Hi Bruce,
I have been learning for about 15 months. I really have struggled with my fingers just going to the wrong place, as if I have poor awareness of their position. Below are two practice ideas I did not see above. I use these on days I cannot seem to do anything correctly, and also for new chords. I still need to work on gaining speed for several songs where there is little time to make the change.
- This is mostly for location memorization.
- form the chord lightly. make sure it sounds clean when you strum it.
- Pay attention to how the strings feel, rotation of wrist, thumb, etc.
- Lift one finger and then place it back down. Did it land correctly?
- Practice this a few times rotating through each finger.
- Next, lift two fingers and place them back down.
- Rotate through combinations of lifting different fingers.
- Next, three fingers, then 4 if you have that many in the chord.
This helps me reset on days I have really poor targeting on the strings, but was a great help early on just getting started in general.
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Playing songs with the app got me over a speed plateau I was stuck at for weeks. Huge benefit, but be careful to avoid letting it be a crutch (i don’t know songs!).
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This is more for dexterity and independent finger control.
- Place all 4 fingers down on string 3, each on their individual fret. Go for comfort as to the frets you choose.
- Lift one finger to string 4, then string 2, then back to string 3. Do this a few times and pay attention to hitting the strings accurately, not quickly. Pick the strings if you want to check for ringing correctly.
- Cycle through each finger until you feel you have control.
- Next stage is to move two fingers, placing one on string 2 and one on string 4 as simultaneously as you can manage, then swap them. Slowly is fine.
- cycle through finger pairs carefully and deliberately trying to move to the strings in the same time on both fingers. Keep it slow.
I found that anything involving finger 3 was a disaster and it took me 3-4 weeks to get some reasonable control of that finger. Once I did, some of the chords started to really come into sounding right, and I can hit many of the sus chords as shown in Justin’s lessons much more comfortably.
one last thought: My older hands were pretty stiff when I first started. I have worked on stretching them very slowly so I do not create any injury. I do a little warmup flexing/wiggling them before I play. I used to have good symmetry in my hands, but now I see that fretting hand can curl and spread far better than my picking hand. This just took time.
Hope this helps!