If you’re a beginner, learning how to play chords—and play them aptly—is the most challenging hurdle you’ll face as a guitarist. Your fingers will ache, your tempo will be non-existent, and as soon as your digits leave the strings that you tried so hard to find, metacarpal amnesia sets in and you’re back to square one.
The whole learning experience is awkward. Your fingers are stretching in strange new ways, strings are buzzing, other strings aren’t sounding out at all, and it takes an interminable amount of time between playing one chord and switching to another. All I can do at this point is throw out an adage that is as exhausted as it is true: practice makes perfect.
Play it a Thousand Times, Sam.
If you’re feeling like you’re not getting anywhere, consider that in order to get something under your belt, you should play it about a thousand times. Hang in there—each day you sit down and practice, things will become more comfortable for you. I promise.
Smart Fingers
Once you’ve been practicing long enough, you’ll notice that your fingers begin to take the shape of the chords before they reach the strings. Where when you first began and you had to create a chord one string at a time, now you’ll be able to land all your fingers on the chord at once. It all comes in good time. Also, take some time to adjust how much pressure you’re putting on the strings with your fretting hand. Most beginners put a white-knuckled death grip on their guitar in order to play those first few chords. That’s not necessary. Evaluate how much pressure you don’t need to put on the fret board by letting up a little. Experiment to see if you can release your tension and still play the chords you want to play. Taking this step will help you make faster transitions, allowing for smoother playing.
It Hurts!
As you practice, you may approach various levels of fatigue, discomfort, or pain. It’s important that you know the difference between what I’ll call “playable plain” and “halting pain.” Here’s how you can tell the difference . . .
Playable Pain
Playable pain is the discomfort you feel from exercising your fingers, hands, and arms in new ways and that, as result of continuous effort, diminishes in time. This whole guitar thing is new to your hands, wrists, and arms, and you need to develop stamina and strength. For example, the pain you feel in your finger tips when you fret the guitar strings is normal. If you keep practicing, you’ll develop calluses. (To assuage some of your suffering, consider buying a lighter gauge of guitar strings because they are thinner and easier to fret then heavier-gauged strings). Also, you may feel discomfort in the muscles of your fretting hand or arm after working on those barre chords for an extended amount of time. Again, this is playable pain. Give yourself some time, and you’ll notice that your practicing sessions can go a lot longer as a result of your diligence.
Halting Pain
This is the kind of pain that serves as an exclamation point in your playing. Oftentimes, it’s a shooting pain. And any shmoe knows that when you feel this kind of pain, it’s your body telling you that you need to stop what you’re doing. So put down the guitar and take a break. Retrace mentally—not physically—what you were doing and try to alter your method. If pain persists, don’t delude yourself into thinking it will just go away. Seek out the professional opinion of a specialist.
Thanks for reading. Keep practicing.
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