Finger Exercise

Hey fellow members,

Is there any way i can get my fingers in shape to play chords.I use to play drums and i dabbled in playing the guitar as a kid.Now i want to play and be good at it.I have short fingers and it's hard to keep my fingers from deading the strings.HELP!!!!!

Just practice and you'll get it...
It's not about you having short fingers , every body gets your problem at the very beginning , say for about couple of months or a little more then you'll never remember how bad you were. ;)

When you practice always keep in mind that your fingers should be perpindicular on the string when fretting it (well, you may see everybody fretting with an angle, but you have to learn the rules before you learn to break them)... Usualy ,for a beginner to get his fretting hand in shape, you should practice scales a lot ,then try slowly getting into simple chords.

It would be nice if you have a guitar teacher or a somehow experienced guitarist friend to help throughout your first few months with the guitar, then you can make progress on your own from books/vids/tabs/etc.

hey man,
it just takes time. and don't worry about short fingers. it shouldn't be a problem.
i really recommend starting with the easy basic chords before going to barre chords or more complex chords. i suggest chords like E, G, Am,Em and so on. there are lots of simple songs that just use these very simple chords. and after a few months you should be good.

Remember to hit the strings with the very tips of your fingers, and to sort of elevate your hand so its not laying on the fretboard causing all kinds of trouble.
Hold your hand in a so that you create a 90 degree angle between the hand and the arm, then imagine that your fingers are claws. Yep thats right.
Now it should look like an angry jaguar with a
broken leg or something.
Thats the kind of approach you would want to the fretboard,
especially when playing chords that requires alot of stretching.
Of course this technique does not work when you're playing
barré chords, but for open chords and acoustic type playing, its jaguar-style! grrrr...

Oh yeah, remember that (as always) training is the key to everything. When I started to play guitar when I was 11, it was totally impossible to play an open G, because I couldnt stretch that far.
So what have we learned?
It doesnt really matter how short your fingers are,
my brothers fingers is like 2,5 meters longer than mine, but he cant play a G (again, because of the stretching that is involved). Eventually your short fingers will be able to play everything.

When your skills improve I recommend the song "Cavatina",
one of the most beautiful songs ever made and it involves a huge amount of stretching.


[Edited by mc9mm on 01-12-2003 at 10:13 AM]