I never really thought of it as a debate about whether a guitar player should learn barre chords or not. That is until I read an article on a fellow guitar blog this morning. The author makes argument (and a good one mind you) that you don’t need to learn to play barre chords to become a great guitar player.
My first thought is “how the heck can he say that, you’re far too limited if you don’t play barre chords” then I got to thinking about it after I read the whole article. It’s true I’ve taught myself as well as used some popular guitar lessons dvd courses to learn guitar. Barre chords were just part of the learning process of course I’d want to know them as they were available to learn, but let’s really dissect the concept of barre chords and whether we really need them.
1 – All the Chords are already there
My first ideas is that you can play almost every chord you need on the first fret (there are a couple of exceptions). Since songs can only be made from so many chords it makes sense that you wouldn’t really ever have to learn barre chords to write a great song.
Sure barre chords are sometimes used as affect during certain styles how ever at the root of a great song is the chord progression and melody. The chords can be played open they don’t have to be barred.
2 – Guitars already make too much noise
From a quote in the other article I read a great musician said that the guitar is already too present in many recordings he hears. This is a good point, many players, especially in rock bands, tend to over do the guitar. They play too much too loud not allowing other instruments in the similar range to cut through. If we played less that would be OK which means that barre chords might not be required.
The key is to learn how to be tasteful, how to inject emotion into your playing and you don’t have to use barre chords or power chords to do that. You can achieve a great sound with open chords as well as riffs and arpeggios.
The moral, don’t worry so much about learning power and barre chords. Instead look at your uniqueness and style. You’ll go further as a guitar player with unique and different abilities then you will as the another power or barre chord king.