F-chord & F-chord Transition Exercises
As a beginner, there’s still a lot I have to learn before I It’s not the most interesting exercise, but I put about 5-minutes a day in my current practice routine into a focused F-chord practice. When starting out with the F chord 1/2 barre and the full barre F, I did a lot of what I call, “Catch & Release”. It’s something that Nate Savage talks about in his video on 8 Chords You Must Know. What you do is fret the chord and then release it. Take your hand off the guitar neck, shake it out, and then fret the chord again. I repeated this exercise for a couple minutes each day for each version of the F-chord and then moved on to my song practice.
Take Your Time
Take your time and practice as you think necessary. I’m not in a massive hurry, so I don’t place a lot of pressure on myself to learn everything instantly. Take your time and go at your own pace. Don’t kill the joy of playing guitar by placing unreasonable expectations on yourself.
Catch & Release Exercise
Barre F-chord Catch & Release (2 minutes): I’m doing the catch and release exercise from Nate Savage’s 8 Chords You Must Know. The video is not about the F-chord. It’s a practice suggestion to use when learning new chords. You fret the chord and then let it go. Shake out your hand and fret the chord again. You “catch” the chord and then “release” it. Forcing your hand to do this helps you develop the muscle memory needed to master the chord.
Fender Play User Tips
If you’re a Fender Play student, here are some things I found helpful as I started learning the little F and barre F chords. I did the catch and release exercise as I mentioned above instead of Fender’s little F chord practice exercise (Level 5, Course 05, Exercise #1). I found that the repeated fretting / releasing forced me to focus in on the mechanics of fretting the little F and the barre F better.
Matt Lake actually teaches the barre F chord, but it’s not on the Levels lesson path as far as I can tell. I worked on learning both the little F and the barre F at the same time. I wouldn’t do that again. Start with the little F then move on to the barre F when you’re ready. I think it’d be much more satisfying to get into playing songs with the little F first and then working on the barre F once you feel you’ve mastered the little F. I haven’t mastered both yet, but I’m definitely making faster progress on the little F. It’s close to the C chord in shape and transitioning between the two chords is much easier.
On Level 4, Course 09 (Eletric Guitar, Rock genre) you’ll find Sydney Ellen’s lessons on stopping sound. I’m working on learning Smells Like Teen Spirit and now would be a good time to review fret hand muting if you haven’t practiced it much since the lessons were introduced.
Resources
- Matt Lake’s Little F and barre F chord lesson on YouTube
- Nate Savage’s 8 Chords You Must Know (for the catch & release exercise. He doesn’t teach the F-chord in this video.)
- Songsterr.com: Smells Like Teen Spirit
- Fender Play