F under a hand
Strummed from the lowest string to the highest, this grip sounds F, C, F, A, C and F, which are the degrees 1 5 1 3 5 1 rather than the 1 3 5 of the written chord. The root is the lowest note, so this grip is in root position and sounds the way the written chord suggests. With F in the bass and six strings sounding three notes, the 1 and 5 appear more than once.
Strummed from the lowest string to the highest, this grip sounds A, F, A, C and F, which are the degrees 3 1 3 5 1 rather than the 1 3 5 of the written chord. The lowest note is the 3 rather than the root, so this grip is in first inversion, written F/A. It has the same notes as the root-position grip, but with A in the bass it sounds different. With A in the bass and five strings sounding three notes, the 1 and 3 appear more than once.
Strummed from the lowest string to the highest, this grip sounds C, F, A, C and F, which are the degrees 5 1 3 5 1 rather than the 1 3 5 of the written chord. The lowest note is the 5 rather than the root, so this grip is in second inversion, written F/C. It has the same notes as the root-position grip, but with C in the bass it sounds different. With C in the bass and five strings sounding three notes, the 1 and 5 appear more than once.
Three shapes for F on guitar: F, F/A and F/C.
Every grip here is F, but no two of them sound alike. A chord with the root as its lowest note is in root position, and a chord with any other note at the bottom is an inversion. On a keyboard you choose the inversion you want, but on a neck the shape your hand can reach usually decides it for you. When a grip sounds a note more than once, the fretting hand decides which note that is, not the harmony.
The nut does the job of a finger holding down every string at once. If you lay your index finger across all the strings at the first fret, you have moved the nut up a semitone. Play the open E shape above that finger and you are playing F.
That is a barre chord, and it is why guitarists learn shapes rather than individual chords. The E shape gives a major chord with its root on the sixth string, and the A shape gives one with its root on the fifth. With these two shapes and twelve frets, you can play every major chord.
F is the E shape at fret 1, which is the grip drawn here. The A shape gives F too, at fret 8, and the next lesson draws it beside the other three. Both contain the same three notes, arranged differently, so they sound different, and both are equally correct ways to play F.
This lesson was drafted with the help of AI and checked by a person, and it may still contain a mistake. Its diagrams are drawn by Everyfret’s own software. How Everyfret is made