re: Official: Guitar beginners question and answer thread.

Thanks!

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Can anyone recommend some techniques

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You tried different wrist placements?

Dropping my wrist helped to increase reach by moving finger up. As well as moving thumb down.

Auggie, after thinking about what you said and playing, I realized that I already do place my other fingers down first before my index, when barring.

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You tried different wrist placements?

Dropping my wrist helped to increase reach by moving finger up. As well as moving thumb down.

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Yep. This, plus pulling the guitar closer to my chest when barring has helped a ton. I used to not be able to do any bar chords, but after I got a setup done and changed my thumb placement, plus pulling the body in closer to my chest has helped a ton. I don't have too much trouble with most bar chords. I mainly have trouble with them when I have to stretch my middle finger further than 1 fret over from the barre, like when playing B with a barre on the 2nd fret. Maybe I just don't have very big hands?

For short barres, I need to practice more. I have trouble controlling what strings are being pressed down on. With you A example, I have trouble keeping my ring finger from pressing down on e when i'm barring d-g-b.

Thank you all for the help!

That's for short barre's, right?

Another thing you might try, is tuning a whole step lower, and use a capo on the 2nd fret. That would allow you to play on narrower frets. Once you get good, tune a half step higher and move the capo to the 1st fret, then repeat

Slowly but surely, as they say. Still learning how to crawl before I can walk. My fingers are nice and sore, though they're getting tougher by the day. I'm still trying to master a couple songs using D, A, and E before I move too much further on. I'm okay at playing them at 0.5x speed, but at full speed it can sometimes sound like my toddler smashing all the strings. Rhythm is still pretty tricky for me at regular speed. I can either get rhythm or I can get clean chords, but not both at the same time. Just need more practice. Every once in a while I get it right and it sounds good before completely falling apart.

I've memorized a couple scales and use those as finger exercises plus trying to hit the correct strings with my pick. Those are fun to play.

I went ahead with the positive grid spark amp. Neat little piece f equipment. Between the size and the features, it fit what I needed. They originally told me three weeks to get it, but it came in three days instead. I received the hardware before I received the tracking info.

How do you guys go about memorizing chord progressions? Just run the song over and over til you got it? Read off a chart until it's memorized?

I'm talking about memorizing more complicated chord progressions than 145.

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Sorry

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Didn't mean to come off snarky. I've always struggled to memorize chord progressions, and just wanted to know what others practice routines were like.

eta: ok - I'll take a stab if no one else will

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memorizing chord progressions?

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For me: The more songs you play the easier it is to hear the changes. So definitely try playing a lot of different ones.

And it's centered on a familiarity within a chord family but also due to ear training. So (again for me) remembering the key and guessing helped, because it's usually one of the 3 major chords, or one of the 3 minor, or a 7th. And then try playing with with extensions, substitutions, or augmentation off these for a better flavor or dead on accuracy or feel. I'm guessing if you're willing to make mistakes you'll soon start hearing what's next by feel... maybe not all the way... but more so or much better. And just hitting on the right chord (for instance A and not A7th or A-4th or second) starts to definitely help.

And then there's always some modulation, alt/5th to 5th resolution, or changing key... but that's pretty unique for a given song (or what makes that song - what it is) and those are more easily remembered for their strangeness.

Still learning myself... don't unduly sweat it... and remember to make it your own (at least a little).

eta: It might also help to try something by ear, something without the music, just keep making guesses once you figure out the key. For me it helps to finger out a simple single note melody line and then flesh that out. And it doesn't have to be the whole melody line just a major phrase. Then finally check that out to see how you really did. Keeping in mind there's beginner-intermediate-advanced versions for most songs.