How to Play Guitar Chords Without Touching Other Strings
Are your fingers touching other strings when you play chords?
In this short video, I'll give you five tips that when you put into practice will help
you solve that once and for all and help you play beautiful chords.
Lets do it.
Hi T'm Tomas Michaud from Real Guitar Success where I help you learn guitar and more importantly
to love the journey.
Tip #1 is to start with good hand position.
What Im gonna do is have you pretend like holding an orange in your hand.
Now, take that position dont move a thing and put it right around
the guitar neck.
Thumb in the back and your fingers touches the strings.
Now you can stay relaxed.
You dont need muscles from the shoulder because when you pressed between the fingers and your
thumb its creating enough pressure to just hold on to the guitar neck.
If you release your hand its kinda drop away.
Now the other thing is , your thumb it can grip up a little bit but it should be mostly
behind the neck not this.
This will make it hard to get good clearn chords.
And finally you should have some space between the hand and the guitar neck.
I should be able to take a pen or pencil and stick it between there easily.
Tip #2 is to adjust the angle of your fingers.
Now what were after is curled fingers.
This is an exaggeration but Id rather you exaggerate it first and then you can lighten
up later.
A lot of the students do the opposite.
The fingers are kinda semi curled and that creates the biggest problem right there.
So curl those fingers, start from that position and then make your chords.
Now the idea is my fingers is coming up and then down straight down as opposed to an open
angle and its always a compromise, you'll never be able to get it exactly straight up
and down but you do the best that you can.
What you want is the tips of the fingers touching the guitar neck not the side pad in other
words the very tip of the finger and not the fleshy part of the finger.
Tip #3 Keep your nails on your left hand short.
This is something I just thought of because I didnt realized if my fingers are growing
longer and I was having a hard time making the chords clearly.
What happens is once the nail hits the guitar neck it forces your finger to not quite curl
as much and that's exactly what was happening to me.
So a simple tip but actually one that comes up even with professional guitar players.
Tip # 4 is to get your fingers close to the frets but of course not on top of them.
The problem is if they are not close to the frets if its back farther youll have to adjust
your fingers and use a lot of pressure and as well kinda control other things to try
to get the strings to sound which will affect the other fingers in the chords.
So close to the frets so you gotta have good clean sound with a least amount of pressure.
And finally tip #5 the finger is thinner this way than it is this way.
So when you finger the chord, try to get your fingers more the best you can in alignment
this way as opposed off an angle because as you turn to an angle youre gonna find that
your using the wider part of the finger.
By the way, as you progressed in practice your finger will be tougher and it will actually
spread out less as you get more experienced so just practicing is not just about learning
how to get your fingers its also about making your fingers tougher so they spread out less.
Now you often cannot get them exactly straight up and down.
You're making a compromise to be able to get your fingers as much as you can this way but
at the same time angle so that you can get your fingers in the right place.
A good example of this is the A chord which is hard to get all the fingers in there.
If I went this way, there's no way I could do it so I have to angle but just enough.
I used an A chords like this which is just two fingers to avoid that problem.
Now if you have exceptionally thick fingers you may have other issues.
All these tips will help you and they are important but there are additional things
that I want you to know and I made a whole video for you just on that.
Ill put a link to it down below in the description.
Thank you for joining me today.
If you enjoyed this video let me know in the comments and please let me know if you have
some other tips that can help everyone who are having a hard time with getting their
fingers in the right place without touching other strings.
And remember, playing guitar is not a destination its a journey.
And life is short you deserved to love your journey.
Let me know how I can best help you.