Shifting The F

Let's tackle some common F chord struggles and ways to help you improve this tricky barre chord!


View the full lesson at Shifting The F | JustinGuitar

Yes to all of this! I was able to play a nice F about two or three times, and after that my hand grew tired and it fell apart. Changes were fairly hopeless. Took my guitar in - luthier made what he said was a minor adjustment, and - wow, what a difference.

Regarding the sneak peek of moving barre chords around on the neck: I really appreciate this. A wise person once told me that good teachers follow a pattern: they tell you what they’re going to teach you, they teach it, then they tell you what they taught. I love that Justin spreads this practice out over time! Thank you. :slight_smile:

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I am struggling big time with the F-Chord. But my problem is on the G string. My Barre is strong enough, I can play it at the 5th, 3rd or 1st fret and the barre notes ring true, but I can’t get the G string to sound properly. I think my 3rd finger is muting the string. I have short fat fingers lol. Any advice because this one chord is really holding me back. Im alternate picking at 150bpm, finger picking fine and all my other chords are down pat, but that bloody G string on the F chord is doing my head in. I can occasionally get it to ring out if I twist my wrist at a weird angle, but I dont think thats how Im supposed to play it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!

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Seriously the only thing that makes me want to quit playing every time. I freakin hate the F chord XD It’s so damn frustrating when playing the songs in the practice routine and it always sounds like…well… Feels like I’m going nowhere with it and not improving at all.

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I have the same hate-hate relationship with the C chord :wink:

Been working on improving it for about three months now. It’s getting better, but progress is painfully slow.

Oddly enough, I’m having better luck with the mini F.

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What the heck is a NITSUJ? :thinking:

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Justin did a couple of learn to play left handed videos. Nitsuj is “Justin” spelled reverse :wink:

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I was actually doing this since the beggining because a song I wanted to play used almost exclusively barre chords and I pushed through it. Definitely not easy but when I got to this lesson it took me around a week and a half to do the F chord consistently with chord changes since I already had the technique

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Ramiro @Ramiro23
Welcome to the community :grinning:

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I have been struggling with this for a while. This “easing into it” method is amazing!

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What do you tell the luthier when you take it in?

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When you took it in, what did you ask the luthier to do?

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Hi Drake @drakes, welcome to the community! When I took the guitar in (FWIW it’s an acoustic) I explained that I am a beginner who was able to fret most chords I’d learned well enough, but was having difficulty playing F cleanly. I asked him to check out the guitar and make any necessary setup adjustments. He adjusted the truss rod, lowering the action somewhat.

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Funnily enough moving the shape around is what led to me playing my first clean F-chord. I actually find this to be a really useful practice method.

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I was struggling with the F chord too, like many. My main issue was muting the B string, like Justin says is common in this video. I tried his suggestion of sliding it to the 5th fret. When I did that, it suddenly rang out very well. Looking at my hand, I saw my barre finger was now lying flatter on the fretboard than at the 1st fret. I then tried to do the same thing at the 1st fret and was much more successful. Not perfect, but closer and it rang out more often. I think in the original F chord lesson, he mentions a slight rolling of the barre finger and I may have taken that too far or my anatomy just didn’t work that way.

Anyway, very grateful for this video!

Jeff

Having eventually mastered the F chord, I feel the pain and frustration of those going through this process. You will eventually get there.
I found that once I mastered it my next problem was trying to use it in songs with chord changes. I found having spent so long learning it by placing the bar first, 2nd finger next followed by 3rd and 4th like a wave. The muscle memory process was doing this every time and was slow and not practical. With a lot of experimentation I found that moving from open G chord to F if I concentrated placing my 2nd finger first everything else fell into place at the same time. A good song to practice this is Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.
Hope this is of help to some of you once you have mastered the F.

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