Barre chords or moveable chords are chords that involve using your first finger to press down all the strings on one fret. Then the the rest of the chord is formed with your 2nd, 3rd and 4th finger. If you think about the “barre” as being the same as the nut,

The NUT is the metal or plastic thing near your guitar tuners/head, where all the strings pass through before the first fret on your guitar.

then you can see it’s like taking open chords and being able to move them around the neck.

Barring has the same effect as a capo. Once you barre a chord, you can move it to anyplace on the guitar neck and create all kinds of chords.

CHORD	TIPS
	This is a G barre chord. The long black line on the third fret of the guitar represent the “BARRE” that you create with your first finger. (represented by the number 1’s). The 2, 3 and 4 represent the fingers you use to for the chord.
	This is a traditional C Barre Chord. Note: it uses the same shape as the open A chord in the previous lessons Basic Guitar Chords and Finger Placement Tips.
	This is ALSO a traditional C Barre Chord, but it’s a shortcut. All of the same strings are being played/fingered and instead of using your 2nd, 3rd and 4th finger to play the notes above the barre, you are just using your third finger, to create another mini-barre across the same notes of the chord. Advanced guitar players usually use this version. See which one feels the most comfortable to you. Again, it is using the A shape you learned in the previous lessons on Basic Guitar Chords and Finger Placement Tips

There are approximately 336,000 google pages when searching for the term “Barre Chords”. However there are 188,000 additional results with the term “Bar Chords”. Since the correct term is BARRE CHORDS, we can only guess that the other 188k people are hoping to be playing these ” Bar chords” while sitting on a stool having an adult beverage 🙂

TIPS
Like any new job or skill you learn, you may overdo it at first (pressing to hard on the fretboard). This makes your fingers sore. However once you figure out how to play the barre chords, the next think to learn is how to ease-off. Only use as much finger pressure is needed to form the chord.

A Final Note
Some students say: their hand, or fingers aren’t long enough, or their fingernails are too long, or their arm doesn’t bend that way etc etc etc. BUT, it just takes time and I have taught 100’s of students in 1-on-1 lessons and guess what… everyone can do it. 🙂