The three hardest chords for beginners learning the guitar are F major, B minor, and B major. I’ve already covered the best songs to learn an F chord and the Best songs to practice the Bm, so today, it’s time to cover the third of the most difficult guitar chords for beginners.
Before I take a look at the best beginners songs to master the B chord, let’s start with the basics and cover a few tips and tricks that will ensure that your B chord sounds great in no time at all.
How to play a B Chord on Guitar
There are lots of different ways to play a B major chord and most guitarists will find one of the methods far easier than the others due to how their hands/fingers naturally work. The second method is arguably the best because it only uses two fingers, therefore making it the quickest option to change to and from. However, countless guitar legends use the other ways of playing the chord, so go for the one that’s most comfortable for your fingers.
Here is a chord diagram of a B major chord:
Method 1
Most guitarists should be able to play the chord this way, but it probably won’t sound very good until you practice it for a while.
Start by playing an A chord as you normally do using your first, second, and third fingers. Now replace your first finger with your second, your second finger with your third, and your third finger with your pinkie. Strum the chord and it should sound like an A major. Then play all the notes one at a time to make sure they all ring out.
If there are dead notes, find out why. Is a finger too far from the second fret wire? If so, move it closer to the fret. Is the note being dampened out because the string is touching another finger? If so, move your fingers around until the strings ring out. Are you pressing hard enough? If not, press harder or get your fingers closer to the fret so that you need less strength to press them down. Don’t rush this step, the better you can make your A chord sound using the second, third, and fourth fingers, the better your B chord will be.
Once you have an A chord that sounds nice and clear, move it up two frets so that all your fingers are on the fourth fret as shown in the diagram above. Now place your first finger flat across all the strings to create a barre on the second fret. But don’t use the soft underside of your finger, turn your finger slightly towards the headstock so that you are pressing the strings down with the edge of your knuckles and the harder skin on the side of your finger.
It probably won’t sound great at this early stage because by pressing down on your first barre finger, you don’t have the strength you had to press your other three fingers down. But don’t worry, perseverance is the key. Play each note one at a time to try and make them all ring, then strum the whole chord to see how it sounds. Then play one string at a time once again, then strum again. Repeat this process until your B chord starts sounding good.
Method 2
This will only work if your fingers bend back on themselves at the third knuckle. This will vary from person to person and goes from highly flexible with a lot of bends, i.e. double jointed, to does not bend back at all and your fingers remain completely straight.
To find out, stretch the third finger on your fretting hand straight out, and gently press the tip of the finger with your thumb to find out how the knuckle moves. It might not bend back at all, in which case, this method won’t work for you. Or it might bend backward slightly, if so, with practice you might get it to bend a little further, or you can use Method 3, which will be covered next.
If, however, it bends back relatively easily, then you can use your third finger to play the notes of the B chord on the D, G, and B strings. This makes it a two finger chord as opposed to a four finger chord as described in Method 1.
The problem is that while playing the chord, you have to lift your third finger after the knuckle to clear the high e string and let that ring from the barre on the second fret. This usually takes quite a bit of practice, but if your finger does bend backward, it’s well worth the effort, because this is by far the best way to play the chord.
Method 3
The final method has two variations. If your third finger bends backward slightly, but not enough to clear the high e string, you can use it to play the D and G strings, then use your little finger to play the B string, making it easier to leave the high e string open than when using Method 2. This is more cumbersome than using one finger to play all three notes but is still far better than using three fingers, as in the first method.
The second variation has the little finger laying relatively flat and pressing down on the G and B strings, with the third finger pressing down on the D string.
5 or 6 Strings?
According to music theory, you should start a B major chord from a B note, which is found on the second fret of the A string. Therefore, you should strum this chord using only the A, D, G, B, and high e strings.
But this is basically impossible while strumming, so for now, strum all six strings until you can play the chord well. After the chord starts sounding good and you can change to it quickly enough to play along with songs, you can slightly reposition your first finger so that the tip touches the low e string and mutes it. This will give you the five strings you need to hear while allowing you to strum all six. But don’t worry about this for now.
Exercises to Learn a B Chord Quickly
As well as the pick every string, adjust it until it sounds good, then play the full chord exercise I’ve already gone through, there are two others that will get you playing the B chord perfectly in days, not months.
They are the Chord Squeeze Ball and the Chord Press and Release exercises. I’ve explained them fully in my look at how to quickly master the F chord and the quick and easy way to play Bm, so check those out for all the info.
They are both fantastic exercises that can be used to quickly master any difficult chord shape, whether you’re a beginner or a pro, so are well worth learning and using whenever you’re presented with a new chord that you are struggling to play.
Now that you know the best way for you to play a B chord on guitar and a few tips and tricks to help you become a ninja at playing it, let’s take a look at…
The Best Songs for Practicing a B major Chord
The key to perfecting any new chord is to learn songs with simple structures that have chord progressions that contain the chord you are trying to master. The simpler the structure of the song, the less you’ll have to concentrate on remembering when the chorus comes, or when you have to go back to the verse, etc.
For the B chord, my go-to songs are:
Wild Thing
An all-time classic that has been covered by hundreds of groups. It can be played in many keys, but if you play it in the key of E, the chords will be…
E / A / B / A
This is a superb song if you use the first method of fingering the B chord because you can play the E as you normally do, then play the A with the second, third, and fourth fingers, before sliding it up two frets and barring it to become a B. Then remove the barre, slide down two frets, and you’re back on A, before returning to the E to start the sequence off once again.
The rhythm is very simple, two downstrokes on the E, followed by two quicker downstrokes on the A, then two downstrokes on the B, again followed by two quicker downstrokes on the A. You can’t get much easier than that.
There is also a bridge section - “Wild Thing, I think I love you!’ - which is fun to play as a break from the B chord. Start by strumming the D, G, and B strings open (i.e. without any fingers on the fretboard), then use the same strings but play an A chord, then play the open strings once again without any fingers, then play the E chord using all six strings to finish. Super cool!
Wild Flower - The Cult
This reminds me of Wild Thing in so many ways that I’m not surprised that they both have the ‘Wild’ as the first word of the song’s title. The chords are:
B / B / A / E
The rhythm is a little more complicated than Wild Thing so it’s best to listen to the video below and strum along. You should get the hang of it very quickly.
Note: If you pause the video at five seconds, you will notice that guitarist Billy Duffy is using the second variation of the third method of playing the B chord.
Taking it a step further…
Creep - Radiohead
If you’ve already learned your B minor shaped barre chord, this is a great song to practice to get both the B and Bm shaped barre chords down. It only contains one chord progression from start to finish which is:
G / B / C / Cm
Start with a G chord, Radiohead use the E-shaped barre chord at the third fret but you can use the root G for now if you prefer. Then play the B chord, then move the whole chord up one fret to become a C chord, then change it from a C major to a C minor to complete the sequence.
The verse is picked and the chorus is strummed, but to practice your new chords, you can happily strum it all the way through so that you don’t have to concentrate on getting the picking correct.
Here is the full tablature of Creep if you want to learn all the intricacies.
Wrapping it Up
That’s it for my look at the best songs to learn that use a B major chord, you should now know the best method to finger the chord for your hands/fingers, what exercises will help you play the chord perfectly in weeks not months, and what songs you should be practicing to help you on your journey.
I’ll end by saying that practice does not make perfect, quality practice makes perfect. So take your time to perfect the B major chord using the pick each string then strum them all together exercise. Then rapidly improve your ability to change to the chord quickly by using the other two exercises I mentioned.
Focus on these three exercises for a few weeks and B major will no longer be a chord to be afraid of, it will become a valued friend that will serve you well whenever you play your guitar.
