The dreaded F chord is infamous to anyone learning to play the guitar. It is a major stepping stone that a huge number of guitarists never manage to cross and usually results in an end to their dreams of ever playing the instrument.
But is it really that hard to play? Are there any tricks to making it easier to play and sound good? Is there an easy way to change to and from an F chord quickly? And what are the best songs to practice to get good at playing the F chord?
I’ll be answering all these questions and more, but let’s get started with…
What is the Best Way to Play an F Chord?
Unlike many teachers, I don’t believe that learning to play any of the easy F chords (one of which is shown below) is beneficial.
Easy F Chord
The first reason is that you will rarely play this in an actual song, therefore you are learning something that you will probably hardly ever use once you have mastered the standard F chord.
Secondly, and far more importantly, if you can play an easy F chord well enough, there is no motivation to spend the time to perfect the full F chord, which is one of the most important chords you will ever learn.
But Why is the F chord so important on the Guitar?
The F is usually the first barre chord that beginners learn. Barre chords consist of the second, third, and fourth fingers playing a chord shape with the first finger laying flat across the whole fretboard creating the barre.
F Chord
The great thing about barre chords is that they are moveable, therefore, if you can play an F chord, you can move the entire shape up one fret and you’ll have an F# chord. Move it up one more and you get a G chord, one more, a G# chord, etc. Therefore, by learning to play the F barre chord well, the entire fretboard opens up and you can play any major chord you want using the same shape.
Plus, there’s more, if you remove your second finger from the chord shape you will get an F minor. This can also be moved to different positions to create all the minor chords up and down the neck. If you now remove your little finger, you will create an Fminor7th chord, again moveable anywhere to create any other minor7th chord.
This is what makes the barre F chord so valuable to every guitarist, therefore the quicker you learn to play it properly, the faster you will improve. Which brings us nicely to…
The Best Way to Learn To Play the F Chord
Before I explain, let's start with a hard truth… the F is by far the hardest chord any beginner will learn. It’s awkward, painful, and infuriating. It will make you think that you have weak fingers and no ability to control them. This is completely normal. In all my many years of teaching, I have never sat with a pupil who is trying to play an F for the first time and they have made it sound anywhere near good. If they are lucky, one or maybe even two strings will sound, the rest will just be muffled.
With a demoralized look on their face, I tell them the same thing I am about to tell you… Think of your favorite three guitarists of all time. They answer, I then tell them that the first time any of those guitar legends tried to play an F, it sounds as bad if not worse than their attempt. It really is that difficult to play.
So, how do you get good at it, well, unfortunately, practice is the key as with most things on the guitar. But it’s how you practice the F chord that will really make a difference.
Hand Position is More Important than Finger Position
Most beginners, especially those who are self-taught, don’t seem to realize that if your hand is in the optimum position for a particular chord, then your fingers will naturally fall into the position you want them to be. Whereas, if your hand is in the wrong position, playing the chord can be anywhere from difficult to impossible.
The secret to getting the F chord to sound good is moving your wrist down much further than it is for the root chords. This allows the first finger to be completely straight and pointing upward giving it enough strength to press down on all six strings. Make sure that the finger doesn’t twist, it should be standing straight like a flagpole. This leaves the other three fingers free to play the other notes of the chord without muffling the strings on either side of them.
Try it, you will probably be shocked at how much of a difference moving your hand position makes. However, this might be quite uncomfortable at first, so practice it daily until your wrist gets used to the slightly awkward position.
The F Chord Press and Release Excercise
This is the best exercise for perfecting new chords and changes to and from them. It’s great for beginners to learn an F chord, but can also be used later in your guitar development whenever you need to quickly master a difficult new chord.
Start by playing an F-barre chord and strum it once. Now release the tension on your fingers, but keep them in position. As you strum the F again, increase the tension pushing your fingers down into position making the chord ring.
Next, relax your fingers even more, so that they are only just touching the strings, then strum again, increasing the tension as you do, to make the F chord ring again. Once you get the hang of this, relax your fingers so that they are a millimeter or two away from the strings, then strum again and tense them.
As this gets easier, you can move to the next step, which is to lift your fingertips slightly further away from the strings, then strum and tense. Now, even further away, and strum and tense. Continue to move them further and further away from the strings until, over time, you can straighten out your entire hand and then, as you strum, the fingers will pop back into the perfect position to make the F chord ring.
This exercise not only teaches you to play the F chord correctly very quickly, but it also helps with changing to and from any other chord to an F.
The Best Songs to Master the F Chord
The secret to mastering any new chord is to learn songs that feature it heavily. My two go-to songs for F are House of the Rising Sun and The Passenger.
House of the Rising Sun by The Animals is a classic and there are three great reasons to learn it:
- It only contains simple root chords and a barre F, so most beginners will find most of it very simple to play giving them more time to concentrate on perfecting the F chord
- The picked introduction is well worth learning and is guaranteed to turn a few heads whenever you play it in front of anyone
- The rhythm is a simple 6/8 but it is played very quickly making it a superb rhythm workout for beginners
Here’s the full House of the Rising Sun Tab which you can either strum or pick.
The Passenger by Iggy Pop is by far the best song ever to learn an F chord. It consists of two alternating four-chord patterns:
Am / F / C / G
Am / F / C / E
This chord sequence remains the same for the verses, choruses, etc, i.e. it never changes, you play this chord sequence from the start of the song till the end. Therefore, play along with the song and you will be playing an F chord every four bars for its nearly five-minute duration, or try a live version that can stretch to approximately seven and a half minutes for a monster F chord workout!
The rhythm is also unusual, starting with an upbeat, followed by a downbeat, an upbeat, and then a muted downbeat to finish every bar adding extra interest to the song and making it even more fun to play.
Wrapping it Up
Hopefully, the F chord now seems a lot less scary than it used to. It’s a great chord and really has to be mastered to make you the guitarist you want to be. These simple techniques will make it sound a lot better as well as make the change to and from the chord far, far quicker.
All the best, and remember, practice makes perfect!
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