D Chord Not Sounding Right to Me

[LievenDV]

• you sound slightly out of tune. Check your tuning first.

• You might be tuning the strings correctly on open strings but it could be that by pressing down really hard, you are pressing some notes sharp

-Check what our fellow Community member @brianlarsen illustrated so nicely:

@brianlarsen

Seven years after picking up a guitar, I realised that the string doesn’t (or rather shouldn’t) touch the fretboard when playing
I understood you should not press too hard or it will go sharp but I presumed it was for the following reason:
pressing lightly to the fretboard

Pressing hard on the fretboard (longer distance = sharp)

The proper way

This takes away a lot of the importance of the choice of wood for the fretboard (apart from aesthetics of course)
I’m slightly comforted by the fact that I’m not alone- I mentioned it to a friend of mine yesterday (not Chris) whose been playing for decades and he thought the same as me…

I continued on that, illustrating where you ideally could fret (no disaster if it is a bit futher from the fret). the orange circle is your fingertip

• make sure that you only play the 4 thinnest strings and that you don’t mute.

• try fretting and playing each note of the chord separately to check if you have any buzzing