Fingers Too Fat For Guitar Chords

My fingers are too fat .

I can't play my chords .

Help .

Hey , how's it going ?

It's Sean Bradshaw from cyber threat dot com .

And that's actually a very common plea for help that I get .

Uh , I've been teaching guitar a long time .

I've taught over 1000 private students and it never fails on about , you know , the second or third lesson , everybody kind of comes up with my fingers are too fat .

My fingers are too thin , my fingers are too long .

My fingers are too short and just about everybody kind of has this .

I don't think my fingers will work .

I don't think my fingers can play these chords and of course , very common .

My fingers are too fat .

I can't play the chords now in all those years that I've been teaching , uh , very rarely has somebody actually had fingers that were too fat to play , uh , or too long or too short .

You know , anybody can learn how to play the guitar and a lot of times it's just a matter of learning how to correctly place your fingers .

Now , I've done , done a few other lessons on , on some hand position things for chords .

But today I want to talk specifically about the fat finger .

All right , and how to get your fingers in and some things , uh to try if you're having some trouble playing some chords .

Um , because you think that your fingers are too fat now , uh I'm gonna start off by kind of using ad major chord as a common one and that people have problems with .

So , um , basic D cord , first finger on the third string , second fret , second finger on the first string at the second fret and third finger on the second string at the third fret , strumming four strings .

Now , a lot of times where people have trouble is that third finger .

All right .

And just getting it in there and having it not touch other strings .

And like I said , a lot of people say , just say , well , I don't think I can get in there because my finger is too fat .

Now , um you want to try to keep that finger as curved as possible .

You want to try to keep this part of your hand fairly close to the bottom of the neck so that your finger is going to come in a little bit steeper an angle .

But kind of here is something to try out is think about where you're actually pressing down on the tip of your finger .

There's multiple places that you can press down .

So if you find that you're playing this chord and you can't get that first string to sound because your quote fat finger is in the way of , uh , uh , that first string .

What I want you to try is to lift up your third finger and move it just a , just a hair closer to the ceiling .

All right , that's gonna give you just a little bit more clearance there so that you're not gonna be touching that first string and you can adjust this , you can almost move this just to the point where your third finger might be touching the third string .

All right , there's kind of a lot of leeway in where you can touch on the tip of your finger in the end , you're gonna be able to just kind of put down your fingers on these different chords .

You kind of have a muscle memory a as to where they need to be placed .

But at first , you kind of have to think about it and , you know , just think about if you have a finger and it doesn't seem to be able to get and stay on its own string , it keeps touching other strings or when you , you press down another common one that people have trouble with is c where this first finger seems to , you know , touch both the third string and the first string and they say , well , my finger just won't fit in there .

It's too big .

But what happens is again , you can find a place where it's gonna be , uh , on the tip of your finger , but in a place where it's not gonna be touching one of those other strings and just don't be afraid of sometimes taking your right hand and actually moving your finger to where you want it to go while you're first learning how to play these chords .

So , I had no fear .

Your finger are not too fat to be able to play .

And , uh , you know , sometimes you , you could need to have a guitar that has a wider neck .

If you'd have really big hands and really big fingers , they do make guitars with different , you know , widths of necks .

And so that's something that you might go down to your local music store and just try out some different guitars and see if you find one that might fit your hands a little bit better , but you can play chords .

Um You just have to kind of work on finding the right positions for your fingers .

All right .

Have a good one .