How To Play A Cigar Box Guitar With One Finger

Because a cigar box guitar is tuned in open tuning you can play a chord with just one finger.

The easiest way to play a chord on a cigar box guitar is to strum the open notes or use your finger or a slide to press each string at the same fret at the same time and strum. As a beginner, concentrate on the open chord and the barred chords at the fifth and seventh frets. These three chords are a gateway to all kinds of music.

How Can I Play A Chord With Just One Finger?

A Cigar Box Guitar is usually tuned in open tuning often, but not always, open G or GDG. This means that strumming the open notes plays a power chord of G. This is not G major or G minor or G7 but will stand in for any of those chords.

As a beginner these one finger power chords are really useful since you can really concentrate on the strumming patterns without having to worry too much about complicated chord fingerings. It’s important to remember that without a good strumming or fingerpicking style, your guitar playing will not sound very good, no matter how many chords you learn.

Your fretting finger is usually your left hand if you are right-handed and your right hand if you are left-handed. When you place your fretting finger across the strings, you raise all the string pitches by the same amount. This makes another chord.

Placing your forefinger across the strings to fret them makes what is called a barre chord.

On the first fret, the chord becomes G#. This is not that useful a chord as a beginner.

However, if you fret the fifth fret, this makes a C power chord. This is a really useful chord as a beginner. This is because many songs use G and C.

Also, if you fret the seventh fret, this makes a D power chord. This is a really useful chord as a beginner. This is because many songs use G and C and D.

In fact, with these 3 power chords, you can play simplified versions of thousands of songs.

6 Quick Tips On Improving The Sound Of A One Finger Barre Chord

It sounds really easy to play a chord with one finger, but there are some tips that will help you to make a better sound:

Check where your finger joints fall on the strings
Look at your thumb position
Check your wrist position
Practise a little each day
Use three fingers instead of one
Try using a guitar slide

How To Improve The Sound Of Your One Finger Barre Chord

Make sure that the strings do not fall at the joints of your finger. Instead ensure the fleshy part of your finger is pressing on the chords.
To get more power in the grip, make sure your thumb and forefinger are both pushing into the neck. The thumb pushes from behind the neck and the finger pushes onto the fretboard. You don’t need to press too hard if you have a good position in your finger, thumb and wrist.
You need a good wrist position so that this helps the finger and thumb not to need to push hard at an awkward angle. Try pushing your wrist up a little bit and your hand down a little bit so that the angle between your forearm and hand is nearer to a right angle.
Initially your wrist, finger and thumb may ache when you play a lot of barre chords. Practise a little bit each day to gain strength and remember that you only need to press just hard enough to get a good sound.
The metal strings of a cigar box guitar can make your fingers quite sore until the skin has thickened up a bit. It’s better to play ten minutes every day than an hour once a week when you start out.
You can try using three fretting fingers instead of a barre( 1st finger on the lowest string, 2nd finger on the middle strings and 3rd finger on the top string.) This will allow you to keep practising strumming whilst giving your fretting hand a bit of a rest.
You could also try using a slide. Read on for some handy hints:

The Difference Between Fretting With A Finger And A Slide

When you use a finger to fret, you place the finger just behind the metal fret wire. That means towards the headstock where the machine heads are.

When you fret with a slide, you place the slide directly over the fret wire or on a fretless guitar directly over the marked fret line. ( A fretless guitar is one without metal fret wires)

How Do I Know Which Chord I Am Playing On A Cigar Box Guitar?

You need to know how your guitar is tuned to begin with.

Let’s look at open G tuning ( bottom string tuned to G, middle string tuned to D, top string tuned to D) to start with:

We will count strumming the open strings, that means with no frets pressed down at all as fret 0. The chart below shows all the power chords you can play as you place your finger or slide on each fret.

fret	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
power chord	G	G#/Ab	A	A#/Bb	B	C	C#/Db	D	D#/Eb	E	F	F#/Gb	G

Why Do Some Notes and Chords Have Two Different Names?

You will see that some chords have alternative names. It’s not important for you to know the theory yet but if you want to know, here’s a simple explanation:

When you sharpen a G note for instance, it’s a semitone higher and this note is the same pitch as flattening an A note by a semitone. So that pitched note can be called 2 different names.

Does It Matter How The Cigar Box Guitar Is Tuned?

The link between the chords on the open strings and the fifth and seventh frets is the same for any cigar box guitar tuned in the same pattern as GDG, but the chords will be different.

	Open GDG	Open DAD	Open EBE
open strings	G power chord	D power chord	E power chord
fifth fret	C power chord	G power chord	A power chord
seventh fret	D power chord	A power chord	B power chord

It’s important to realise that the one finger power chords only work in this way if your guitar is in open tuning. If your cigar box guitar is tuned in a different way eg like a ukulele or Hawaiian tuning or like a classical guitar, this will not work in the same way. However, that’s not to say that you can’t experiment. Try one finger chords in different tunings.

More experienced players still use one finger power chords for playing some chords within a song. Even when you have learned some different chord shapes that add a bit more variety within a song, you will still find power chords a useful tool.

Why Are The Fifth And Seventh Frets So Important On A Cigar Box Guitar?

The link between the open strings and the fifth and seventh fret is found because of the way these chords sound.

The open chords are the home chord. This is where the music ends and often starts. in musical terms it is the I chord. It’s root note is do ( as in do-re-mi)

The chord on the fifth fret is what I call the interest chord. This is where we move away from home for a bit of variation. It is the IV ( say 4th as that’s roman numerals for fourth) chord. That’s a bit confusing I know. The fourth chord is played on the fifth fret. That’s why in some tutorials you may get a bit lost if people say the fourth chord, meaning the fifth fret. ( It’s to do with semitones if you want to find out more, but let’s not get into that here.

The chord on the seventh fret is the turnaround chord or the heading for home chord. it has a strong pull to the I chord and always sounds a bit unfinished if you pay that chord and then don’t go back to I. You can probably guess that the chord has a roman numeral name that isn’t the same as the fret number. It is the V or fifth chord and it’s on the seventh fret.

Even more confused? I’m sorry. I’ve set it out for you in a table and hopefully this will help:

fret number	chord description	roman numeral	chord name in open G
0	home	I	power G
5	interest	IV	power C
7	turnaround	V	power D

How Can I Find These Frets Quickly?

I strongly recommend that even if your guitar has fret markers on the fretboard at the fifth and seventh frets, you mark the edge of the neck also.

Mark the edge of the neck with either a sticker or a pen or some masking tape, anything really if it helps you to see where these frets are.

You could even put masking tape along the whole length of the length on the side that faces you and write the chord names on each fret, highlighting those on the fifth and seventh frets if that helps.

If you are always relying on the fretboard markers to see where you are, you will end up with either a cricked neck or a twisted wrist.

When you know where you are on the fretboard without looking, you can remove any stickers or tape if you like.

Which Music Styles And Genres Use These Three Chords?

The I, IV and V chord are used in blues, rock, pop, metal, folk. In fact a lot of western music could be played in a very simplified version with just those three chords.

Adding in a few power chords to stand in place of the relative minor chords would expand what could be played. If that last sentence has you baffled, I will try to explain it as simply as I can.

A lot of music is written in what is called a major key. Simply put, this has a more upbeat and happy sound.

Music written in a minor key has a sadder, more sombre sound.

Some music is written in a major key, but has some minor chords added to give a bit more interest.

Because we are using power chords that stand in for both major and minor keys, we can easily add in minor keys with the barred chords. This is so useful as a beginner. As you start to improve and want to add in other chord shapes, you can progress to adding just one note that will change a power chord into a minor chord. ( See paragraph below on zooming up and down the neck)

Useful power chords to add to the three you have already learned are those that relate to them:

	fret number	power chord in open G	fret number for relative minor	power chord in open G
I	0	G	9	E
IV	5	C	2	A
V	7	D	4	B

How Can I Progress My Playing To Include Other Chords?

If you have already marked the neck by writing the names of the chords on masking tape, you can easily start to play other chords. You could mark the neck now if you haven’t already done so.

Once you are confident that you can play a handful of power chords, you can start learning some more complicated chord fingerings to add a bit more interest.

For instance, placing your little finger on the fourth fret of an open G chord turns the power chord into a G major chord. G D G becomes G D B

Placing your little finger on the third fret of an open G chord turns the power chord into a G minor chord. G D G becomes G D Bb

Adding this little finger works at every fret:

Play a C power chord by barring the fifth fret. Add your little finger to the fourth fret up from the bar ( the 9th fret) You are playing a C major chord. C G C becomes C G E

Play a C power chord by barring the fifth fret. Add your little finger to the third fret up from the bar ( the 8th fret) You are playing a C minor chord. CGC becomes C G Eb

Do I Always Have To Keep Zooming Up And Down The Neck?

There are other ways of playing power chords and also more complicated chords that require each string to be fretted independently.

For instance, you can play a D power chord on an open GDG instrument by fretting the bottom and top string at the second fret, leaving the middle string open. This is an A D A chord. The D power chord on the seventh fret is a D A D chord. So it’s the same chord but the notes are in a different order. These are called inversions.

There are so many different ways of playing the same chord and as you get more experience you will find that some chord shapes flow into each other more easily. Once you are confident with fretted chords ( remember that these are also called barred chords) you can start experimenting with more complex chord shapes. In some ways we are always beginners on the guitar, no matter how long we have played. There is still always something new to learn.

Using A Capo On A Cigar Box Guitar

You might also want to consider using a capo to raise the pitch of your guitar. Players of 6 string guitars use capos a bit more frequently than cigar box guitar players.

This is because the chord shapes in some keys for a standard six string are way more difficult. you won’t find many guitarists who love playing Bb or F for instance. They are trickier shapes than C or G.

On a cigar box guitar there is always a really easy shape to play a power chord and I think that a lot of players would choose playing a straight fretted or barred chord over the hassle of a capo. But if you are playing with a band or strumming along with your favourite recording and need to easily change the pitch of your guitar, remember that a capo is an easy option if you don’t want to transpose all the chords.