Arthritis in my chording hand

[N-lightMike]

Hello @DrB ;

Let’s start with a simple reality. There are many guitar players, including professionals, who DO NOT play barre chords. There are several options.

The first and most obvious it to avoid barre chord heavy keys like “Bm” (it’s really the minor mode of the key of D). The minor mode of the key of C is Am, Dm and Em, none of which are barre chords. Is it limiting? Well, look at the songs of Tom Petty. His songs are usually not that hard, but he still found ways to make unique and interesting sounding chord progressions.

And you have several keys without any barre chord in the 1, 4, 5 progression. G, C, D; D, G, A; A, D, E.

Now, more options open up when you learn the partial chord shapes, the most common being the mini barre F. There are an awful lot of guitar players that use that and never make the full barre F. You just use the high 4 strings like the D chord. All of the barre chords can be played using a partial shape rather than all 5 or 6 strings.

If you’re older and have arthritis are you going to improve? Maybe, but there is a good chance you will never do well with barre chords. That is not important.

There are 2 things that are all important in guitar:

1) Have Fun

2) Do What You Can

Ok, 3 things.

3) Have Fun.

That’s the exhaustive list of what’s important in guitar.

MG 😀

[DrB]

Thank you Mike. I just have had several people over the years tell me I need to learn barre chords. I have substituted B7 and Bmin7 most of the time for B and Bmin. I will look at what I can do to play less strings.

[Cadgirl]

@DrB , @N-lightMike is correct, lots of people don’t do barr chords. I attached a youtube that might help you out, it’s called Guitar CHEATS! The video shows that there are alternatives out there. This friday’s Lesson “KC9 Minor (Key of Bm). YIKES, I’ll admit I didn’t do a full 10 minutes of it and I called it done (bad me). So… I’m glad for your question, because now I found some alternative voicings through the website for some of the challenges we had this week. Just google guitar cheat! – Never Play a Barre Chord Again!. It’s a site by Darrell Braun Guitar.
I attached my cheat sheet. It has the chords being talked about in the video. Hope this helps. It helped me.

alternative-chords.jpg 932 KB Image File - Click to view

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[N-lightMike]

👍🙏😊

Thanks @Cadgirl , I’m going to check it out as well. I can play barre chords, but I’ve never gotten as good as I’d like. Alternate chord shapes might help me play better even though I can do barre chords. 😎

MG 😀

[Cadgirl]

I was really happy to find the site. I never thought to look up an alternative. 🙂

[N-lightMike]

👍😊

[DrB]

Thank you cadgirl. I will look at that site.

[Bill_Brown]

Hello @DrB , welcome to TAC. I hope you have a great journey here. I also have arthritis in my hands and fingers (among other places) and some times the pain and swelling within the joints gets to a point that its hard to make an open C chord. When things get that bad for me, I resort to topical creams for some relief. I’ve used prescription as well as OTC medical pain relief creams, one is not better than the other, but the OTC ones are easy to come by and less expensive IMHO. I rub the cream thoroughly on my hands and fingers and wait for it to take affect (maybe 1/2 hour) and then wipe my hands off before I pick up my guitar. Just something to consider.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by  Bill_Brown.

[Timbothirroul]

Hi l am in the same boat regarding arthritis

I find the finger stretching course a great help