Ok, first off, let me introduce myself: my name is Diego and I've been practising guitar(acoustic with metal strings) for about a month and a half, like five hours the day.
Well, to the point: Recently, I've been practising a song which has some barre chords(F,Gm7,Bb and the G with barre), which I don't care to practice, except by the bloody F chord... Let me explain...
In general, when I find a new chord, the first I do is to make it sound alone with different finger and hand positions, until I find some position in which all strings sound fine and my hand is comfortable(when possible). Second, I try to change fast to it. And that's it.
But with the F chord I can't do it, because the amount of strength it requieres is such that I just can't imagine changing to it. Specifically it's the second string the one which doesn't sound at least I press really hard on the first fret. For the rest of the strings, I can proudly say that after 1 whole day practicing, almost 90% of the time sound good.
I've come to think that it may be a guitar problem, so my first question is whether you also had complication with that string when doing the F chord. If it's not a guitar problem, I was starting to think another idea. As far as I know, the Capo's function is to lower or raise tones, which can be done also changing the strings tension manually..My idea is to loose the strings a semitone or a whole tone(to make it easier to press them), and then using the capo to compensate it, so that it sounds the same, so my second question is whether it'll work. I don't know if what I've just said is stupid, so forgive me if so...