Hey Friend,
The A minor barre chord, and in fact any minor barre chord, is based on the same two shapes as the major barre chord - A and E. Except, we're going to make these chords minor.
Thank you, Captain Obvious!
Using the A minor shape to play the A minor barre chord is as straightforward as they come. It is a "root 5" barre chord, so your root note A is represented on the fifth string (open string in this case).
Just play the A minor chord in its normal position - no barring necessary. That is unless you want to play it at the twelfth fret, but that's not likely to happen very often. If by some chance you do, barre the first five strings across the twelfth fret. Add the A minor shape and strum.
The "root 6" version of A minor is rooted on the sixth string at the fifth fret. Here, you use the E shape, except you need to use the minor version. Barre all six strings across the fifth fret and add the E minor shape. This will give you the notes necessary for the A minor chord.
Remember, these shapes are movable. That means you can place your fingers on the strings in one chord position and simply slide them up or down on the neck to give you different chords. This is how we're able to quickly change chords for progressions without a lot of fancy finger movement.
This is also why power chords are so easy to use. Power chords give us the meat of each barre chord that we can quickly and easily use to play just about any song we want.
Most Rock has a bit of distortion on the guitars. This helps sustain the chord notes longer. When you add distortion, though, it becomes a little harder to hear higher frequency notes in a chord. The lower frequency notes in a chord tend to drown out the notes on higher pitched strings, unless those notes are specifically plucked.
Power chords provide the first and fifth notes in a chord, but on the bass strings (the fourth, fifth and sixth strings), so you can just play those without worrying about the three note from the chord. You get the foundation of the chord, and in Rock, that is enough to provide the power and energy the song needs most of the time.
While power chords feel like a short cut, they really are used heavily in Rock music, so it's good to study and know these. I put over 250 of them in Easy Power Chords, an ebook I wrote to teach the basics of power chords.
If you can play power chords, barre chords become a non-issue, especially if you struggle with them (and frankly, I think everyone struggles with them in the beginning). You should check out Easy Power Chords.
Peace~
Dave
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