[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@nlsbjaol-com that happens to the best of us!! There’s a couple of wonderful courses here in TAC that help to address that fly-away fretting issue. Here’s the link to the 5-day pinky challenge. It’s under “My Routine” then “Skill Courses”, then “5 Day Challenges”. There’s another one in that section called “5-Day Finger Stretch” which is also a good one for flying fretting fingers. Hope this helps!!

https://tonypolecastro.com/courses/pinky-5-day-challenge/

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@AnneD. I think every single guitar geek has at one time or another, inadvertently turned their tuning pegs the wrong direction. It’s like a rite of passage!! And there’s nothing like experience for being a good teacher.

I learned the hard way, to pick each string as I’m tuning it so I can hear that I’m messing with the correct tuning peg, and to hear whether I’m tightening or loosening it. It’s also good to always have your “next set of strings” in your guitar case ready to go on, in case you do snap a string.

So you are an official guitar geek now 🙂

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@KayMesser it sounds like you are doing everything correctly so far!! Including not giving up!

Tons of great advice already on this thread already, it’s all good! One thing I learned along the way for developing good chord muscle memory is this exercise:

Choose one chord to work on. We’ll say the C-Chord.

Grab a guitar and fret your C-chord. Strum it until you get clean tone.

Then keeping your chord fretted, just lighten up the pressure just a little bit on your fretting hand. Strum the strings (You will definately get dead strings as you lighten up)

Then go back on with the pressure until you get a clean sounding strum.

Keep doing this and each time release your fretting finger pressure a little bit more each time.

Eventually you will release the pressure to the extent that your fretting fingers are no longer touching the strings. (They are helicoptering/hovering above their proper “landing” spots). Then return your fretting fingers to their proper places with enough pressure to get a good tone with your strumming.

Keep doing this and each time release your fretting fingers, let them go a little bit higher above the strings. The idea is to train your muscle memory to just land the chord without you even having to look. Once you can land your C-Chord, try it with a G-Chord. After you have both of them in your helicopter muscle memory, NOW try switching back and forth between the 2 chords you are working with. I bet you will find it much more smooth and automatic.

You can do this exercise with any single chord, or with any combination of 2 chords or chord progressions. Hope it helps, and keep up the great work!!!

Disclaimer: I am still not great friends with the B-minor chord or really that dang F-chord either. This exercise works well with non Barre Chords. There I said the bad word, hahaha!

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

Each of the 6 horizontal lines of the Tabulature staff represents your 6 strings on your guitar. The bottom line of the TAB is your low E string, aka 6th string (Thickest one), and the next line above that one represents your A string aka 5th string, the next one is your D string aka 4th string, next is G, then B, and the top line of the TAB is your high e string (thinnest one). The numbers on the TAB indicate which fret to play on that string. A zero means that string is played open/not fretted. An X if it appears anywhere means that string is not played for that chord. If there is no number on the tab for a particular string it means it’s not plucked at all.

So a C-chord in TAB would be from bottom to top, X32010

A G-chord would be 320033

A D-chord would be XX0232

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@SteveDyer if the fret numbers in the TAB are all vertically stacked, you play them all at once like a chord. If the fret numbers are more horizontally arranged with nothing above/below each number, then you play each note separately like an arpeggio. Music notation is the same. Stacked notes are played all together (chord) and single notes are played singly (melody/arpeggio). Music notation gives much more information about rhythm and timing but there are some TABs software that allows some of that information as well. Hope that helped a little.

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@MisterBee you are lucky there is a chapter near your location… I think they will answer your email, just give some time… I think there are ways to start up your own chapter if you are so inclined. I’m not sure the process as they might require the coordinator to be a veteran, who knows? If I get brave, I may see if I can volunteer to play guitar at a VA home. I think the activities director there would be a good person to make friends with as a starting point.

Our Veterans deserve sooooo much for their bravery and sacrifice. G4V is a wonderful organization to help these dear folks. Best of luck with your journey!!

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@Screaming_fingers_jackson I just love my D’addario capo. It’s got the low profile playability of a G7, along with the easy on/off of a Kyser, and best of all, it’s got a tension adjustment knob built in. It’s definately my fav capo!!

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

Hiya @AnneD.

A capo is that little hinge clip, it goes on the fretboard and covers all the strings and shortens the length of all the strings. People use it to change the key they are playing in without changing their chord shapes, and it’s also useful to make learning new music easier because the frets are not so far apart.

Tony P. explains it much better than I can. He’s got a course all about capos in the Skill Courses section here in TAC. Here’s the link to it:

https://tonypolecastro.com/courses/capo-comprehension/

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by  Carol-3M-Stillhand.
• This reply was modified 3 years ago by  Carol-3M-Stillhand.

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@AnneD. You can try using a capo on the higher frets. That makes the distance much shorter for your fingers to have to reach. Once you master the fretting at capo 5th fret, you would move it down to the 4th fret and try it there. And so on, until you get it cleanly with no capo. I keep my guitar tuned down a whole step (DGCFAD) and play with capo on fret 2 which results in standard tuning but with the capo on 2nd fret it’s so much easier to reach those stretches!! Also lower action and less tension on the strings makes it easier to get clean tones with less pressure/less stress in fretting hand.

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@Kinga Wow what a great question, and there are some wonderful suggestions here already!! I would add one thing: Have you tried attending one of Tony P.’s 90 Day Progress Parties? That is one of the things that he emphasizes there (in person), which is how to cultivate your daily practice habit. You can raise your “virtual hand” and ask any of your specific questions and issues directly to Tony P right there in the Zoom party.

Also a good idea to try is to use your egg timer and just set it for 5-10 minutes for your daily practice goal. Attach your practice time to another habit you do daily like brushing your teeth. So every time you brush your teeth, grab your guitar and do 5 minutes of practice. Just don’t do both at once, haha. Almost everyone can find 5 minutes a day to practice. And if you are in a crunch for time, a practice log with daily “assignments” that you fill in for yourself ahead of time will help you find some instant focus each day. (This is where the daily TAC lessons come in handy as well but as long as you are practicing every day even for just 5-10 minutes)

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@CaryneAg I’ve had that same issue at times, with my fretting fingers. I think if you learn to play more relaxed it might help.

Try really doing those warm up exercises for both hands, before you start your practice session. Also if you’ve heard of “The Spider Exercise”, that is a really good one to use on a daily basis for about 5 minutes either after or as part of your warm up. Do the exercise very slowly, multiple times. For one pass, experiment with lighter fretting pressure on every note. Practice decreasing the pressure until you hear the strings buzz and/or deaden. Then increase it just slightly to get your clean notes. You’ve just learned the minimal fretting pressure. Giving it any more, is just a waste of muscle capacity and contributes to higher tension as you play. Another variation of “Spider” is to try it without touching your fretting hand thumb to the back of the neck. This will also help take the tension out of your fretting hand. Any time you are struggling to play/practice anything, just throw a capo on the 3rd or 4th fret. The shorter frets and lower action that results will also help you to play more relaxed.

Hope this makes sense to you and hope it helps!! C

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@maryd too much tension and poor ergodynamics can result in injury… Lots of great suggestions here already, but I will add a few to the list:

Try doing the exercises/practice with a capo on the 3rd or 4th fret. This lowers the action and makes the frets closer together, both make learning new power chords a bit easier.

To reduce the tension in your fretting hand, try playing without using your fretting thumb on the back of the guitar neck. You will be suprised to see just how little pressure is needed to fret notes cleanly, and leaving your thumb off duty will both rest the thumb and teach you to use minimal pressure to fret notes (less pressure = less tension = better playing)

Whatever you do, always listen to your body. If you are having pain, you are definately over-doing something. Rest, ice, and wrist supports are your friends. I’ve had tendonitis in my fretting hand 2-3 times now, and the urge to play through it will just result in prolonging recovery time. Best wishes!! C

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

Ultimate Guitar is a great place to start if you’re looking for free songsheets/TABs. Also if you do a YouTube search using the word “guitar” and the song title you might find a song lesson with or without the TABs. I also love to do a google search for a song by title and filter it by “image” and there’s usually a plethora of music/tabs/songsheets.

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@AnneD. If you are using a capo, you generally would not change your tuning at all. So without a capo your open strings are EADGBE, and if you place your capo on for example, the 3rd fret, your open strings are now GCFA#DG. It’s almost impossible to tune your strings low enough to maintain standard tuning with a capo once you place it higher than fret 2 or 3. You’d get buzzing strings from them being too loose. So anything you play with using a capo will be higher notes than if you played without one. If you’re playing along with a recording or with another person then you both need to have your capo on the same fret so they match. But if you are playing or practicing solo then it just doesn’t matter if the notes are all higher. So don’t fret it (hehe pun intended). Just tune your guitar to standard tuning EADGBE without the capo, then put the capo on fret 3 or 4 and then go ahead with your practice or drills.

(There is a “capo rule” that after applying a capo you should re-tune your guitar because the capo can pull the strings sharp, but for your purposes, you can skip that part. It can get a little confusing to figure out what the “new open string notes” are supposed to be with the capo in place on any given fret.)

[Carol-3M-Stillhand]

@DHeaton I understand your question perfectly. Our first position standard cowboy open chords can be played all over the fretboard using different shapes. (Take your familiar C-Shaped C chord) if you move that C-shape up 2 frets (you can’t move the nut up 2 frets so that’s why you need to make your 1st finger the “new nut” aka barre chord with the barre on fret 2). Now you have a C-shaped D chord. It looks like a C but it sounds like a D. Knowing that a D is 2 frets higher than a C, you just move the shape up 2 frets. E is 2 frets higher than D, so move that same C-shaped Barre chord another 2 frets and now you have a C-shaped E chord. F is only one fret higher than E, so the C-shaped F chord is only 1 fret higher than the C-shaped E chord.

You can do that same thing with C, A, G, E and D chord shapes. (CAGED)

Tony P explains it beautifully in his Fretboard Wizard course…

https://tonypolecastro.com/courses/fretboard-wizard/

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by  Carol-3M-Stillhand.