Guitar Tactics
Technique

You Don't Need Barre Chords: Alternatives That Work

You can play full progressions **without barre chords**

Key Takeaways

  • You can play full progressions without barre chords
  • Extract the inner voices from barre chord shapes
  • Alter voicings slightly to create new sounds
  • The same G to C progression can be voiced many different ways

Transcription

Here's a quick tip for folks working on barre chords. Even if you already know barre chords, this will be useful.

If you've been struggling with barre chords, I have good news: you don't need barre chords. You can get around and play a lot of nice progressions without them.

Let's start with two chords in the key of G. We're going to do G to C to G. That's how we play with barre chords, but check this out.

What I'm doing is taking the inner voices from barre chord shapes and altering them just a little bit. Or even something like this, further up the neck.

Everything I played there is just G to C, but the voicings are different.

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