Steve-o, along with my folk music activity, I have been studying classic guitar since early 1955. Over the years, I have taken lessons from four different classic guitar teachers and one flamenco guitar teacher. I have had three years at the University of Washington School of Music and two years at the Cornish School of the Arts studying music theory and literature in order to give my musicianship a solid foundation. In the mid-Seventies, I attended a week-long seminar with Aaron Shearer (look him up) and in the early Eighties, a master class with Pepe Romero (you are familiar with him, aren't you?). I have a large number of guitar manuals and methods which I use for my own edification and practice as well as for teaching, along with collections of studies by Sor, Aguado, Carulli, Tarrega, et al. I have two filing cabinets full of classic guitar sheet music. Some of it, I can actually play. And a few things, I can play pretty well. In short, I have seen one helluva lot of music written for the guitar. And for good or ill, I have been teaching folk and classic guitar out of these methods and using this music for forty-five years. I guess I haven't screwed my pupils up too badly because a few of them are still making livings as professional musicians.

"Bar" is correct. "Barré," which is French and pronounced "bah-RAY," is also correct.   And so is "çeja" (SEH-hah) in Spanish. The traditional wooden capo used by flamenco guitarists is called a cejilla, pronounced "say-HEE-yah" (oddly enough, it means "little eyebrow"). By the way, the word "capo" comes from the longer "capotasto," which means "head note." It is sometimes mistakenly written as "cape d'astro" (or some variation of that), which translates into "head of the star" and makes no sense at all.

"Bar"—as in "let's go to the bar and have a drink," or "the ballet student is practicing her bar exercises," or "let there be no moaning at the bar," or "the full, six-string F major chord in first position is a bar-chord"—is perfectly correct.

Don Firth

P. S. Let me cite two references among the many I have (I just happen to have both of these methods within arm's reach because I'm preparing the next lesson for one of my students—in fact, I just started her on bar-chords yesterday:   The Christopher Parkening Guitar Method, Vol. 1, page 74 and following, and Classic Guitar Technique, Vol. II by Aaron Shearer, page 3 and following.