difficulty with barre chords

helendavis

Member
Joined
Feb 28, 2018
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
I have very small and thin fingers and am having a heckuva time getting enough pressure on all strings to make the notes ring true. And if I am doing a partial barre with 2 frets flattened with my small index finger, then as soon as I put the other fingers down my index finger lifts up. Help!!
 
Some of it is conditioning and practice. Do keep at it and it will get better. Do watch videos online on the various ways one can position the hand. I found it very hard to A, D and Bm chord transition early one but now I don’t even think about it..(took daily time spent + weeks..)


Do try different necks and frets. Not all ukes feel the same same when it comes to pressing down on frets. The string height, string tension, fret height, scale length and radius fret boards can change how it feels. What is right for you is dependent on your hands and what you like.
 
Last edited:
I have very small and thin fingers and am having a heckuva time getting enough pressure on all strings to make the notes ring true. And if I am doing a partial barre with 2 frets flattened with my small index finger, then as soon as I put the other fingers down my index finger lifts up. Help!!

I have really tiny hands too and I just keep practicing. It's sure different on different sized ukes, and string height and thickness affects it for me too. I don't have really strong hands but I just keep at it. Maybe your uke's too big for you to play comfortably? I gave up on a tenor. Just can't handle the stretches on it. I love the sound of my concert, but the fretboard of a soprano actually works better.
Good luck!
 
Another thing to consider is whether your ukulele is set up correctly. Many inexpensive ukes have very high action (string height above the fretboard) and you have to press really hard to hold the strings down. If you don't know how to check it, there's lots of good info and videos available online.
 
The biggest thing I notice with students is thumb positioning behind your barre finger.
Make sure your thumb is a little closer to the head stock. It will give you some extra leverage without having to squeeze to hard.
 
As I've gotten older, I have more finger pain when making certain chords, so I've taken to using another finger to help push down on the finger making the barre to add pressure. You can see what I mean in my video "The Lady Wants to Know." You can see my middle finger pushing down on the index finger forming the barre across the 2nd fret when I make the Dmaj7 chord (and I use the little finger to press down on the 4th fret, A string):

 
Last edited:
The game-changer, for me, with barre chords is the direction of the force. Like everyone else I was pushing harder and harder into the fret board. Then, I received the tip of pulling down. Gravity is already pulling your fingers toward the floor, so don't fight it. Work with gravity and pull downward--not enough to where you're bending the notes, but just enough to get clear notes.
 
We don't need that many barre chords in ukulele, when we can use open chords most time instead.
I will now go and find out what barres I use and tell here with major and minor chords and their dominant 7ths, but I'm not giving fingerings as you can find them here https://ukebuddy.com/ukulele-chords.

There is Bb and Bb7 moved upper sometimes, but say B7 can be played many times with an open chord very conveniently. Also there is Bbm. But with that chord too You don't need to move it up to maybe more than one fret.
There is D7, moved down to C#7 or up to D#7 /Eb7).
There is Db (C#) that I don't move upper normally.
Then Ab (G#) that I move usually only down.
Cm I sometimes play with barre 3 string hold, but you can use also a 3 finger grip.
Fm7 is used also for F#m7.

Those are about it. You just need learn the open string fingerings for most chords and not depend on the barre simpletons :)
When strumming you can often release the barre hold soon after for rhythmic purposes, not so easy for fingerpicking though. Maybe just stick to keys with less barres for that?

EDIT:
I forgot Bbm7 that I raise up to 3rd fret for Cm7, this being the hardest to finger barre with all four strings. First fret barre chords can be very difficult if the nut action is too high.
Could be some others too that I forgot.
 
Last edited:
Some of it is conditioning and practice. Do keep at it and it will get better. Do watch videos online on the various ways one can position the hand. I found it very hard to A, D and Bm chord transition early one but now I don’t even think about it..(took daily time spent + weeks..)


Do try different necks and frets. Not all ukes feel the same same when it comes to pressing down on frets. The string height, string tension, fret height, scale length and radius fret boards can change how it feels. What is right for you is dependent on your hands and what you like.

:agree:

To an extent an extent problems do reduce after hours and hours of practice and the improvements in technique that you discover during that practice.

However, do not think or believe that all the difficulty lies with your skill level because that isn’t necessarily so. Ukes are not all standard in every respect, I’ve had a couple with less tall frets that have been difficult to do barre chords on. Had I not mostly ‘cracked’ the problem of barre chords on other Ukes then I’d have thought my lowly skills to be worse than they actually are. Without wishing to state the obvious the hands of players come in many different forms too and that impacts on what is easier and harder to do with any Uke. Experience does help overcome difficulties and mismatches between hands and the ergonomics of individual Ukes, but if you can manage it then then the best way forward is to get a good match between your hands and your Uke’s features by selecting (your Uke) with well informed care - still working on that one myself.

I think that it’s been said already too but make sure that your Uke has been well set-up. Strings that are too height will always be difficult to fret.

Good luck with your Ukulele journey.
 
Last edited:
This video by Stuart Fuchs has helped me a lot:

https://youtu.be/gGSU3P77RTQ

About three quarters of the way through he goes over four principles for playing barre chords. I realized when I watched this that I was exerting lots of pressure in the wrong place because of bad hand position. Hope it helps!
 
The game-changer, for me, with barre chords is the direction of the force. Like everyone else I was pushing harder and harder into the fret board. Then, I received the tip of pulling down. Gravity is already pulling your fingers toward the floor, so don't fight it. Work with gravity and pull downward--not enough to where you're bending the notes, but just enough to get clear notes.


I agree. Use your arm weight to hold the barre. Think of it like a monkey hanging off a branch kind of weight. Also, when forming a barre chord, place the index finger that is going to be holding the barre last.
 
Thanks for this. Yes it works well to help with my second finger as it is stronger and larger. And your song is lovely.
 
This video by Stuart Fuchs has helped me a lot:

https://youtu.be/gGSU3P77RTQ

About three quarters of the way through he goes over four principles for playing barre chords. I realized when I watched this that I was exerting lots of pressure in the wrong place because of bad hand position. Hope it helps!

Thank you for adding this to the thread. It's already helping me. :)
 
Anybody with any tips on barring past the 7th fret? I get nice clean chords on 7 and down, but I am thinking that my finger may simply be to big to cleanly barre any higher up the fretboard. Those frets start to get awfully close together
 
Well, yesterday I experimented with the A-shaped barre chord (a.k.a. the B major chord) and I found that I could play it up until the 17th fret. I do acknowledge that with the higher frets you do have to pay special attention with the fingers since they do get crowded. The things I find advantageous to playing up there are:

1. cutaways. My ukulele has a nice florentine cutaway that allows access to all 19 frets.
2. straps. I always use a strap and I notice that when I play those high frets I tend to swing the ukulele to the left a bit so that whatever fret I'm playing is right in front of me just like the 7th fret normally is. This keeps my wrist in the same position. Otherwise I would have gnarl my wrist in some sort of palsied posture to attain the chord. I will try this experiment with my Kamaka that has no cutaway and see how far up the fret board I can go.
 
Assuming a good setup on your instrument, the required force of a bar finger held close and parallel to the fret is very small. New players tend to muscle the bar too much.

The one thing that was a game changer for my bar technique was learning to use the biceps rather than depending only on squeezing the bar chord between thumb and finger. If I wanted to, I can play full bars on 'ukulele and guitar with my left hand thumb loose and solely depend on my biceps for pressure. The ideal is a combination of slight pressure between thumb and bar finger and arm or bicep pressure. Of course the instrument must be well braced with the right arm in order to use the bicep. The benefit of this technique is you have a more relaxed fretting hand—of course no cramps—and may use arm vibrato bar on chords if so desired.
 
Last edited:
Anybody with any tips on barring past the 7th fret? I get nice clean chords on 7 and down, but I am thinking that my finger may simply be to big to cleanly barre any higher up the fretboard. Those frets start to get awfully close together

It helps me to twist my finger a bit so that I'm barring with the side of my finger, rather than the flat part. You can get pretty high up like that.
 
I was just looking to see if someone posted Stu Fuchs' technique. Sliding that thumb further toward the headstock helps many of us barre more cleanly as the finger rotates slightly off the fleshy part of the finger and uses more of the side of the finger for firmer and more even pressure. I had a workshop with Stu at the Tampa Bay Ukulele Getaway a few years back. Great teacher.
 
Top Bottom