This is one of the most common complaints that I receive from guitar students. They are having difficulty fingering various guitar chords and are looking for solutions.
There are different ways to handle these fingering issues.
It could be a matter of adjusting how you finger the chord, to what type of guitar you choose to play on.
To illustrate this further, here is a specific chord fingering problem that I was given by one of my students.
Question:
Tomas, I find it difficult to not touch some strings when I play the C chord with 3 fingers, is there an alternative C chord?
— Alan Williams
Answer:
It's a common problem to have difficulty fingering many guitar chords including the C chord. Here are some of the solutions that hopefully will give you more ideas and some encouragement about fingering chords.
Use A Guitar With A Wider Neck
If you are using a steel string acoustic guitar and your fingers are on the thicker side, you may want to try a classical type guitar.
This type of guitar has a wider neck than the acoustic guitar and the strings are farther apart. It's created this way so that the fingers can get between the strings easier for picking with the right hand fingers, but some people with thick fingers find it easier to finger chords also.
A classical guitar has nylon strings so the sound is very different than a acoustic guitar.
Another possibility is to use a 12 string guitar and only string it with six strings. This way the strings will be wider apart similar to a classical guitar only with metal strings.
In this case I'm assuming you want the sound of metal strings which is common for pop rock music.
Before jumping to a guitar with a wider neck, and especially if your fingers seem in the normal range of thickness, I would consider some of the following solutions also.
Alternative Form Of The C Chord
In place of the regular three finger C chord you can start off using the fingering of an A minor chord.
Another way to say this is to use just the two first fingers of the C chord and leave off the third finger.
This actually makes and a minor chord, but if you strum just the top fourth strings it's the same notes of the C chord.
This fingering is easier because you don't have to stretch the third finger over. I use this with students especially if their hands are small or their fingers are stiff.
This is a good stepping stone to fingering the full C chord. It sounds pretty good also.
Eventually as the student gets comfortable with this I have them add the third finger to make the full C.
How To Practice Fingering Guitar Chords
Touching other strings when you're trying to play chord will mute the sound of the strings. This is common when you're first learning.
A lot of this can be sold just by patience and persistence. Get the fingering of the chord the best you can and then practice changing from one chord to another slowly.
Over time you will likely figure out how to keep from touching, or muting, the other strings little by little. There here's a few pointers can help:
- Hand position is important. You should have your fingers, as much as possible, go straight up and then straight down on the string. There is no exact angle, but many beginners tend to straighten out their fingers when fingering guitar chords more than is optimal.
- You'll want to press the string using mostly your fingertip and not the flat pad of your finger. Again it takes practice but it's something to pay attention to.
- A good guitar chord exercise to start with is to just finger the chord, strum it once or twice, make a few adjustments, strum again, and then take your fingers off. Repeat this process about 20 times per practice session. It only takes a few seconds each time. As you do this over a period of a week or so you'll find the chord sounds better and better. The reason you want to take your fingers off after a few strums is that your handle start tensing and you want to break that tension.
If you'd like more help with this check out my blog post and lesson:
One Final But Important Note
A lot of students that tell me they have a problem with fingering guitar chords really have a different problem.
Learning to play a complex skill like playing guitar involves learning many movements that your body is not accustomed to doing. So it rebels.
Often students try to do something for a little while and when it doesn't work they either quit (really bad idea), or start looking for a quick fix like a different guitar or an easier way to do the particular technique.
Unfortunately this doesn't address the underlying issue… a lack of a systematic way of practicing a new skill and difficulty with staying with something that you can't quite do yet.
I do want to also emphasize there is a time and a place to change the guitar, change strings or try something easier. It really helps if you follow a good systematic approach to learning guitar.
This includes regular practice that's done in an effective way. Then making other changes to lower the bar makes more sense if you're still having difficulties with something.
Answer To A Simple Question
I know some of you would think this was a long answer to a simple question. I'm hoping you'll see that I giving you much more than a quick fix to help you really learn to play guitar.
Let me know if you found this useful or if you have any other ways to help with fingering chords.
Leave a comment below so we can all benefit.
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Tomas, as always your advice is sound and practical. I will start with trying the A minor chord. Having just retired from work aged 59 and with some limited musical experience (5 years at age 10 to 15 in a Brass Band)my retirement ambition was to learn to play the guitar. However, recently I have been diagnosed with Polymyalgia rheumatica, but persevering through the pain a stiffness in my left wrist to continue to practice (5 times per week a minimum of 30 minutes per session). Starting to use my limited ability to read music to work on translating music for guitar to avoid only using tablature as the “easy way out”. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Alun 🙂
Hello Alun,
Your story is definitely well-appreciated. Tomas Michaud would definitely feel proud of you.
You are such an inspiration to those novice guitar players out there
who are almost giving up their dreams of playing guitar for so many reasons. I really hope that your doctor knew about this and
that playing guitar will not worsen the situation. Your perseverance and persistence is truly amazing.
Get well so soon and take care of yourself and please don’t push too hard. Have fun and enjoy playing guitar.
Take care,
Hazel
Starland Guitar
Customer Support
Helpful advice. Thanks
Hello Donna,
You are most welcome. As always, Tomas Michaud is glad to hear from someone like you
how his guitar lessons were able to help his budding guitarist out there.
Keep it up, Donna.
Thanks,
Hazel
Starland Guitar
Customer Support
Hi Tom:
I’m having this problem with muting strings on some of my chords. I am a totally new player at age 71. I have a Martin LX-1, lefty, because we liveaboard our boat 6-7 months a year and it is smaller. I also think that I have smaller hands. A wider neck guitar would seem to be even harder to stretch my hands across. I’ve been using simpler chords, as you suggested. Hopefully, I will get better with practice.
Do you have any suggestions for beginning left handed players? I have enjoyed your free videos but haven’t subscribed to any teacher yet because I have to convert everything I see to left handed chord charts.
Hello John,
Glad to hear from you. With regard to your problem on muted string, allow me to share with you a blog post written by Tomas Michaud himself, its How To Avoid Muted Strings When Making Chords >> https://tomasmichaud.com/avoid-muted-strings-making-chords-sunday-update-33/. For left handed players, I hope that this post will also help you a lot http://www.starlandguitar.com/mistake-3/.
If you think you’re having a smaller hands, then don’t worry too much about. Here’s what Tomas Michaud’s point on that :
“I commend you on taking a first step…getting help. I want to assure you that it’s very unlikely that the size of your hands is really a problem. If they really are small like a child just get a smaller guitar (3/4 size). many students have told me over the years they thought their hand were too small or too large. The real issue is just practice and patience. The best advice is 1) find a good teacher or systematic online lesson course, 2) practice 5 days a week, and 3) persist…don’t stop. I know this may sound too simplistic.” – Tomas
I wish you all the best in your guitar playing journey. Before I’d end up, remember that in playing guitar, age doesn’t matter 🙂
Thanks,
Hazel
Starland Guitar
Customer Support
Another great post. I too picked up the guitar at age 70. It’s great to have both
Thomas and a local guitar instructor. I have Bud Preston here in Medina Ohio and I subscribe to Thomas Michaud. Thank you again Thomas and staff.
Hello Dennis,
That sounds great 🙂 Warm regards to Bud Preston
and thanks for subscribing to Tomas Michaud’s guitar lessons.
with you age, you proved to anyone that playing guitar – age doesn’t matter at all.
Thanks to you as well.
Hazel
Starland Guitar
Customer Support
Your approach to proper fingering and explanation of why we have problems to execute chords is excellent. I believe in you Tomas 100%.
Keep on teaching us.
Thanks.
Michael.
I am a 63 old female just learning to play guitar. I love it! But feeling frustrated about going from one chord to the next. Practice at least an hour a day. Any suggestions?
Hi Mary, you’re not alone on this. This is one of the most common issues when someone is 1st learning guitar. I’m really glad to hear you’re making time to practice. Here is a lesson that can help you put some structure to your practicing: https://tomasmichaud.com/changing-guitar-chords-beginners-easily-smoothly/
Tomas
Tomas, I’m a beginner to guitar. Tell me why do you hold down the B2 string, if you’re not going to play it. I thought when you held down a string on it’s fret, it was to change the or tone of the sound. Since the B2 string is not being played, why bother holding it down?
Please explain or point me where I can learn guitar theory.
Hi Tomas,
Great lesson but I have a major problem getting D chord to ring out clearly. When I form this chord, my ring finger mutes the high E string. However hard I tried changing my wrist(lowering it), fingers going into fretboard, it just dont work.
Any piece of advice.
Hi Jaggs,
This may help: https://tomasmichaud.com/guitar-chords-difficulty-fingering-chords-heres-help/
Hey Jaggs… Here’s a new lesson that you might find helpful: https://youtu.be/DccbNJUswpg
I wish you the best, Tomas
A very informative lessson to my ear I think I can play most beginners chords , but just started to learn the full F Barr chord I just can’t get all the fingers down at once , no matter how I try , practice and paitience, as Thomas says, thank you, Tomas
Regards
thank you for this amazing article this is very helpful
Playing the shape of the chords like Bm and Fm is hard, your teaching is great and I can see the errors and things I need to improve, thanks for writing this up! I’m grateful to read your article.
When I was a starter, I really struggled in getting good sound. Now looking at your guide, I wish I had seen it when I started.
I hereby thank you on the behalf of beginners 🙂
You’re welcome John. There’s a lot of things I wish I could do over also 🙂
– Tomas
Amazing! Learned just now that the C maj chord can be played in teh nut position by using just two fingers.
Hello
My name is Anna and i am 45 years old. I just want to play guitar but confused about going from one chord to the next. I am practicing 1 hour a day. Do you have any quick suggestions for me?
I really like your idea to get a wider necked guitar to make it easier. My cousin is trying to get a new guitar soon. They want to get lessons to start playing quickly.
I am a beginner and an older one 69 yrs old I have always had a fetish to play the guitar. I liked your answers the the difficulty of getting cords . Makes sence I have set aside a minimum of 1 hour every eve for the guitar fingures are new to it but as you said I belive in time I will get it
Hi Tomas, just wanted to thank you for writing this guide out. I've shared it with a couple of my students and they've picked it up quite quickly. You're obviously a very guitarist.
Thanks Joe.
64 year old , new player !! Arthritis in both hands ,but is easing as I play. As any new player I'm struggling but being a hard head will NOT GIVE UP !
thanks for sharing this great information this will be very helpful all the students who just started learning