The Great Barre Chord Quest

A structured approach for IMPROVER guitar players.

With a focus on Electric guitar rhythm and chord playing.

Included with membership

What you'll be learning

Welcome to this Level 2 Electric guitar pathway! 🎉😃

Here, we are starting your journey to a mastery of barre chords. Learning to play this type of chord is your bridge between an improver level player, and an intermediate player… but it takes time and persistence.

During this pathway we work through the core knowledge you need to learn the barre chords, then set about the journey of practically making them stick. With a variety of genres, songs, and player studies they'll become second nature for you!

We also upgrade your rhythm and theory skills massively, giving you the tools you need to write your own songs and even learn songs by ear!

It's an exciting time in your guitar development, and we're thrilled to be working through it with you.
Dan Holton
Chief Coach
Before you begin
You'll need to be confident with powerchords, a wide range of open chords and 8th note strumming. If you want to brush up on any of those before this pathway, be sure to take Rhythm Level 1 (for strumming), Open Chords (for chords) & Electric Guitar 2 (for powerchords). If you can do these relatively easily, you're ready for this pathway!
Challenges
Rhythm Level 1
Challenges
Open Chords
Guitar Skills
Electric Guitar Level 2
Premium Content
Barre Chords
Breaking down barre-iers!
We'll start our quest with Franco's wonderful Challenge course. This is a perfect start as it outlines the 4 core shapes, and gives you some useful exercises to get started with them. Do not expect this to come too easily, and prepare yourself for a bit of hard graft… the journey starts now!
5 lesson course
Unlockable with purchase or subscription.
Premium Content
Electric Guitar
Level 3: The world of barre chords!
Now that you have the 4 core shapes under your fingers, we will take the knowledge a little deeper. In this course we once again repeat the 4 shapes, giving you a chance to once to solidify that knowledge, but this time we have 4 awesome custom written songs to play alongside the chords. This will massively help you more firmly establish the chord shapes.
21 lesson course
Unlockable with purchase or subscription.
Free Content
Songs
Apply your new skills
At this point in our pathway we need to step back and consolidate the knowledge we have. There is no better way to do that than put the barre chords into practice using some real world songs! Choose as many of these as you like, and learn the tracks before moving onto the next stage. Good luck!
Premium Content
Rhythm
Level 1: Dan takes you on a 5 lesson interactive rhythm journey.
I know full well, from experience, that barre chords take a while to sink in. Whilst you continue to practice those and the songs we've previously learnt, let's take a step into more rhythm work. We'll be exploring every rhythm grouping you need for strumming patterns for the moment, so get the drum beat machine in the Toolbox ready!
6 lesson course
Unlockable with purchase or subscription.
Premium content
Guitar Gym
Improve your technique
Before jumping into the next course, add this Guitar Gym session to your practice schedule. It will help to continue to refine your 16th note strumming, as this is a new concept that needs time to sink in!
Premium Content
Dave Grohl
The drummer who plays guitar!
We're now diving into our Dave Grohl study, which is an absolute banger from Franco! This study allows you to continue practicing your barre chords, but also start to learn more about songwriting and how to use your chords and rhythm patterns in a Rock style. There is so much gold in this study, and I'm excited that you're now ready to work through it! 🎉
20 lesson course
Unlockable with purchase or subscription.
Free Content
Songs
Apply your new skills
We can't do a full Dave Grohl study and then have you not learn some classic Foo Fighters! We have three absolute classics to learn here, and as always you can cover as many or few as you like before moving on. Each one you learn will further reinforce all of your skills up to now, so take your time with them!
Premium Content
Octaves
No more fretboard mystery!
Now that we've spent plenty of time on barre chords, and whilst they continue to sink in, let's pull our focus to another wonderful rhythm, lead and theory tool… The octave! Franco will guide you through the concept and give you plenty of practical application.
5 lesson course
Unlockable with purchase or subscription.
Free Content
Songs
Apply your new skills
To help you practice the concept of octaves, and even the physical playing of them, we have a couple of classic Indie Rock tracks for you to have fun with. These tracks are a complete joy to play, and will help you further refine your rhythm and barre chord playing, as well as some octave playing in "Last Nite".
Premium Content
Scale Harmonisation
Building chords and keys!
Just before we jump into our last main course of the pathway, let's cover the core theory of scale harmonisation. This is the concept of how to build a key, so that the next time someone says "we're in the key of A major", you'll know what they mean! At this point of your journey, this is important knowledge to have.
10 lesson course
Unlockable with purchase or subscription.
Premium Content
Harmony
The musical blueprint
Now we put that scale harmonisation theory into practice! In this wonderful course presented by Franco we will guide you through the skill of getting a "key" laid out on the guitar, showing you how to play the correct chords in the key, but also use that as an ear training tool when working out songs by yourself! This knowledge, combined with your rhythm and chord skills, will elevate you into the realms of intermediate guitar playing!
20 lesson course
Unlockable with purchase or subscription.
Premium content
Guitar Gym
Improve your technique
Finally, just before we wrap up this epic quest of a pathway, here is a great gym exercise designed to help you remember the scale harmonisation concept practically. By being able to quickly play all the chords of a key using barre chords, you will speed up all future learning. Get this into your weekly practice!
Complete pathway
to unlock
Well done for getting all the way through this epic pathway! It's a huge achievement and should leave you feeling comfortable playing an enormous range of music. At this point you have two options for your next steps…

1. If you haven't done any lead work at all yet, and just focused on chords and rhythm, your next step should definitely be the Lead Level 1 pathway as it's important you have some lead playing under your belt before Level 3 of the electric pathway, as lead is used more and more as you advance!

2. If you have covered Lead Level 1 then you should move on to Lead Level 2 before going into Level 3 of the core Electric work.

3. If you've done both of the above, jump into Electric Level 3 and enjoy!

What is important is that you take a range of your favourite songs from the pathway, and practice them regularly, to ensure that those rhythm and chord skills are continuously improving. When they become too easy, let them go! There will be plenty more taking their place along the way. See you in the next pathway!
Dan Holton
Chief Coach

Complete pathway
to unlock

Well done for getting all the way through this epic pathway! It's a huge achievement and should leave you feeling comfortable playing an enormous range of music. At this point you have two options for your next steps…

1. If you haven't done any lead work at all yet, and just focused on chords and rhythm, your next step should definitely be the Lead Level 1 pathway as it's important you have some lead playing under your belt before Level 3 of the electric pathway, as lead is used more and more as you advance!

2. If you have covered Lead Level 1 then you should move on to Lead Level 2 before going into Level 3 of the core Electric work.

3. If you've done both of the above, jump into Electric Level 3 and enjoy!

What is important is that you take a range of your favourite songs from the pathway, and practice them regularly, to ensure that those rhythm and chord skills are continuously improving. When they become too easy, let them go! There will be plenty more taking their place along the way. See you in the next pathway!

Dan Holton

Chief Coach

The Great Barre Chord Quest

Before you begin

Barre Chords

Electric Guitar

Songs

Rhythm

Guitar Gym

Dave Grohl

Songs

Octaves

Songs

Scale Harmonisation

Harmony

Guitar Gym

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