Please help - my ring finger is slow to land on chords

Hi all help needed so I’ve been playing for a yr now but i still cant control my ring finger for the D,C Big G (4 finger G) it takes about ten seconds to go down on the string getting so frustrated and that is with doing finger excises
Cheers

Hi David

Take it slowly and practice perfectly, if you make the “one minute changes” it should eventually get better… very slowly and a little faster day or week per week, now a year of practice say`s not that much… how many minutes/hour per day and so on…
Hope this helps,
Greetings,Rogier

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I also found it helpful to spend some practice time leading the chord with different fingers. So make sure to play the chord with the ring finger placed first, regardless of how weird it feels.

Doing this with each finger as I learn a chord slowly helped me be able to land all fingers closer to the same time.

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Yes, try this, it really helped when I was learning the F chord. And I’m going to try it with the B7 chord as my ring finger tends to land on the B string rather than the G string.

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@Symy70 If i may suggest, try not landing finger by finger at all. Put your hand on your knee, bring it up to fretboard and slowly visualising where you need to land the fingers try and do it with all fingers down at once. Adjust if not correct, hold for a second. Release, put hand on your knee again. Repeat a lot for each chord. Then, when this is working for chords individualy try the changes.

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@Symy70 for some finger control in general try “walking your fingers” across strings. How? Take finger 1 6th string, then finger 3 5th string, finger 1 4th string, finger 3 3rd string and so on to 1st string.Then, back up from 1st to 6th string. Like walking across strings. Work on all pairs of fingers. Since it is ring finger giving trouble first try combinations involving it.

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Hi David,

What kind of finger exercises are you using? Justin has several different ones & my favorite is the Spider exercise. I also like Sly’s first post above… taking the hand completely off the guitar neck, slapping the knee & returning to the fretboard is one I’ve used before… slowly!!! Rogier mentions this… slowly & very gradually increasing tempo. This helped me with an uncontrollable pinky - which is still a work in progress!!! :roll_eyes:

Tod

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The Spider | JustinGuitar.com

Here’s the link to Justin’s spider exercise…

Tod

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The Spider or this walking exercise i mentioned are finger control exercises. Besides that finger strength is important. So to help with the pinky i would suggest if i may doing some trill exercises with pinky (and other fingers too). Not too much at first but a couple minutes every day. Should help with the pinky a lot after couple months. + the walking exercise is left hand only so your only focus is fretting hand finger control without the picking pattern complication.

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These exercises are great, but i found I wasn’t able to coordinate them at all, until I had spent some time learning to land the chord with each finger leading multiple times. Then, finally, I felt I could position my fingers to land at the same time (or at least close). That is what worked for me, anyway.

I am sure everyone is a bit different as to what works for them, so try a bunch of things and practice what seems to help.

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:+1: Of course. Whatever works to achieve the goal. I just offered an idea (which might help) to try out for a month or two.

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Hi David.

Finding difficulty forming certain chords is a very common issue. It can be different chords for different people.

To improve the formation of a chosen chord:

Hold your fingers near to but not touching the strings.
Touch the fingers where the chord is but do not press.
Once you have all three touching at the correct place then press them down.
Do not strum - this is a fretting hand exercise only.
Release the pressure after a few seconds but keep touching the strings.
Then move your hand away from the strings by a small amount. All fingers away.
Repeat the process.

Then, to improve changes to and from the chosen chord and other commonly grouped chords, repeat the above process with one alteration. After the final step of lifting all fingers away, the next cycle would be to move fingers over the chord that you are changing to. Once that chord has been done and fingers are lifted away, go back to the first chord of the pair.

Wash, rinse, repeat. Make this exercise last about five minutes.

Example - D chord plus some associated chords

1 minute - D alone
1 minute - D & G
1 minute - D and C
1 minute - D and Em
1 minute - D alone

Practice daily and within a week you will be smashing it.

Hope that helps.

Cheers :smiley:

| Richard_close2u | Community Moderator, Official Guide, JustinGuitar Approved Teacher

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Cheers all, i will try these all .
Great help :+1::+1: