'Play a fair bit per day (1hr+) and have developed good callouses, or so I thought.
My fretting index finger, has, over the past half year or so, felt like I was pressing my fingertip on a sharp pebble,
even when just pressing against said fingertip with the pad of my thumb. It got even more of my attention fretting a string.
âOh, itâs just still developing a callousâ, I reasoned.
Today I thought, Could the pain be the result of callous itself ? ? ?
I got out an emery board, pinched my fingertip so the callous was the high point, and sanded away, and sanded away, and sanded away⌠. .
Pain like fretting on a pebble is gone!
What I think happened was the callous developed, and became like an embedded pebble in my fingertip, which irritated the skin every time I played, so it created even more callous directly under the callous (logarithmic growth?).
The positive feedback loop of playing developing a callous turned
into a negative feedback loop as the callous became too thick.
Probably what happened is that thick callus was pressing right on a nerve ending. I once had a problem of playing too much before I had thick enough calluses, and pressing against the strings damaged some nerves, so I developed persistent tingling in my fingertips (neuropathy, I guess). As a result, I couldnât tell where my fingers were and whether they were doing what I wanted. I had to quit playing guitar cold turkey until all that resolved. Took months.
Itâs good you caught this. If you hadnât, the exponential growth could have got way out of control, and you would need to see a doctor. And then, in the consulting room, you would have been very surprised to hear the callus say âDoctor, I seem to have grown this human on my foot.â You never know!
I far prefer glass nail files to sandpaper or emery boards for reducing/smoothing calluses. The much finer abrasive surface leaves the calluses smoother, and you donât end up with sand detritus all over the place. Plus they last a very long time. Search Amazon for glass nail file.
I believe Iâve been pressing on the acoustic strings far too hard (a common beginner problem) over the years. Itâs worth learning to press only the minimum required to get a clean chord / note.
Iâve been trying to press lighter and lighter but it requires a lot of my attention to do it. As soon as I forget I start pressing too hard again.
Thereâs a recent Justin lesson about this. Itâs really worth doing because not only is there less finger pain but also more relaxed hands make it easier to change chords. But itâs easier said than done !
to âquit cold turkeyâ is to stop suddenly and without transition, I suppose you could say. no idea the origin of that phrase, but itâs often used in reference to quitting smoking without assistance (very difficult to sustain).
That made me have to find out. It seems no one is totally sure, but the most popular explanation is that it comes from the cold, sweaty, goose-bumpy skin that people get when going through withdrawal from narcotics, similar to a turkey before it goes in the oven.
I thought,
