In this video guitar lesson I’m going to show you an F chord that every rock guitar player should know. I sometimes refer to this as the “Jimmy Page F Chord”. But this rock F chord is not just played by the Led Zeppelin guitar slinger. But is the go to F guitar chord for many top rock guitar players. And you will see why.
- If you want to build you vocabulary of essential guitar chords and master strumming…check out my Rhythm Guitar Mastery course.
(Video Guitar Lesson)
Basic F Guitar Chord
Most guitar players learn this basic F chord on the guitar first. The problem is that out of all of the other basic guitar chords, it’s the highest sounding.
So if you were to play a big fat Em or G chord, and then play this F…well…it just sounds a little wimpy. And so I fondly refer to this as the “wimpy f chord”.
F Barre Chord
So to combat the wimpy sound of the basic F guitar chord you could play an F barre chord. Or sometimes F bar chord. The spelling “barre” is used because of the Spanish origins of the guitar. It sounds good…a nice and fat sounding F chord.
But one problem can be that in order to play barre chords like this you need to keep the thumb of your left hand fairly low on the back of the neck. And for other basic open position guitar chords your left hand thumb will often stay a little higher, and sometimes even wrap around the neck to mute the 6th string. So if you had to switch back and forth between a G and this F barre chord you would have to completely rearrange your hand potion to do so.
The Rock F Chord
Enter the almighty Rock F Chord. The one favored by hotel TV smashing leather clad icons. Why? Because you are going to use your thumb to play the note on the 6th string at the 1st fret. So this is going to allow your right hand to stay in basically the same hand position as all of the other basic guitar chords.
And also rock guitar players do tend to wear their axes a little lower…for coolness sake. And if you have ever tried to play an F barre chord with your guitar swung low, you know it can be a pain in the wrist.
Usually the most common problem guitar players have with playing this Rock F Chord is that if you have somewhat small hands it’s going to be a little tough reach your thumb around the neck. But don’t give up after failing a few times. This F chord is well worth the time to master.
Practicing Your New Rock F Chord
A great way to put your new F guitar chord to the test is to play this basic chord progression. You are just going back and forth between a basic G and this rock F chord. The guitar strum in the exercise below is probably one of the most common strum patterns there is. So try that first, then plug in some other strum patterns.
G to F Chord Progression Jam Track
Here is a Jam Track you can play the above chord progression along with. It’s just drums and bass…so that gives you a lot of options for guitar strums to play around with.
Guitar Lesson Downloads
Below is a PDF file you can print out with F chord charts and the chord progression strumming exercise to practice with. There is also an MP3 of the Jam Track you can download.
(Right Click the links below and choose “Save As” or “Save Target As” or “Download Linked Files As”)
