I’m not going to lie to you. You will rarely, if ever, hear the words barre chord and easy in the same sentence. The technique of playing barre chords has been something that guitar players have struggled with for a very long time. However, it is an attainable goal to be able to play these chords and learning them in theory rather than in practice only takes a few minutes.
The first of the major barre chords that you will learn is the E shaped chord. This is probably the easiest of the two common shapes used. All you have to do is take your middle, ring, and pinky fingers and use them to play an E chord on the fretboard. Then just simply slide that chord formation up however many frets you want and place your first finger over all the strings to cover them as if it were the nut of the guitar in the original E position. The name of the chord will always be the same as the note your first finger covers on the low E string.
To create the minor version of this formation simply pick up your middle finger from the fretboard and you are playing the minor chord. A good thing to practice is moving this chord up and down the neck of the guitar and recalling which chord your are playing at each position.
With the A shaped barre chord you will be using the same principle with the A shaped chord. You will quickly find that it is almost impossible to form the A chord and cover the five strings needed (you don’t need the low E but it needs to be muted) so what a lot of guitar players end up doing is not only barring with their first finger but also barring the A chord part with their third finger. As you move this chord formation up the neck, each fret counts for a half step gain in the chord you are playing.
Playing the minor chord is much simpler because you use the A minor form which involves moving the middle finger back a fret. This gives your fingers more room and should me much easier to play. It will take a lot of practice to get the A form barre chord down but keep practicing it and you will get there sooner than you may think.
One way to work your way up when playing barre chords is to try and play them on an electric guitar first if you have one. They tend to offer less resistance when trying to hold down all the strings and are generally easier to play. For the A form barre chord you can also play a shortcut by playing the A2 instead. To do this you simply pick up your finger from the B string and let it play open. For a lot of songs this gives the song more of an open feel and is actually a good addition to the sound of the song.
