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I'll add that sometimes you can see a number next to the barred fret. This indicates which fret it should be, omitting all previous ones from the diagram. For example, the exact same picture with a little 4 next to the black bar would mean barré on the 4th fret, middle finger on 5th fret and the two fingers on 6th, which would be a G# or Ab chord.
– Divizna
Commented Mar 8 at 21:26
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@DarrelHoffman - first time I've heard about that. How does it work with cambered fingerboards? Probably best to bite the bullet, like maybe 99% of us did, and learn to barre with a finger. Imagine a song in key C, where the bottleneck needs to go on for each F chord..!
– Tim
Commented Mar 9 at 9:30
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@DarrelHoffman You mean a slide? As far as I know, that's for achieving a specific sound, not for protecting your finger from hurting. (Btw barré doesn't hurt the finger any more that open chords do. You develop calluses on the side of your finger just as those on the tips. You just have to practice for a while.) And if you're wearing the slide on your index finger, how do you then bend it to play C in the next bar (and then C7 where you need all four)?
– Divizna
Commented Mar 9 at 11:04
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@dbmag9 The origin is clear. It's barré in French where it comes from, Barré in German, barré in Italian, Czech, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish. Yes, barré is the participle of barrer which is indeed derived from barre but that's a previous generation of the etymology. When English ambushes other languages in dark alleys and searches their pockets for vocabulary, the speakers then have a tendency to throw out any diacritics and write cafe, nee and fiance (and not even distinguish between a fiancé and a fiancée at that), but that doesn't make keeping the accent wrong.
– Divizna
Commented Mar 10 at 9:11
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@Divizna: In words like "cafe", the diacritics markings are omitted, but the pronunciation is retained. The word "barre", however, is almost always prounounced like the word "bar". I don't think many people would describe such a chord by saying the index finger is "barréed" across the strings; most would instead use the past tense form "barred", pronounced like a minstrel. The adjective spelleing "barre" distinguishes it from a common term for a musical measure. At least in writing, a four barre-chord loop would be different from a four-bar chord loop.
– supercat
Commented Mar 10 at 18:45

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