Hey Friend,
Diminished barre chords have a different shape than what we've gotten accustomed to. Normally, for a major barre chord in the root 6 position, we'd use the index finger to barre all six strings and an E shape chord to get the triad notes.
With diminished chords, the shapes are closer to what we would use if we were playing minor barre chords. For the root 6, the shape is similar to a D minor shape, barring all six with the index finger and placing your middle finger on the fifth string and ring on the fourth in the proper positions.
A root 5 diminished chord looks like a barre with a D shape chord added on. If you're already used to playing barre chords, this one will be a bit awkward - at least it has been for me. Nothing a little practice won't cure, but again, it's not like you're going to see this chord pop up very often.
One way to think about diminished chords is that they give you the opportunity to move your fingers into configurations they're not familiar with. This is very good for finger stretching and muscle memory, since you're forcing the fingers to learn new ways to form chords. The muscles get used to these new positions and this helps you place your fingers faster during chord changes.
When you look at the chord charts in today's exercises (like all the barre chord exercises before), I haven't shown the full barre across the strings for the actual chord shapes. My thought process was that I wanted you to be able to play the chords without needing to press all strings down with your index finger.
I had two reasons for this... - I didn't want you to be intimidated by the full barres across the strings. Most people pick up a psychological aversion to barre chords after trying one and finding them hard to play. So I wanted to remove that by only showing the fingering for the the root and remaining triad notes.
- I wanted them to be easy. If you can play the shapes, you can actually be lazy about the barre and simply maintain the index finger placement. Just let your index finger rest on the strings while the rest of your fingers do the real work. Just make sure your index fingertip is pressing the sixth or fifth string down.
As you become comfortable with barre chords, your index finger will strengthen up and you'll be able to do "the pinch" without any trouble.
Moving forward, when we cover new chords, I'm just going to use the barre chords to illustrate. You're familiar enough with them now that they shouldn't be too intimidating (unless you haven't been practicing!).
We've come a long way! All seven chords of the key of C major. And yet, we're just scratching the surface...
There are lots of variations of major and minor chords that we still get to play with. Things like seven chords, suspended chords, add chords, and augmented chords. Not to mention when several of these types get added together into a kind of "Frankenstein" chord. Some can be downright scary, but others just have scary names.
And we get to play with all of them eventually! Onward...
Peace~
Dave
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