C Chord Frustration

My fingers physically cannot reach across 3 frets to play the C chord. Is there any other combination of strings that one could press to achieve the C chord sound?

if you can do barre chords, you can play it like this

----3-------
----5-------
----5-------
----5-------
----3-------
------------

but I would still practice the open chord. Eventually you will be able to get it as your hands become used to the stretch.

You obviously haven't gotten to the F chord yet.... haha

Like ninja said... practice it. Try to do it as much as possible. It probably will cramp your hand up and your hand may get a little bit sore... but that is the muscle stretching.... soon the pain will go away and you will be left with the capability of easily holding a C...

If you can stretch your fingers enough to span 2 1/2 inches with your first and third fingers, then you can easily play a C chord--well, with practice. If your fingers are smaller than that, buy a guitar with a shorter scale length. Seriously.

You might want to have someone look at how you position your hands, arms, and fingers when you play. Sometimes people can do the most awkward things imaginable in their playing and not realise that it doesn't have to be that hard. There's no reason why you can't stretch just as far on a fretboard as you can when you just hold your hand at arm's length and spread your fingers out.

Going along with what Mark Pav said, I have really small hands and short fingers. I used to play guitars with a long scale neck, but now play Gibsons with the shorter scale neck and it does make some things easier for me.

But yeah, a C chord isn't that much of a stretch. Unless your really young and have really small hands anyway....I'd say it's more the case of your fingers just getting used to playing chords, we all went through that.

learn to play Joe Satriani - Tears In The Rain, the first chord goes as follows (and no, you cannot play it note for note, the song is too fast for that, besides this is easier once you get the hang out of it):

--------3------
------5---5----
----7-------7--
--0------------
---------------
---------------

now you're able to stretch ;) you'll get there, just give it some time, remember that your fingers gotta do things they've never done before

Try just playing the top 4 strings of the chord. Most people wouldn't notice the missing root note, especially if you were singing over top of it.
A D chord is only the top 4 strings so you should probably already know how to strum it.