Hey Friend,

F major weighs in next as the VI chord in the harmonic progression of the key of A minor. If you recall, F was the IV chord in the key of C. So like all its co-stars in the key of A minor, its position is merely shifted BACK by two spots:

Repetition and time - that's what it takes to learn these differences.

Again, it's the patterns that make learning this stuff doable. The more you work with these patterns, the easier they become to apply. Your brain accepts them as known good information and integrates them into your playing.

Your fingers and hands also begin to "intuit" where they need to be on the fingerboard. That's the muscle memory kicking in and allowing you to put your brain to the creative process. Like any other routine you establish, once it's in your fingers, you don't need to expend any thought energy on it. When was the last time you had to think about taking a breath?

It's not sexy! Learning these things CAN be boring, especially if you're burning to become the next Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen now, not tomorrow!

But both Jimi and Eddie invested the "behind the scenes" time learning this stuff and applying it. You don't become a master by reading something once and getting the gist of it. You've got to read it, try it, practice it, read it again (to see what you missed the first, second third time), practice it some more and then apply it in some real music.

That's when you find out if the "battle plans" will actually stand up to real combat.

Trust me... these will.

But you've got to take the time to dig in - if you really want to learn it.

Okay, stepping down from my soap box, let's look at F major. 

The chord comes from the key of F major

Using the 1 3 5 pattern to get the notes for the triad, you get F, A and C. AND, as you see here, the same three notes occur naturally in the A minor scale, so the chord works well:

Let's get to the exercises:

Here are the various positions up the neck where you can play F Major.

And its barre chords:

Only one more chord to round out A minor - that'll be G major. See you tomorrow.

Peace~

Dave