[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@JulieK_Acoustic52 You are absolutely correct, any kind of shooting pain up your arm is most definately a warning sign. The best thing to do is to include some warm up stretches at the beginning of your practice routine, and also try to limit your practice sessions to 10-15 minutes at a time. It’s much more effective (and easier on your body) to practice 15 minutes twice a day, then to practice 30 minutes all at once.

If you take lessons in person, your teacher can help you with any needed corrections in posture and ergonomics that could be irritating your joints, or preventing you from reaching all those fret stretches… If you’re not taking lessons it might be a good investment to take even just a few to get on the right track and avoid injury.

Best wishes, Carol

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@SDConn So sorry about your accident but glad you are being persistent about your guitar playing life!! There’s lots of things you can try!!

Most of them might involve learning less complex chords- With your ring finger being fused, I would try to learn some chord shapes that only involve fretting 1-2 strings for each chord. That way you can fret with your more agile fingers.

You might want to start studying music theory as it will help you learn chord structure and which chord tones make a chord live up to its name… That will help you decide which notes in the chord to leave out. Also keep in mind that just because there is a barre chord staring at you from the page, you can always just fret/play the 3 high strings.

And one more thing, you could start playing around with open tunings. Open G, Open D, DADGAD. Most of the open tunings only require 1-2 strings to be fretted for many chords and arrangements. There’s tons of tabs out there for open tuning songs…

Hope some of this is helpful. And your determination and persistence are surely an inspiration to all!!!!!

Cheers, Carol

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

<div>@Sandie I am also short (5’3″) and have small short stubby fingers too!! I am always so envious of all those tall people with really long cello fingers, ha!! But there’s plenty of great guitar players with very short fingers who overcome with technique… For inspiration I’d suggest looking for Muriel Anderson on YouTube. (She was the first ever female to win the annual International Fingerstyle Championship in Winfield KS).</div>

Anywayz take a look and notice her ergonomics and technique. She’s amazing!!

If you don’t already, consider taking just a few lessons in person with a guitar teacher. It’s worth it to get on the right track with your posture and good fretting technique.

Another suggestion is to tune down your guitar a full step. Instead of EADGBe, tune it to DGCFAd. This will decrease your string tension markedly, and will make it easier for your fretting hand to produce good tone. Also put your capo on the 2nd fret. This will put you back in standard tuning in case you are playing with others, but it will also help reduce the space between the strings and the frets. (The action). This also makes it easier on your fretting hand. And the last thing using a capo does for you, is that now the frets aren’t as far apart, which again makes it easier on your fretting hand. Ahhhhhhhhh what a relief!! You will be able to play with much less tension in your hands and should be able to get things into your muscle memory a little easier and enjoy playing and learning a little more!!

Best wishes, Carol

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@lollyt I agree with @jumpinjeff that if it’s happening on every one of your guitars, chances are good that it’s related to player technique…. So assuming you have 6 good fresh strings and there’s nothing wrong with your setup or structural elements of your headstock etc… it may be time to work on your technique.

After paying some attention to your posture and picking hand attack, (make sure all your fingernails are same length if you pick bare handed), you might want to do some arpeggio picking exercises similar to the ones the classical players do. This will help get all 4 of your picking fingers in relatively the same shape.

One of the most common picking hand dynamics drill involves stressing a different string as played louder than all the rest. Assuming for the drills, the thumb (p) is always picking the 4th, 5th and 6th strings (D, A, low E), the index (i) always picks the 3rd string (G), the middle (m) always picks the 2nd string (B), and the ring finger (a) always picks the first string (high e)

Start the drill by just doing an equal dynamic pima pick pattern. You can hold down a chord with your fretting hand or just do it with all open strings. Then do the same pima pattern but let the first string be louder than all the rest. (pimA) Next do the pattern with the second string emphasized. (piMa). Then do it with the third string loudest (pIma), then again with the fourth string in the spotlight (Pima). You can use the fourth string for your thumb in all of these to keep it simple…

This drill will help each one of your picking fingers become “more aware” of how strongly they each need to attack the strings for the desired dynamic. Most of us have differences in the innate strength of each of our individual fingers (no comments here about the middle finger, hehe) Anyway hope this made sense and hope it helps!!!

Best wishes, Carol

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@karlawehling hi and welcome to guitar geekdom!! That was some great advice from @JeffM.22 and might I add another tip, that is to use your capo maybe on the 3rd or 4th fret. That will also have the same effect of making those frets smaller and you might be able to reach more easily. Once you can do it with capo 4th fret easily, try it with capo 3rd fret, keep moving the capo down until you don’t need it any more.

I agree that any method you use that results in you playing something is the right way for you. Everyone has different abilities and limitations so find the way that works best for you. Best wishes, C

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@BarbaraM One of my favorite tricks is to use your capo on 3rd or 4th fret during your practice sessions. This makes it easier to stretch your fingers to where they need to be while you are re-learning the muscle memory that you had a few decades ago. Once you are able to play the chord or song without too much difficulty you can move the capo down a fret until you don’t need it any more. It’s like training wheels for a bicycle I suppose.

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

Hi @tmadden17gmail-com and welcome to the guitar kingdom!!!

Many many people before you have asked this same question, and there is no real “correct” answer. It all depends on your taste in music (which will likely dictate what songs you’d like to learn/play), your playing style, and even your learning style.

Beginners sometimes enjoy the “soft” string feeling of an electric guitar, or even a nylon string. Those first few weeks can be rough until you develop some callouses on your fretting hand.

On the flipside, there are those who say, “You can’t really play it until you can play it on an acoustic”. Meaning that acoustic guitars demand a much stronger, cleaner fretting technique to get clean tone with certain songs/chords etc. You might be able to learn the basics more quickly on an electric guitar, but don’t expect to just pick up an acoustic guitar and play what you’ve learned on an electric guitar.

If you are wanting to start playing songs quickly, you might join the electric guitar camp right at the beginning. Your fingers will still be sore but not as bad. Also you will find it easier to learn chords etc. (I use my electric guitar unplugged for quiet practice.)

If you decide to learn on your current acoustic guitar it might be worth your while to take it to your nearest luthier (usually found at guitar stores) and ask for a set up. They will tweak your guitar so that the action (string height above the fretboard) is optimal for easier play. This should only cost around $40 or so and usually includes new strings.

Also, nothing wrong with learning to play guitar on BOTH acoustic and electric, ha!!!

Good luck and best wishes on your guitar journey!

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

Hi @TerTer

Everyone is different, but the minimum needed to check a daily lesson “done” is to work at it for at least 10 minutes. If you still feel you would like to work on it further, just hit the Heart Icon to add it to your favorites so that you can access it after the week is over. Enjoy!! C

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

Hi @Jpolley Yes, if you want to keep that counter going, you have to log into TAC every day, including weekends. If you skip that, your counter goes back to zero. The weekly counter is for completing all 5 lessons for each week. Best wishes!!

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

For my printed paper music, I put the sheet music/song sheets alphabetically by song title. I used to keep them in a binder but now I have so many that I keep them in folders. Right now I have A-M in one, N-Z in another one, and I do keep any alternate tuning songs in another folder, arranged by which tuning the song is in. (DADGAD, Open G, Open D, Etc)

I also keep one or 2 binders with plastic page protectors, for taking selected loose music out with me to jam parties, guitar camps etc.

I also have a whole library of guitar song books, workbooks and stuff like that. I have them all on the shelf arranged by topic (classical, theory, instructional, fingerstyle, christmas, etc.)

It took me 2 full days to organize all of my music last summer but it was well worth it. Now I can find stuff within 2 minutes and know if I have the music or not. 🙂

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@ChuckS I bought one of those thing-a-ma-jigs years ago, thinking it would make my fortify my fretting fingers…. But it only fortified the bank account of whoever makes them, LOL!!

I think the best thing-a-ma-jig for improving your finger strength and dexterity is your guitar!!

If you practice regularly and pay attention to posture, body mechanics and ergonomics (Yes they are extremely important) you will automatically be training your entire body to be able to master the more difficult chords and pieces.

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

Wow this is a great thread which deserves to be revived and brought to light!! I agree that Tommy is one of The Greatest Guitar Players ever!!! I think everyone has a finite capacity for memorizing songs and each of us has a different number of back pocket songs that we can carry. When we reach our capacity, something has to scroll off the list to make room.

My former guitar teacher advised me to put all my back pocket songs into one section of my notebook, and once or twice a month to use my practice time to play through all of them to keep them from rusting out. It’s really irritating and frustrating to go through all the effort to learn a song and then find out a few months later that the muscle memory just isn’t there anymore… I have had to “re-learn” songs many times because they rusted away. The good thing is that it’s usually alot quicker to learn a song the 2nd time (or 3rd or even 4th time). One trick I’ve learned is to write little chord diagrams right in the tab/music and indicate which fret/which fingers to use on which string. New diagram with each chord change or position change. This makes it much easier to polish up a rusty song 6 months later.

My back pocket only holds about 10 songs. My notebook holds about 100 songs, hehe and I can always get another one!!

Regards, Carol

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

Yes you can still access the Acoustic Tuesday archives in YouTube. You can type in “Acoustic Tuesday” in the YT search box and find the playlist (I think there are 310 episodes total), or I copied the playlist link and it’s right here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8jYLoDm3lMxlcE_OA50XXkjYxpcCt-Mh

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

Yaaaay, happy NGD to you!! (New Guitar Day)

Congrats on your new guitar, enjoy it!!

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@ChuckS if it helps to inspire you, try watching some videos of musicians like Muriel Anderson- she has very small hands and yet her perfect technique allows her to play extremely difficult pieces. There’s also a YouTube video out there of about 6 kindergarten age kiddos, all playing full size guitars together. Their hands are sooooo small yet they are still able to play very intricate technique… Another great artist to take a look at is Ana Vidovic. Just watching how the pro’s do it, is a workshop on ergonomics and economy of motion. As well as a motivational treat!! Best wishes in your guitar journey!!