[Cloodie]

Now that I've gotten into fingerpicking it's shown up some weaknesses in my play that I wasn't aware of i.e. Barre chords

I'm learning Spanish Romance at the moment and there's bar as follows -



--9--------------------11----------------------9----------------
-----------7---------------------7----------------------7--------
-------------------8----------------------8---------------------8
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
--7---------------------------------------------------------------



My (current) problem is that I'm struggling to sound the B string. Normally when I Barre a chord my index finger is kinda sideways on the string rather than totally flat and it sounds and feels fine like this. When I try to play the above the stretch to the 11th fret means that my index flattened and the barre therefore isn't playing properly. Any solutions, advice etc?

[theprik]

theres no way around it man just practice it

[guitarstrummin63]

either bring your finger closer to your face

or rotate your finger so it is flat in the areas you need flat

[Takamine_player]

bring your thumb down to the middle of the nack and and practice 1,2,3,4 strings at a time from top to bottem and u should have it down in no time

[dorio]

Ha ha yeah the barre ! 'practice practice practice', that's the only known way to learn them

And as you refuse to give up, you'll notice that those barre chords werent so hard
after all. Yup, practice ...

[cristo73]

Now that I've gotten into fingerpicking it's shown up some weaknesses in my play that I wasn't aware of i.e. Barre chords

I'm learning Spanish Romance at the moment and there's bar as follows -



--9--------------------11----------------------9----------------
-----------7---------------------7----------------------7--------
-------------------8----------------------8---------------------8
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
--7---------------------------------------------------------------



My (current) problem is that I'm struggling to sound the B string. Normally when I Barre a chord my index finger is kinda sideways on the string rather than totally flat and it sounds and feels fine like this. When I try to play the above the stretch to the 11th fret means that my index flattened and the barre therefore isn't playing properly. Any solutions, advice etc?

You posted this a long time ago Cloodie, so I guess you might have the solution now. Anyway, in case you don't and while practice is a good advice (although the same advice would apply to any question), there are a few tricks you can do to improve the simple yet bloody difficult "Spanish Romance". This song has had a lot written about and I have been looking for the solution you are looking for for a long time.

Actually, if you spent more than a few months trying the same few notes or chords and still fail, I believe this is not because of not having the muscles which had time to improve but because you are not doing it right. While some people may have hands that good that they can put their index finger straight against the fret and stretch their pinky 4 frets away whith all notes sounding good, this is not everybody's case.

Actually there are 2 tricks to play the difficult parts of the "Spanish Romance", I have discovered them while watching Carlos Bonnel on DVD playing the tune at very slow motion. While I am not a big fan of Carlos, his abilities are way above mine and I should be ashamed to even compare. However, I have found that the man probably has the same problem and resort to 2 things to make it sound better.

1st Trick: Before playing the difficult chords (yes the one with full barre and pinky stretched), the man would slow down on the last 2 or 3 notes to induce a tiny pause that would sound as part of the interpretation and give him time to adjust his left hand for the big chord.

2nd Trick: This is the most important, instead of having the index finger straight against the fret for the full barre, the man would actually have the middle of his index finger tip right over the fret, while the finger would have an approximately 10 degre angle with the fret so that the fingers over the B string would be behind the fret as it should be. As a result, the suface of contact between your finger and the strings increase a little while reworking the position of the finger for the B string. When I tried, it sounded good immediately. I believe the trick is proper for any full barre with stretch that needs your B string to ring... If it feels like loosing a little bit of you lower E string sound just play it a little bit harder to compensate.

Hope this helps!

[PingerFicker]

I believe the song that you are playing also is known by the name of Romanza. There is a great DVD (one of my favorites) by Pete Huttlinger that covers this song, and others. It is called Essential Exercises for Fingerstyle Guitar. He goes over lots of scales and theory, very useful stuff, and a good workout/reminder. He also has a song on there that has a kind of bossa nova feel to it that is an absolute blast to play. But that song is pretty thoroughly covered, and he gives lots of pointers. It is something that might be worthwhile getting.

[ninjato]

Learning from Jamey Andreas's stuff?

[Cloodie]

Thanks for the advice guys.