D Guitar Chord Sound
Lida Rick
I have occasionally played guitar and the first bar chord I came across was Bb major. If I remember right, it is a bar chord across the first fret. I tried and I got like a muted staccato sound even though I was pressing as hard as I would for an individual string to ring out. But I figured out a way to do it with all 6 strings that wasn't a bar chord and boom, Bb major was in my chord inventory. Non-standard way but it works for me because I have flexible pianist hands.
But why is it that if I try to play a bar chord, any bar chord, I get a muted staccato instead of a full ringing out? Because while I might be able to play Bb major as a non bar chord, that doesn't guarantee that I will be able to do it for every common bar chord(some of which I bet are 7th chords that would be awkward or impossible to play otherwise).
And I have seen bar chords where you have a string that is not fingered and you might have like 3 strings on 1 side of it and 2 strings on the other side. I assume that means that you use that string at tuned pitch instead of as a fingered note.
Several potential reasons. But let's make life a little easier. That shape (an A shape) barre is transferrable all over the fingerboard, to produce any of the 12 major chords. Where you are trying it is in a difficult place. Try it on 5th fret - which will be a D major. Here, the frets are closer together.
Now, the barre goes across the strings at fret 5. It can go across all 6, or just 5. personal choice, although a lot of folk on the net seem to think it must only cover the top 5. This gives a root version. But it then means you either miss the fat bottom string when you strum, or mute it - usually with the tip of the index finger, some players use their thumb wrapped round.
Bear in mind that the barre finger only needs to press on the (6th) 5th and top strings. Use the side not the fleshy pad part of that finger. The 3 that are pressed on fret 7 (still on D!) need to be curled. You may be collapsing them and muting other strings in the process.
One common reason it's unsuccessful is the set up of the guitar. If the action is too high, you're going to struggle to press them down properly. Tight strings that are too heavy gauge won't help either. If it's those, then for a time, tune the guitar a tone lower to help. It's not usually because the strings are too low to the fingerboard. If it was, every chord would sound choked.
1. As Tetsujin mentioned in his comment, you might not have the strength to push hard enough. This will come given enough time and practice. You could start by playing a F chord on the first fret, with a barre only on the E and B strings.
I've found that the geometry of your arm, hand, and fingers with respect to the neck matters. Adjusting the neck up or down (i.e. angle with respect to the ground, or your body) to a position where you can hold the bar chord that sounds right, will help.
It takes time to get the technique. The best tip I can give if you don't know this already is not to lay your index finger totally flat but to roll it round slightly so that it is the bony side, rather than the fleshy pad of the finger pressing down.
For F shape barre chords there is trick for avoiding them altogether (Jimi Hendrix reportedly did this) - don't barre completely, just barre the B and high E strings and tuck your thumb over to fret the low E string
I'm thinking that even if I do the low level leg work of producing multiple sine waves at the right frequencies it wont sound right due to the envelope needing to be correct also, else it wont sound like a guitar but more of a hum.
a) is it possible to shoehorn the play command to do a whole chord (ideally with slightly differing start times to simulate the plectrum string stroke) -- i've not been able to do this but maybe theres some bash fairydust that'll fork a process or such so it sounds right. If this is possible i'd settle for just calling out to a bash command from my code (I dont like reinventing the wheel).
b) (even better) is there a way in python of achieving this (a guitar chord sound) ? I've seen a few accessable python midi librarys but frankly midi isn't a good fit for the sound I want, as far as i can tell.
a) The hackish way is to spawn a background subprocess to run each play command. Since a background subprocess doesn't make the shell wait for it to finish, you can have multiple plays running at once. Something like this would work:
b) The key point to realize about MIDI data is that it's more like a high-level recipe for producing a sound, not the sound itself. In other words, each MIDI note is expressed as a pitch, a dynamic level, start and stop times, and assorted other metadata. The actual sound is produced by a synthesizer, and different synthesizers do the job with different levels of quality. If you don't like the sound you're getting from your MIDI files, it's not a problem with MIDI, it's a problem with your synthesizer, so you just need to find a better one. (In practice, that usually takes $$$; most free or cheap synthesizers are pretty bad.)
An alternative would be to actually dig under the hood, so to speak, and implement an algorithm to create your own guitar sound. For that you'd want to look into digital signal processing, in particular something like the Karplus-Strong algorithm (one of many ways to create a synthetic plucked string sound). It's a fascinating subject, but if your only exposure to sound synthesis is at the level of play and creating MIDI files, you'd have a bit of learning to do. Additionally, Python probably isn't the best choice of language, since execution speed is pretty critical.
Guitar Chords are a group of at least 3 notes played together, this means three different notes, i.e. notes with 3 different pitches. If, for example, you select an E major chord on the guitar chord generator on this page, you can see the 3 notes E, B and G# (Ab) make up this chord. Some notes can be expressed as either sharp or flat (enharmonic spelling), the notes sound just the same but the naming of them is decided by which key the song is in. You can find out more about this in our music theory section.
The Guitar Chord Book is intended to be as intuitive to use as possible, but we also have instructions below! also see the frequently asked questions page link on the right. Members can post and answer questions in the forum.
The chord book will load an E major chord to start you off. Everytime you click on the Root or Type it will load a new selection of guitar chords (inversion or voicings) that fit the selected Root+Type combination. The Roots show the available root keys from C upwards and the types show a variety of the most common chord types.
When you have selected a guitar chord root and type, the more link will appear and this will show more chords which may be different voicings or inversions of the selected chord and in different places on the fretboard.
There are two available modes for playing the guitar; strum or pick. In Strum mode you will here the notes played back quickly one after another like when using a plectrum and they will stop after the guitar chord is complete, in pick mode they will keep going until you tell it to stop. This is also true when using the MyChords panel. You can toggle between these two modes using the button at the top of the guitar chords application.
When you select a chord from the Root and Type panels this will be automatically set to the ideal fret for displaying this chord. You can though adjust this yourself and you can make this go to maximum of 10th fret.
Just like a real guitar you can put a Capo on the strings to change the chord or raise the key of the chord. You can toggle the capo on and off using the button at the top of the guitar chord application.
Why you sound out of tune often depends on your level of experience. Beginners, for example, sound out of tune because they tend to tug at the strings pulling them sharp. A perfectly tuned guitar can yield chords that sound disonnent because of poor technique.
Intermediate and advanced guitarist sound out of tune for different reasons. Number one, even a perfectly tuned guitar is slightly out of tune due to design. By that, I mean there are basic flaws that even under perfect conditions some notes will be slightly out of tune.
When the guitar intonation is properly adjusted all notes will be in tune or at least very close. Do to the physical construction of the guitar it will never be in perfect tune but the idea is to get it as close to perfect as possible.
When the intonation is adjusted properly the neck will be slightly curved to allow space between the frets and the strings. If the neck was adjusted perfectly flat strings would rattle against the frets.
This is the tool that is used to adjust the truss rod. Be sure to loosen the strings before making this adjustment. Turn the nut no more than a quarter turn. Retune the guitar. Wait a few hours before making a second adjustment because over time the tension may change.
The six screws at the top of this photo are used to adjust the Floyd Rose bridge pieces. Notice the symmetry of the six pieces. The three wound strings are adjusted with the low E string piece the farthest back, next the A string and the D string is the most forward. The unwound strings have a similar symmetry with the high E string the most forward.
To help you understand the reasons why your chords might sound bad, one thing you can do is to learn what those bad sounds are and how they are created. This way, you can make a conscious effort to avoid these actions.
Try not to press your palm right up against the back of the neck, leave a little space. The only exception here is when you might have to play a chord using your thumb to fret a note on the low E string, however, this is very rare.
With some chords, you may find yourself accidentally muting the high E string. The culprit is often the base of your index finger. Try to keep a bigger gap between this space if you find this is happening. (see photos above)
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