Flatten Fingers Excercises

Hi all,

Working through Lisa's courses at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it.

One thing I'm struggling with is my fingers simply won't flatten against the fret board. Say I"m playing a simple G, followed by A Minor. When playing the G, my index and middle finger are splayed out miles away from the board and I can't then place the fingers in time to keep up.

I do 5 minutes of left hand stretching and warm up at the start of every practice but I simply can't seem to flatten my fingers. Can anyone recommend any exercises that I can do to bring those fingers in??

Thanks in advance,

Pete

Hey PeteCC,

Since I can't actually see your fingers, I'll take a guess.

You *might* be over-extending your forearm, putting your thumb too far behind the neck, and arching those fingers too much. But I can't be certain!

While we are often told as beginners to keep the thumb way behind the neck, it's really not a practical thing in regular playing. It all depends on what you are playing. Watch any famous guitarist and they almost always move their thumb all over the place, behind, on top, etc.

Also, I am not totally sure what you mean by "flattening." If you're trying to go to A Minor from G Major there shouldn't really be any flattening or barring happening.

That said, G Major is an oddball chord in the open position, and is hard to get at first since you're playing such extremes (high and low strings far apart).

Feel free to post a picture / video of the problem or email them to me to check out: carl@guitartricks.com.

-Carl.

Hey Carl,

Many thanks for coming back to me. Re the thumb position, that makes sense. I'd been adhering to the original advice to keep it in one place and try to move fingers accordingly. Your advice makes perfect sense now! The lessons I followed after sending my note also covered some areas I was struggling with.

Thanks again!

Pete