everyone plays it a touch differently. Fun stuff!

Amnesiax, have fun and when you have it down strumming, like Rev and Dom, start picking it...same chords, just pick arpeggios. So, from one tune, you can learn basic barres (the fiddly stuff with adding other fingers to the barre with come easily once you get this song down), chunking, arpeggiating, march downs, the dreaded E7 chord, playing along with others (on your fav video of it), timing, etc. Fun!

Down the road from Drop Baby Drop comes a gift. The biggest lesson from this song...after you've played it daily for a month, you'll begin to see this: you can play any song your own way, your own style, and it sounds great and you will be free. It takes beginners a long time to realize that, even the greats, don't play the same song the same way twice. Play it slow, play it fast; play it loud, then suddenly softLy; pick a line, then up the tempo and chunk a line; do the march down only on the C string; slide the march down! The only limit is your imagination.

Once a song is "yours", you naturally play it and adapt it to your sound, your style...no more stiff strums, no more thinking about it...it becomes not only autopilot, but your unique autopilot. That's when the uke gets damned fun!!
 
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Here is something that helped me. I discovered it playing White Rabbit by the Jefferson Airplane and sort of added to it to make it an exercise and it helped a lot. So barring a chord in the first position is the hardest. So F# is going to be troublesome. The next chord up the neck though is a barred G. Much easier. In the first part of White Rabbit, you go from the F# to the G and back again, two times. It is fun. So I started just going back and forth, back and forth. G sounded good, F# not so good. After a little while, G sounded real good, F# not too bad. After a while, G isn't going to get any better, F# sounds pretty good. And so it went. If you want, you can go two frets more and you will have a barred A, which is pretty easy, and you can go between it and the G for a while to work up to it before you get up against the nut there. Anyway that helped me. Also, turn your barring finger a little to one side or the other, it makes it is stronger that way. It takes away the tendency of the finger to bend at the joints.

I want to add here, that I am not an expert. I'm just a beginner as well, and when I give advise, it is because I've had to deal with the same problems. And I'm still learning as well. So it is sort of beginner helping beginner. Some might say the blind leading the blind. But I work through them, same as every one else.
 
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Hello amnesiax, welcome to the club.

I have found the most helpful advice in barre-ing chords to be not to use the first joint of your index finger to barre with. Less buzz for one thing.
Rllinks practice advise is very good not only for barre-ing but for all areas where you are having trouble transitioning back and forth.

@koolkayaker1: You have wondered why some players don't barre at certain logical points. When I barre, my other fingers get bound up to a certain degree. If I am interested in a walk-down or triplets or melodic stuff in general, not barre-ing gives my other fingers a little more flexibility and speed.
 
Looks like you got all the info you need. I just roll my finger so I'm playing a little on the "side" of my finger. I have also been known to put my middle finger on top of my forefinger for added pressure. As your hands/fingers get stronger, it will get easier. I started out with the usual D7 blues chord
 
Amnesiax, have fun and when you have it down strumming, like Rev and Dom, start picking it...same chords, just pick arpeggios. So, from one tune, you can learn basic barres (the fiddly stuff with adding other fingers to the barre with come easily once you get this song down), chunking, arpeggiating, march downs, the dreaded E7 chord, playing along with others (on your fav video of it), timing, etc. Fun!

Down the road from Drop Baby Drop comes a gift. The biggest lesson from this song...after you've played it daily for a month, you'll begin to see this: you can play any song your own way, your own style, and it sounds great and you will be free. It takes beginners a long time to realize that, even the greats, don't play the same song the same way twice. Play it slow, play it fast; play it loud, then suddenly softLy; pick a line, then up the tempo and chunk a line; do the march down only on the C string; slide the march down! The only limit is your imagination.

Once a song is "yours", you naturally play it and adapt it to your sound, your style...no more stiff strums, no more thinking about it...it becomes not only autopilot, but your unique autopilot. That's when the uke gets damned fun!
!

I love this advice! It makes me happy to think I can play the way I want and do my own thing!

But, are there others songs that can help you do this besides this one?
 
I might be the one who mentioned the action at the nut elsewhere. Looks like you have a $99 ukulele which is in the same range as my Kala KA-SEM. Mine came with a setup by ukegirl and it just needed a tweak to fit my taste. If your ukulele has never had a setup it might be worth it to have one done or give it a go after watching many videos. Where did you buy your ukulele, was it setup properly?

The problem I was having barring chords with my ukulele were limited to the first two fret positions. After a quick inspection of the strings height I could see I had plenty of room to come down at the nut. There are many videos on doing a setup on a ukulele both using proper tools and makeshift tools. In the least you can learn how to check your own instrument. I get by on my instruments with homegrown tools and cheap files from harbor freight. If you're not used to working with your hands or have any fear by all means pay someone to do it for you.

I love this advice! It makes me happy to think I can play the way I want and do my own thing!

But, are there others songs that can help you do this besides this one?

I have to check out this song everyone is on about in this thread. As a newish player my noodle song is "Please don't talk about me when I'm gone", I kinda got hooked on it due to the damn WB frog.

EDIT: There is a way to hold the ukulele that naturally pushes the fretboard into your fingers. I will try to find the video that teaches this method it helps for me. I cannot find the old video I was looking for but this guy is close. One can see how a little pressure squeezing the ukulele to your body forces the fretboard into your fingers.



~peace~
 
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I agree with all the advice given above. Isn't it great to have such a wonderful resource at hand? My two cents worth? Simply this, just practice barring all the strings, making sure they are all sounding OK and that your finger is in a relatively comfortable position, and then move the finger up and down the fretboard, barring all the strings as you go. It will be a bit clumsy at first, but you will be concentrating exclusively on the barring, and not worrying about fingering other chords. Once you are able to run a barre up and down the fretboard with ease, learning the fingerings for other barre chords will be a snap!
 
Thank you very much! :)

Guess I should get off of this addictive forum and go work on my Political Theology mid-term exam . . .

But isn't this more fun? I bet you can't get addicted to political theology....
 
Hey hai! I'm still here and thanks for the advice given here.
While on the topic on setting up an uke, should I still do it regardless.
 
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