Learn Acoustic Guitar

Learning to play acoustic guitar is not as easy as it first seems. I’ve had a suspicion for a long time that many people learn electric guitar just because changing between guitar chords is so deceptively difficult.

Learning chord shapes can be sometimes be a lot harder than learning guitar scales. It’s not easy to build correct technique and speed up your chord changes but a few helpful tips can speed up your progress significantly

Building Finger Strength

One of the reasons acoustic guitar is so difficult when you first start playing is that you have enough strength in your fingers to keep the chord held down properly. There are ways to build your finger strength though.

When I first started playing guitar I had the craziest teacher. One of the oddest things he ever told me to do was to practice playing rhythm guitar while wearing a pair of tight gloves.

At the time I didn’t understand why, but now I realise he had me do this to build finger strength.

As you can imagine it is extremely difficult to play a clean guitar chord when you are wearing gloves. The strength required to actually fret the notes of the chord, especially on an acoustic guitar is very high.

Although I wouldn’t advise playing guitar wearing gloves, it did work for me and my finger strength increased dramatically over a very short space of time.

The real problem with building finger strength is that if you do not approach it as a training regime you can cause actual damage to your hands.

You should never over stress muscles and tendons of your hands for long periods as this can cause tendinitis. Ask any guitarist that has suffered this affliction to learn just how much it hurts.

The best way to build finger strength is not by playing the guitar, but by using a specialist exercise device, like a set of weights for your fingers, called a grip-master.

The device fits in your hand and has a set of four finger rests. Each rest can be depressed individually.

These are available in good music shops and are ideal for building finger strength. I used to spend 2 hours a day using one of these gadgets, on the train to and from work.

Playing With Rhythm

Once you have a regime in place to begin building finger strength you need to start looking at the way you actually play rhythm. 

It’s important to realise that you only need to lift your fingers from the fret board by a couple of millimetres to make a chord change. Don’t waste time lifting your fingers too high or removing them from the neck entirely, simply stop fretting the current chord by lifting your finger tips enough to stop the note sounding and then move to the new chord shape.

Practice this technique alongside your strength building exercises and you will find your chord changes become faster, smoother and cleaner in a very short period of time.

Filed under: Learn Guitar Chords