The Eric Kershaw Book of Dance Band Chords.

[RayL]

Looking back, the Keith Papworth book (which I bought in 1960 along with my first guitar) is the reason why I don't play barre chords. In the Introduction it says

The three inversions in this tutor are given in different symbols
The First is a black dot
The Second is a star
The Third is a diamond
By placing the fingers in any of these series of symbols, the chord nominated by the key and chord name will be produced

Note that it doesn't say anything about stretching the first finger flat across the fretboard and holding down all six strings at once. On that first cheap acoustic which was already second-hand in 1960 the high action and heavy-guage strings would have made this impossible anyway.

The Papworth book even encourages the idea of 'one fingertip per string' by offering lots of chords that only use the top four strings.

In such ways do ideas spread!

Does the Eric Kershaw book describe the use of the first finger as a capo?

Ray

[cockroach]

The Mickey Baker book (and to a lesser extent the Ivor Mairants book) show and explain how to actually USE all those complex chords.

Not much point learning some impressive sounding, complex, difficult to play chord, if you don't know where you can fit it in, and make musical use and sense of it.

It was an eye opener to me when I first got Mickey Baker's book years ago, and taught me a lot about use of substitute chords, chromatic basslines, intro and ending sequences etc which suddenly meant I could hear what was going on musically in a lot of more complex tunes, like standards, jazz things, even Chet Atkins style stuff, and enabled me to work out and play stuff which was a complete mystery before....

The Beatles used a lot of unusual chords in a very interesting and creative way too. These books often show things which, when you try them, enable you to say...'Ahh! THAT'S the mystery chord (or sequence etc )that they used in that song!'

I tried to play the guitar without using barre chords for a few months not long after I started playing- I soon realised that, high action or not, there was no way these shapes could be studiously ignored and not used! No pain, no gain, as folks say these days...but in the long run the pain and struggling was worth it!

[keithmantle]

My left index finger is 70mm / 2.3/4" long and i find it very difficult to do barre chords in any position, any tips?. No jokes please

[ecca]

Keith..... perseverance.
The old chord books don't tell you how you have to play the chords, they just tell you the chords themeselves.
If you can't do 'em then drop the action, or perhaps the nut or use lighter strings.
If you have strings like bars of iron then you will struggle with barre chords.
PERSEVERANCE.