GNS - June 2022 - Jon Bon Jovi - Blaze of Glory (Acoustic)

Hey, guys! So, as Friday came, I wanted to share something with an F barre chord in it, and decided to go with Bon Jovi’s Blaze of Glory. Now, I actually, took about seven times to record this song and still in the end I did not like much the result, but I figured that this is the best that I could muster at this point; considering that when I was just starting out to play songs with F barre chord in it, I only could change to barre chord from any other chords in two or three seconds, so it’s quite an achievement when I look at the recording that the changes are significantly faster. In some places there are hick-ups as I like to call them, because sometimes, for some reason, my pinky finger just likes to slide down that high e string (I guess it’s true what they say - you learn something new and that new pushes the old one out from your ears :smiley: ).

Also, added excerpts from small licks, which you can hear in original recording of the song, but is just simple riff (I don’t know whether its the tuning, my strings need changing or I just can’t do it properly yet, bur that 9th fret G string bend always sounds off to me).

In the long run, when I can do F chord changes without, ya’ know, stopin’ at all, I’m gonna re-vist these F barre chord songs and do them properly. But for now it is what it is.

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Aurimasas you’re well on your way to mastering barre chords.

Be sure to take your time with the placement of your hand and fingers and to pick one string at a time to make sure your placement is on point. Be sure you’re not practicing mistakes when your tempo speeds up. It’s hard to unlearn bad technique.

Hi Aurimas, don’t know the original but it’s an interesting arrangement of which your getting to grips with. Keep it going.

You are doing well, Aurimas, lots going well and progressing.

From a polishing perspective, perhaps worth playing the song in practice without singing at a slightly slower tempo to practice playing through the progression without those odd slight hesitations that happen.

On the F chord, I notice you are landing the fingers of the E shape first and then adding the barre. This is fine at times, specifically if you want the open E to ring out at the start of the bar. More generally speaking the first note you want to hear of the F barre is the F bass note. So a good idea to focus on that change, Dm to F, and concentrate and making the barre first and then landing the other fingers, doing it as slowly as you need to do. Also following @batwoman’s suggest to strum-pick-strum to ensure all notes ring clean.

Well done, keep pressing on, and you’ll keep on improving.

I actually tried your suggestion the first few weeks of barre chord training, and it simply did not work. It’s hard to explain, but simply put, fingers 2, 3, 4 just don’t want to get in their respective places, if I first put my index finger as a barre. The most I got was for my middle finger to “lie” on the strings 3 and 2 muting them completely. Then I began looking up alternatives and found one advice, I think it was from GuitarZero2Hero channel, can’t remember, to first do an open chord shape with your fingers 2-4 and then barre the strings with your index finger, which was significantly easier.

And, yes, I’m doing F chord changes, as well as chord perfect changes. And they are becoming faster, but not yet quite to the point of open chord changes (something akin to G, C and Dm changes when I found them to be the most difficult, but after a couple of thousand, I reckon, chord progression playthroughs, they are more or less okey now; so I’m guessing the same thing will be with the F chord as well). It’s just that sometimes my finger tends to land not quite in the right place, so sometimes not all of the strings are ringing out, but it’s slowly getting there.

Thank you all for the kind words :slight_smile:

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That was good stuff Aurimas and the changes to F was nice and will get better with more practice.

I am like you and I land fingers 2,3 and 4 first. We both need to work on that one I think.

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Me too, 2 first, 3 & 4 together then the barre. I’ve not been able to do it any other way.

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