Hi there I'm Tomas Michaud from Real Guitar Success.
Today I want to give you 7 tips that'll help you to play
chords clean, smooth without buzzing and without muted notes. Now after the
7 tips I'm going to give you a bonus tip
and this is by far the most important tip. So if you
want you find the 7 tips trivial skip past them get to the end where I
give you my bonus tip so with that let's get started with the
7 tips. Tip number 1, start off with a good
hand position. Now there's no absolute one right way it
should look and everybody's hands a little bit different but there are
some guiding principles. In general. I prefer to have the thumb
behind the neck. It can be straight up and down or off to an angle
but in general I want to have the thumb behind the neck
and space between the fingers and the hand as it comes around the guitar neck.
Have the elbow kind of relaxed tucked into your
side but not hard tucked in just gently hanging down. When you grab the guitar
the idea is that you're not going to grab it so hard
that your hand hurts but you want to put enough pressure of
course that the note sounds good. And a lot of that has to do with the
angle of your fingers so it's not just a matter of pressing
harder. You want to try and get the right angle for your hand and it'll
take some experimenting that brings me to the fingers. Tip number
2, in general you want your fingers to go up and back
down. Now there's again no absolute perfect there and some
chords it can look more angled and some a
little bit less but you want to avoid a real flat finger.
Again you won't be able to keep from hitting
other strings if you do that. So for tip number 3, I'm going to bring up that
you want to keep the nails on your left hand short and you
know of course I've had many female students that
kind of grumble around that and they try it and they agree with me after a while.
But even I have to watch that I find my nails just grow and I don't really pay
attention to it and all of a sudden I'm having a hard
time making a chord. It either hurts my finger or I have to press extra
hard and I realized my nails have grown. So you'll want to pay attention to that
and keep them short. Tip number 4 is when you're
making a chord, put your fingers as close to the fret
that it's just behind. In other words if I'm making a G chord
my second finger here is on the third fret. I say on the third fret but I
never mean exactly on the fret just behind the fret. Get it as close to
the fret as you can but not on top. The farther it is back
the harder you have to press to make a decent sound.
So you're gonna not only make a better sound but you're gonna relieve some
tension and pain in your hand if you practice getting close to the fret.
Now that's the key practice. It's not something that
if you think hard enough about it every time you're going to be lost before you
get to the next chord in a chord progression.
You want to practice so it becomes a habit and some chords you can get closer
to the fret than others. You work at it, you get better at
it and then it just seeps into your playing. Tip
number 5, try not to angle your wrist too much.
It's okay if it bends a little but don't angle out like this to try to
make the cord first of all that's going to hurt you over time
but it's not the most efficient way to make a cord. You want to keep your wrist
relaxed on the straighter side as opposed to
angle and that'll change. You'll notice when I do bar chords I
have to angle more. There's no way out. So there's not one right angle you keep
the whole time but in general less angle than more and not rigidly
straight either. You don't want a lot of tension in your hand.
And you'll find over time that it's actually a more efficient way
to bend your fingers and make the chords. Tip number 6,
is you want to work at how much pressure you need to make that chord
and this again will take some practice and paying attention.
So what I'm talking about is how hard you actually need to press to make the
sound of the note. When you make a chord, you can press
really hard and it'll sound sounds good. I can press a little less
and it still sounds good that's what you want.
You want the least amount of pressure and have the notes still sound good.
Now that will also be kind of a test of how you're
angling your fingers and your hands and the other parts. The more you get the
angle your fingers correct and the wrist position correct the easier it is
to make the chord and the less pressure you'll have to use.
What I like to have students do is once in a while just
try to see how much pressure they actually need to make a note
because I often find that students just get in the habit of pressing as hard as
they can and they don't really realize they could
lighten up and still get a good sounding note. Pay attention to that and try once
in a while just making a chord and see how hard you
have to press to make the sound of the chord.
Tip number 7, I've went over a lot of things and if you try to
pay attention to all that at once you're not gonna be able to play.
You're gonna be frozen up with angling your fingers and getting close to the
fret. They need to become a habit and to do
that you need to practice it. And to practice it, recommend making a game out of practicing the chord. A game I like to
have students play is to make one chord at a time
put their hand down at their side and count
5 and see how quickly they can make the chord - 3
4 5. Did it and then keep shortening the amount of time it
takes till you get to 1 - 1. So by making a game out of it, it
becomes a little more fun and you need some kind of challenge to make a game
out of it if you can't measure it with how long it takes. You don't know if
you're getting better or not. So you'll know if it took you 5
seconds to make the chord and sound good over time you get to 3
seconds you'll know you improved and you keep wanting to get down to one
second where you could just make the chord. Do that for each of the chords you're
using and you'll get the chords better and better
of course all that while you're kind of paying attention a little bit
Am I close to the fret? Is my hand angled? And little by little that becomes
a habit. So here's my bonus tip for you when I first started playing guitar it
seemed like everything I tried on the guitar
wouldn't work at least not at first and sometimes for quite a while.
Now I can play things I never imagined. Now I'm not exceptionally talented.
I have very talented friends so I have a comparison there.
I'm probably about average. Heck, I don't even know why I
stuck with it probably just despite my dad who thought I was wasting my time.
Looking back, I realized how hard it is to imagine what you're doing in the
beginning how it will turn out later. Now there are
certainly some talented people but everyone
at the beginning couldn't play a lick possibly with the exception of
Jimi Hendrix. There's a rumor he came out of his mom with a guitar in his hand
but everyone else basically had to struggle
and learn no matter how talented they were. They all had doubts. They probably
at one point or another felt like giving it up.
The best tip I can give you is to keep on trying
no matter whether or not it seems like what you're doing
can eventually turn out to real guitar playing.
All the tips I've given you will help you go faster and it's important to
learn things from other people. But all the tips and lessons on YouTube
and from teachers, they can't make up for
giving a half-hearted try and then hanging it up
saying “ I tried. I couldn't do it.” Remember there are no two people that are the
same so all these tips are not like the
gospel bible. You're going to have to experiment, try
things out, decide what works for you, discard what
doesn't and try other things out. You have to find your own way and
there's no shortcut you're going to just have to keep at it
and keep doing things until it works. You try something, it works
great. You try something else, it doesn't. Let it go.
Keep trying until you find something that works for you and who knows
if you just keep at it you're likely at some point to impress yourself. Thanks
for joining me today. If you like what I'm doing give me a
thumbs up and let me know what kinds of lessons you'd
like to see me make in the comments below. Bye for now.