TAC Family Forums

@Sandie – If I didn’t know better, I would swear that picture is a photo of my hand😁. I have the same problem. Ironically, I am 6’2″ but my hand and fingers never got that message apparently and so here I am with the medium hands and very short fingers more like those of a 5’2″ person. My pinky is also very very short, just like you show. (I quite watching those you tube videos of guys with pinkys longer than my index finger)

Anyhow, You can still make it work. I do the finger stretching exercises that Tony has in there everyday before I start playing or practicing. They do help and over time things get a bit better.

At the end of the day though, if you are 5’2″ tall and stand under the hoop, you still won’t be able to dunk the basketball no matter how much stretching you do. If you think about it though, the name of the game is to put the ball in the hoop and there are many ways to do that without dunking – dunking is just a crowd pleaser thing. Take that analogy and what I am saying is sometimes to play the song or TAC exercise, you just have to adapt and play it a different way or use the pinky to catch that faraway note, vice the ring finger or play the note in a different place or play the chord differently so if fits what you can do. The end result will be the same.

Do you need a different guitar? Maybe. Neck width and neck design make a huge difference. Acoustic
Guitar necks come in all kinds of widths, typical widths are 1 11/16″, 1
23/32″, 1 3/4″. More importantly, Neck designs also run the full variety of
shapes (e.g. Oval, Modified Oval, C, V, Modified V, Low Profile, etc.). All of
these variable affect fingering depending on your hand and finger size. Scale length can also make a difference, but I have found going to a shorter scale didn’t help me much, so I stuck with the more or less 25.4″ standard.

You play fiddle? Cool – that will give you a bump up in guitar land progressing.

Hope this helps,

Chuck