This is a solid reply from @Fast-Eddie. Lots of small practice sessions. Hey Stacy, I felt the same frustration until a few months ago. Now I still muff barre chords sometimes, especially low and high on the neck, but I’m confident enough to use them a lot. I suggest learning your technique on barres in the middle of the neck - less stretchy and less cramped than either end. Use your ears to find the right amount of pressure to get each string to ring. It takes a lot of micro-adjustment and conditioning your muscles to put the right pressure in the right place at the right time every time.
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Did/do you utilize the pullback technique as part of your learning and playing? I’m happy to use it if it does become second nature. It’s just one of those things that feels like it will always have to have an awareness to it, which I think would be pulling me out of the zone of playing and affecting my joy in playing.
I didn’t use the pullback much. It felt unnatural. Things I found made the biggest difference are:
- Keep your thumb behind the neck between your index and middle finger always. A little, consistent thumb pressure does the same thing for me as the pullback.
- Land your barre (especially E and e strings) and the fretted fingers as close to the fret as possible.
- Keep the guitar facing straight in front or your body. I find this helps minimize bend in the wrist and shoulder tension, both of which make barre chords more difficult and even painful.
Thanks Tom for this tutorial, indeed injuries might pop up by practicing too hard on guitar.
I generally practice demanding chords, barrés, or challenging chormatics for a maximum of 5 minutes to avoid over-straining my underarm and the underlying ligaments and tendons.
Nevertheless, I practiced a new set of chromatics (keeping one finger fixed, the other going up and down along strings 6 to 1) I developed a very annoying tendonitis in my left arm in a couple of weeks (I can hardly curl for the moment).
Therefore besides limiting the time of practice to max. 5 minutes, warming up the arms and fingers are of paramount importance, also doing stretching exercises.
Last but not least, as you say: “relax”, one tends to build up tension as the whole energy is focused on the exercise and not only arms and fingers are affected but also neck and back. I generally move my elbows and shoulder from time to time to remove tension while playing, a very good exercise in order to disconnect the body from the playing. Only the hands perfom the music.
Take care and yes, RELAX !
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I don’t use that either. Tried it, felt wrong. I did similar to what @Fast-Eddie is recommending, frequent practice. In truth when I was learning barre chords I picked up the guitar at least 2, 3, 4 times a day to get a couple of minutes of barre chord practice in.
I also ignored the acoustic to start with, it was too hard. Just did electric. Eventually put lighter strings on my acoustic after that. Now I’m fine doing them on anything. Just like gym, start with the light weights first.
All chords are loved the same, they’re like children… except the C, c’mon, it’s used so much that it’s like the-favourite-not-favourite kid that’s good at sport, school, AND well behaved…
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That’s interesting. I don’t like it either. Just feels too tense. Maybe after a decade I’ll be doing the pullback somewhat unintentionally. The whole 5 minute practice method is just super annoying. I get it that it is effective, and I understand why. Its just annoying to think about stopping what I am doing and switching mindsets several times a day, only to get back to my previous mindset five minutes later. I don’t exactly have much else on my practice rotation right now other than the barres, and practicing a couple of songs, so I admit I am probably over-practicing my hands, and as a result it’s stressing out my thumb tendon. I think I’ll shorten the barre part of practice down to maybe 10 minutes or less until my thumb really heals and I get some physical therapy working for me.
And I think I will simply ignore acoustic for awhile. I already have a lighter string gauge on it. Even if I went down one more gauge, I notice it is only the thin strings that are thinner, the thick three are the same size in the light pack as they are in the extra-light! What?! Haha.
These are their extra-light .010 - .047. These are what I use on my acoustic. The light set is .011 - .052
YMMV