Stubby Finger Syndrome

Hi All,

Taking up the guitar at 60 and loving it!! This is a great course out of the many I have tried.. Kudos to Christopher for his fine teaching technique.

O.K. My problem is stubby fingers.. I was not blessed with long flexible digits and find it almost impossible to cover 4-5 frets with my pinky and index finger.
I don't even want to talk about those wonderful barre chords!
I do all the exercises with little to no improvement.
Has anyone else had this problem? If so, how did you overcome it. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Jazzn01 :confused:

My fingers are short. No one I know has fingers shorter than mine. Seriously! It has always deterred me from trying to learn lead guitar. I'm finding my limited "reach" to be less of a factor than I feared.

I'm only beginning my second month and I notice a big difference from just a few weeks ago. I suspect you'll see definite improvement even over a very short time if my own experience is an indicator. Some things may never change and I may have to move to (rather than reach for) some notes sometimes, but it's all good.

BTW, I am 45 and have not tended toward dexterous pass times. My only suggestion is practice, practice, practice! My pinky always seems to have that "worked out" feeling these days. But it's definetly getting stronger and listens to me more attentively.

Just for fun: I measured my index finger. It's 2 & 1/2 inches measuring from the crook between index & middle. Are you stubbier than that? :)

Hey Razbo,

Thank you for the response. I guess you have me beat as my index measures a whopping 3 inches. Shezzz, I should be playing like Clapton.

Seriously though, I am just getting very frustrated with the finger stretch issue but will just keep on trying.

Best Regards

Jazzn

Originally Posted by: jazzn01Hey Razbo,

Thank you for the response. I guess you have me beat as my index measures a whopping 3 inches. Shezzz, I should be playing like Clapton.

Seriously though, I am just getting very frustrated with the finger stretch issue but will just keep on trying.

Best Regards

Jazzn

Getting frustrated is part of the learning process. I have been getting frustrated to, but lets keep going and never give up. Also we all have to support each other it really makes a difference.

Hi Gothax,

Thanks for the encouragement. It is nice to know that others are or have experienced the same problem and have eventually overcome it.

It is also great to have a forum such as this where we can share issues and solutions to learning problems.

Will keep on truckin with practice practice practice and see what happens.

Jazzn

3 and you called them stubby... Crap, now I'm in need of encouragement. Maybe I should have stuck with the drums. :p

Originally Posted by: jazzn01Hi All,

Taking up the guitar at 60 and loving it!! This is a great course out of the many I have tried.. Kudos to Christopher for his fine teaching technique.

O.K. My problem is stubby fingers.. I was not blessed with long flexible digits and find it almost impossible to cover 4-5 frets with my pinky and index finger.
I don't even want to talk about those wonderful barre chords!
I do all the exercises with little to no improvement.
Has anyone else had this problem? If so, how did you overcome it. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Jazzn01 :confused:

You will rbably never find a guitar player who can't describe to you his or her short come as far as what their fingers can do. I remember Brian May saying that he almost never uses his pinky because it doesn't seem to work right.

Seems the trick is not the shortcoming being fixed but how you worked around them. Looking at other guitar players play is useful but they have different hands than you. You may think they're doing it 'perfectly' if they are a great player but they have a cheat in their somewhere.

I guess I think that it only matter that you get to the fret. If you can have prefect technique while doing it. Excellent. If your hand doesn't play, then just figure out how to actually get there.

I say this because I have average to short fingers and a 5 fret stretch is a challenge for me but in the past and with getting some of it back now, I'm starting to be able to get the 5 fretter going a little. I weee sloppy and disconcerting when a good number of years ago it could do it clean but gotta get back in the groove.

Sometimes it helps to find inspiration in other people.

Django Reinhardt - a master of jazz guitar during the first half of the 20th century - could only use two fingers of his left hand, as the other two (not counting the thumb) were severely disfigured following an accident involving a fire when he was young.

It's all about finding a way around the problem.

This is all heartening. I became slightly obsessed last night. I remeasured with a good ruler and I actually get 2 & 13/16 inches. Yay! Spread is a factor too, I suppose. After these past weeks, my left index-to-pinky spread is about an inch more than my right.

This is why I never could get that blues thingy going on a B chord where your playing between the G# and the A with the pinky on the D string.

I guess us stubbies will just have to learn to get by. Maybe I can market myself as physically challenged or something. :)