Guitar Theory - The F Shape - F chord

In this video, we practice the F shape, and the F chord.Show more

This illustration starts out with the hand in the 13th hand position, which technically makes this an F chord, although this chord gets its name from when this shape is make in the 1st hand position.

This chord can be challenging to get comfortable with. You really have to experiment with moving your elbow etc to get it to work correctly.

Many guitar players really don’t like this chord, so they don’t practice it, and just figure out a work around.

However, this is a very important chord shape, and it can become the foundation on which to understand the strings, starting with the high E string.

If you think about learning guitar from the lowest note to the highest, we would start on Open Low E string, and go up by one half-step increments.

With this shape, and exercise, we start at the high note (the note on the high E string) and work our way down from there.

This shape ties together the two different octaves that exist across the 6 strings, by re-establishing and emphasizing the root/octave note on the D string.

That root note on the D string is the anchor point, the pivot point, where 2 different octaves come together.

That root note on the D string allows you to noodle around above and below the root/octave, and resolve on the root.

Practice this shape all the way up and down the fingerboard