G cord

[petelanger]

Hello Brad,

Looking at your profile it appears you are a new player like myself. I started early this year and joined TAC in July.

This is very common, starting out you will struggle with the G, C and D open chords. B7 is similar to G (just 1 fret towards the nut and small movements of the 1,2 and 3 fingers). G, B7 and C (sometimes even D!) gave me fits for months. Have you begun to develop calluses on your fingers yet? It takes close to a month for this to happen if you play about 20 min everyday. Might develop faster if you play longer, but it takes many months to get really solid calluses that are necessary for extended playing.
I assure you, keep working on it and it will get better! Keep your fingernails on the fretting hand as short as possible! What also helped me was getting my wrist lower (or further around) the neck so that the fingers are coming at the strings as perpendicular as possible.

New players will tend to play with the wrong amount of pressure. Practice doing each note one at a time and feel how much pressure you need to play it clean! Finger placement should be as close the fret as possible, this will save you from having to overcome more of the tension in the strings and have push even harder.
If I think or hear about anything else on this topic, I will post it.

Rock on, Brad!

[petelanger]

Also this video that TAC member Beatrice posted recently also is very helpful:
https://youtu.be/7nHdOebrma8

[petelanger]

Forgot to mention to “curl the knuckle!”. Earlier I wrote about getting the hand further under the neck, but you will never get far enough under to come at the fretboard with straight fingers, the last leg is a bend at the knuckle. You want to get off the pad of your fingers and right up on the tip directly under the fingernail.

Combining those 2 actions should help to eliminate some of the “thud”:
1. pushing the hand further under the neck (like you were trying to reach around it)

2. curling your knuckles and fretting with the tip of your fingers

[Paul_B]

Timely question since we are only holding the G chord in todays challenge – Mississippi Timing. I noticed my 5th string was sounding muted playing single strings and dead when i would try hammer on on the high E string.

I have been rewatching some of Tony’s basic courses and remembered that we are supposed to hold the guitar so the front is at 90 degrees to the floor. The front of the guitar is straight up and down. As soon as I moved my guitar to that position I immediately started to get much cleaner notes. But now i have a new challenge I have always played played with guitar turned up so i could see my frets and now I can’t see them. Something new to work on.

[Beatrice]

great replies from fellow TAC members here.

Also, try to include warmups in your daily practice, really, really essential to improve your technique. There are numerous exercises you can do, including the good old spider walk exercise. Lauren has some great examples on her channel, here is one…

https://youtu.be/FrVNdaycI6A

also a here useful tips to improve finger placements

https://youtu.be/57lvcEIki_0

[Brad L]

Thank you!