How To Play A D Bar Chord

Bonus Barre Chord Tips

In this video, Mike will show you 3 awesome tips that will enhance your barre chords:

Why Should I Learn Barre Chords?

To become an intermediate/advanced guitarist, you must know how to play barre chords.

Here are a few reasons why learning barre chords is essential.

Barre Chords Enhance Your Fretboard Knowledge. 

Without barre chords, you’ll never be able to play guitar chords in ALL 12 keys.

Learning barre chords increases your knowledge of the fret board and allows you to play ANY chord.

This means that you unlock a whole new level batch of guitar songs that you couldn’t play with regular chords.

To learn easy songs, go here:10 Easy Songs On Guitar

Barre Chords Enhance Technique

Learning barre chords is a fantastic way of enhancing your dexterity and technique.

It’s a completely new technique which isn’t covered when learning open chords.

Learning barring technique WILL make you a better guitarist.

The D Chord

Before we learn how to play the D bar chord, let’s take a look at a regular D chord.

This chord is an open chord. We refer to this as an ‘open chord’ because it uses open strings.

• Place your 1st finger on the 2nd fret of the G string. (3rd string.)
• Place your 2nd finger on the 2nd fret of the high E string. (1st string.)
• Place your 3rd finger on the 3rd fret of the B string. (2nd string.)

To learn more about the D chord, go here:3 Easy Ways To Play The D Chord On Guitar

Quick Tip!

D major chords can be written in a variety of ways, here are a few examples:

• D Chord
• D Bar Chord
• D Major Chord

A chord is only ever minor, whenever the word ‘minor’ or a lower case ‘m’ is placed AFTER the chord.

For example:

• Dm
• D Minor

In today’s lesson, we’re going to be focusing on the D bar chord. In this case, it is a D major chord. 

Easy D Bar Chord

The easiest way to play a D bar chord is with your:

• 1st finger barred across the G, B and E strings.

This is known as a ‘D Major 7’.

If you’re new to barre chords, this chord is perfect as you only have to barre over 3 strings.

Other D Bar Chord Shapes?

The two most common D bar chord shapes are the:

• E Shape
• A Shape.

However, to enhance your fret board knowledge, it’s worth learning some extra D bar chord shapes.

We’re going to learn two, these are:

• D Bar Chord (G Shape).
• D Bar Chord (C Shape).

These barre chords are aimed at more advanced guitarists as they’re less common. However they are useful to know if you want to enhance your dexterity an technique.

Playing guitar is good for you, it’s scientifically proven. Check out this article by Guitar World to find out why: 10 Reasons Playing Guitar Is Good For Your Mind And Body

D Bar Chord (G Shape)

We refer to this as the ‘G shape’ because this chord is based on a open G chord.

To learn the G chord, go here: 4 Easy Ways To Play The G Chord On Guitar

• Place your 4th finger on the 10th fret of the low E string. (6th string.)
• Place your 3rd finger on the 9th fret of the A string. (5th string.)
• Barre your first finger over the 7th fret on the D (4th string), G (3rd string), B (2nd string) and E string. (1st string.)

D Bar Chord (C Shape)

We refer to this as the C shape as this D bar chord is based on an open C chord.

To learn a C chord, go here: Easy Ways To Play The C Chord On Guitar

• Place your 4th finger on the 5th fret of the A string. (5th string.)
• Place your 3rd finger on the 4th fret of the D string. (3rd string.)
• Barre your first finger over the 2nd fret of the G (3rd string), B (2nd string) and E string. (1st string.)
• Place your 2nd finger on the 3rd fret of the high E string. (1st string.)

Even though you don’t have too barre ALL of the strings, this chord can be tricky as you have to use ALL of your fingers.

Make sure you take your time with this D bar chord.

How do I practice the D Bar Chord?

We’re going to show you the two best ways to practice the D bar chord. Let’s get started.

1) Replace The Open D Chord With A Barre Chord

Here’s a top practice tip:

Any time you see a regular D chord, replace it with a D bar chord. 

This is the best way to practice barre chords.

Let’s put it into practice, here’s the chord progression from ‘Thinking Out Loud’ by Ed Sheeran.

D  D/F# |G   A |

Every time you see the ‘D Chord’ replace it with ANY D Bar chord.

Even though this isn’t what Ed plays, this is a great way to practice the D bar chord.

Practice each of your D bar chords in this order:

• D Bar Chord. (E Shape.)
• D Bar Chord. (A Shape.)
• D Bar Chord. (G Shape.)
• D Bar Chord. (C Shape.)

To mix it up, you could even throw in an open D chord.

2) Practice Changing Between Each D Bar Chord

To perfect each D bar chord shape, practice changing between each of them.

The best way to do this is to allow four beats for each chord.

You would practice them in this order.

• D Bar Chord (D Shape)
• D Bar Chord (C Shape)
• D Bar Chord (A Shape)
• D Bar Chord (G Shape)
• D Bar Chord (E Shape)

This is great for practicing barre chords, as it enhances your dexterity and technique.

Click play to hear this cool trick in action:

What’s the best way to remember guitar chords?

Here’s a cool trick which is guaranteed to help you NEVER forget guitar chords.

Here it is:

Every time you play a chord correctly, squeeze your hand. 

This engages your muscle memory and allows you to ‘remember’ guitar chords.

It’s VITAL that the chord is correct. If you play the chord wrong and squeeze your hand, you will be teaching yourself the incorrect chord.

Follow each of these steps, BEFORE you squeeze your hand:

• Make sure each note of the chord is clear. (You can test this by picking each individual note!)
• Make sure it feels good. (You shouldn’t feel any pain!)
• Make sure that it sounds great.

Once you’ve completed these steps you will be well on your way to becoming a chord master.