Strumming patterns won’t do you any good if you’re chords aren’t happening on the guitar. In the next series of articles we will look at various tips to increase your fretting hand technique.
Playing guitar properly requires effective use of both your hands along with the right techniques.
If you can nail the basics you will be astounded at what you can accomplish with very little effort.
I’d like to give you a few pointers for each hand so that you can use them to fast track your progress. Luckily it does not need to take forever to learn acoustic guitar.
Let’s start with the fretting hand which will be the left hand for most guitar players.
First thing you need to realize is that you really don’t have to fret the string that hard in order to produce a good sound. In fact fretting too hard leads to a few serious problems.
- You’re risking injury since your hand is way too tense all the time.
- It will just sound bad because the harder you fret a note the more out of tune it will become.
Those are two pretty nasty things you want to avoid right? So in order to train your fingers a bit you can play the following exercise.
Fretting Hand Exercise
Fret a note so that it sounds out clearly. Pay attention to the intensity of your fretting hand. Now slowly start to decrease the amount of pressure you’re applying and keep going until the note stops ringing out. Once you get there apply just enough pressure so that the note starts ringing out again. Now pay attention to the amount of pressure needed to produce a sound.
Is it more than what you had when you first fretted the note? In most cases it is so if it’s the same with you maybe that’s something you’d like to work on a bit. Getting used to fretting notes with the least amount of pressure.
Chords For Beginners
Once you’ve done that you can check out “4 Easy Tips For Killer Sounding Chords”
