Firewall

I am an ultimate beginner.I aquired a basic instruction book with the chords and various other info. Not a big book.
I have very large hands and I am left handed. I play right.
I cannot play most chords without touching ajacent strings.
What should I do? Is there a solution?

You know I had exactly the same problem when i started two years ago. I have large fleashy hands and fingers and would for example mute the high E when playing the F chord. I kept at it and practised the difficult chords (barre chords were nearly impossible) until my hands now find odd little angles to form these chords.

I'm not perfect by any means, but I'm playing stuff I would have thought impossible when i started. So keep at it, dont give up, there are loads of helpful people on here to give you encoraugement.

Mike

Originally Posted by: FIREWALLI am an ultimate beginner.I aquired a basic instruction book with the chords and various other info. Not a big book.
I have very large hands and I am left handed. I play right.
I cannot play most chords without touching ajacent strings.
What should I do? Is there a solution?

The best advice I can give is the following:

If you're playing righty, have the guitar on your left leg
elevate the head of the guitar a bit
keep your thumb in the middle of the back of the neck
play on the very tips of your fingers

You should find with a combination of these you can find a position where you get more arch in your fingers over the strings, and hopefully less muting of the adjacent ones.

You can also try playing chords differently. E.G:

A major

e--0
b--2 <-- ring finger
g--2 <-- middle finger
d--2 <-- index finger
a--0
e--x

or:

e--0
b--2 <-- ring finger
g--2 <-- index finger
d--2 <-- middle finger
a--0
e--x

Hope that helps a bit. Pay close attention to what you're doing when you play and how you can influence it. The solution is there, you've just got to find it. And yeah, I have big shovel hands too :)

Hi Firewall,

Sounds like you've gotten some really good advice on this already, but I'll toss in another suggestion.

You might try out the Spider Legs Warm-ups, as there are some exercises in there specifically aimed at developing proper hand/finger angles, leading to better clarity of tone.

Here's a link to the series:
”SPIDER LEGS” WARM-UP EXERCISES TUTORIAL:
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=621

Keep us posted - Lisa

I've developed the habit (not too sure if it is a bad one) of playing A Maj with middle, ring and pinky.

Mike

Thank you all.I will try your suggestions.
FIREWALL

Hi Mike-

That's not necessarily a bad habit. If it's working for you, I wouldn't worry about it.
-Lisa

Originally Posted by: MikeFaulknerI've developed the habit (not too sure if it is a bad one) of playing A Maj with middle, ring and pinky.

Mike

I find myself playing the A maj (And all derivitive Barre chords(like B) now as more of an A2 - same form as A but lose the finger on the B string - For Rock its sounds fine.

I have big fingers too and could never get a clean sounding A with all three fingers.

i think you should try to develop the index middle ring finger combo for the A maj because it freezes the pinky for very common hammer ons and embellishments that can't be done with the free index. Practicing both would be good though because the pinky configuration works well for all the Maj Barre chords on the A string.