Bar Chord Shapes

I have put together charts of bar chord shapes for many of the commonly used chords. Also, I tried to find a shape that would place the root note on the E string, A string, and D string. This way you will have many different options.

To use my charts, just place the red note on the root note and play the shape. The light gray notes are optional. You can either play them or not depending on how you prefer it to sound or if you are able to play them due to a difficult shape. I didn’t include any shapes that I felt were just impossible.

Also, I encourage you to play around with some of these shapes. I will be the first to admit that not every one of them sound very good the way they are charted, but I wanted to include all possible notes that could be in the chord. By taking out some notes and adding or leaving out the optional (light gray) notes, you can get a few different sounds from each.