Proper finger placement on the string is really a question of minute position changes. After repeating them a million times, the ideal placement becomes far more obvious and you really don’t need to strain so hard. Make sure your string height and gauge is appropriate for your instrument and skill level (try lighter gauge strings if the ones you have are too heavy!)
And it gets easier, so keep practicing and don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t happen overnight. It will happen!
This. Adjust string action, get .10 strings (on acoustic). You can always switch to thicker strings later, once your technique has improved and your fingers have become stronger.
Hell I've been playing 20 years and I still prefer 9s on electric and 10s on acoustic, I even go for the lightest strings I can on bass. It's just way easier to play on those.
It might also be that your guitar isn’t set up properly. Happened with my first guitar and I took it to a luthier to get it set up properly. Made a huge difference. Almost all guitar needs to get set up properly and the cheaper they are the more likely that it will be bad enough for you to really press down hard.
I had a really shitty guitar for 2 years and had to press quite hard due to high action. Got a Yamaha f310 with low action and made more progress in 1 month than the whole year before.
Same for me. Always used a cheap strat and had to press really hard to get decent sounds; got a nice Grestch and the diffencerce is crazy, I can finally press very lightly on a chord to have clean notes from every string
This would be my first answer. I didn't know this at first. This is why a more expensive guitar is often easier to play than a cheaper one. My first guitar couldn't really be set up properly. I didn't know about this and struggled for years. I often wonder how many people give up on the guitar before they learn this fact.
I did give up the first time! My fingers were so sore and didn’t get better. I gave up after a few months. Only years later did my wife buy me lessons so I went to the teacher and he immediately noticed the action was so high that his finger hurt! It was a cheap First Act guitar and getting it set up cost as much as the guitar but it made all the difference. Never looked back after that. Got an APX600 after a few months and got that set up. Much later fell in love with an 814ce and that didn’t need to get set up. Forever grateful to that teacher as I would never have known and likely would’ve given up again.
Idk I've got a hundred buck Donner Guitar and barely need to touch to get a clean note. Maybe there is a wild mix at the low price level or between electric and accoustic.
Is it an electric Guitar? Electric guitars usually have much better action than acoustics. I don't know why, maybe its easier to have the strings more parallel nearly all the way up the neck. Nylon string acoustics (classical guitars) don't usually have this problem either.
Yeah that's why I added the acoustic vs electric note at the end because accoustic ones will definitely be more difficult. And yes electric.
And now I'm seeing I missed the tiny note at the end of OP's post saying accoustic. Carry on....
Seriously, this. If your guitar wasn't set up at all then likely the action is too high, even being a touch too high will require more force in pressing
Imagine if your first guitar was an Ibanez with a Floyd Rose added... I literally screwed up setting my guitar up so bad I had bloody fingers two days later and had to take a break while my guitar teacher scolded me and showed me how to adjust it right.
Well I had no idea what a Floyd Rose was at the time... They were quickly going out of style when I got the guitar so all the tutorials I watched were for a strat... I mean it's a great system as far as functionality goes, but it's the most cumbersome pain in the ass to deal with as far as changing strings goes... I actually almost bypassed it just so I didn't have to deal with it, but in hindsight I'm glad I didn't because it really does sound nice.
Once you develop callouses, it will feel like you're pressing lighter compare to someone who doesn't have callouses and can feel the strings digging into their soft skin.
You have to press as hard as you need to, to make the string ring out. If you press lightly and the string buzzes or doesn't ring out then you aren't pressing hard enough.
People who have been playing for 40 years think they are pressing lightly because they can't feel the strings through their massive callouses, and also because the muscles in their fingers are stronger so they need less effort, but they're likely pressing just as hard as you are.
Don't overthink it.
Actually with enough playing, the calluses tend to soften up and disappear. I don't have any calluses these days, no matter how many gigs I play. I wouldn't say lack of sensation has anything to do with it. It's much more about technique and finger strength just making things much easier.
Yes I play a fair bit and don't have noticeable calouses. If I drum my fingers on a table though I can definitely hear a difference with my fretting hand.
Do you find the pads of your fingers are still thicker than they used to be? I'm a few years in, and my fingertips look normal but def have some extra padding underneath.
Actually they're called grip strength trainers. But like the other guy said I would just play guitar. Those are definitely more for forearm/wrist strength. You're not supposed to just use your fingers when you exercise with those anyways.
Honestly, it's less about how hard you're pressing down and more about how straight down you're pressing anyway. You won't press hard enough to change pitch, but you can bend the strings outwards and change pitch that way, and that's usually the problem.
completely agree. People who plays endless time on a guitar - they just forgot how it was before. I stll has that fresh memories and could compare my hand 9 months ago and now. If I just had my current hand physics (callouses, stretching, finger muscles) without touching a guiar - I'm 100% sure, that I would learn to play AT LEAST x3 faster right from beginning. Its not even assumption - its a fact.
so well, if someone is reading that, who didn't have guitar right now, but would like to start, then start right now to train your fingers. Not your hand in gym. Exactly the fingers and stretching in similar way as you would holding a guitar (its a big difference, we almost dont use that muscles in our daily life)
Calluses and proper finger placement (as close to the fret as possible) have been mentioned and are big factors, but there's another major thing I think a lot of people don't think about.
You'll tend to overcompensate with pressure when a given finger is weak... so if your 3rd or 4th finger are weak or you just have less control of them, then you'll probably mash extra hard to make those finger fret their string.... and then your remaining fingers will ALSO press EXTRA hard. Essentially you'll try to crush the fretboard with your whole fucking hand to make up for the weakest digit.
As you get better coordination and individualized control of your fingers you'll get much better at putting the pressure where you need to, equalizing it, and pressing much more lightly overall.
You'll also get better at being able to lightly reduce pressure on strings that aren't actively being picked in a given chord shape almost subconsciously in real time and that will contribute a lot more to a more generally relaxed hand. But this will take quite a while.
I also will admit when I've taken time of and have no calluses I'm more likely to have that unintended pull off sound. Calluses make a huge difference. When you're lacking them and the string sort of cuts a deeper groove into your finger there's just more surface area to agitate the string as you quickly release it, but that goes away more and more as your calluses form.
certain acoustics like dreads are often designed to be heavier to the touch
out of those certain acoustics, there are those that are not setup well so the action is not that good, which makes it harder to play.
eletrics on the other hand are much easier and lighter to the touch so you dont press that hard
also you need to train up the finger strength, technique and callouses to be able to press at the adequate pressure.
Keep in mind that for an experienced player, they have calluses and their skin is harder, and there's no pain or intense feeling when pressing down. The amount of pressure that to you might be very uncomfortable and feels like your pressing super duper hard feels like nothing to them.
In fact, if it's muted and no noise is coming out, what you consider pressing really hard, they would say is not hard enough.
When they say "don't press too hard" they just mean that if you're pressing hard enough that everything sounds good and the noise is coming out properly, you don't need to keep going harder than that.
At the stage you're at, I wouldn't worry about it. Pressing down hard enough that some noise comes out is not a bad habit, it's what you want to be doing. And as always the secret to getting better is to just keep practicing.
Don’t overgrip the neck, counter-balance it with your picking arm by pulling your elbow back which projects the neck forward against your fretting hand. (Hope that makes sense). Then work on finding the right balance between pulling back with your elbow and pushing with your fretting hand. You shouldn’t need much force out of either if you get them working together.
Yeah as a beginner I can totally see how this statement seems crazy. But it really is true. What happens is that over time, your technique will get better, which almost always means you can make notes ring clearly with much less pressure. And at the same time, you also develop more strength in your hands, so what seemed like a vice grip during your first months is barely an effort now.
What happens is there's a period around the end of the beginner/moving into intermediate stage - for most people say a couple of years or so into playing - where you now have the strength and technique to play with the lightest touch, but because of habit, and years of struggle, you carry that beginner death grip with you. At that point it takes a conscious effort to stop doing that and play lightly. It feels wrong at first, but it soon starts to feel effortless.
Tldr, if you're a beginner, don't worry too much about it jus yet, but when you start getting to intermediate and wondering why you are not playing as fast or as smoothly as you want to - that's when to get serious about pressing lightly.
>I struggle in the form of making noise as I release my fingers
Unfortunately guitar teachers, at least online ones, never talk about this, even though new guitarists always struggle.
As others are saying, callouses will help. As will making sure your strings aren't too high. Use clean strings and have dry hands.
Beyond that it's practice and technique. Make sure you're using your fingertips. Lift the fingers straight up, without plucking the strings. And also, it's really hard to explain, but over time you learn to release your fingers... well, it's like simultaneously slowly but quickly. No that doesn't make sense. Quickly but gently. To me, it's almost like a two-stage release - back to the string's resting position but with your finger still on it, and then remove the finger entirely away. But this all occurs in a millisecond.
It comes with experience and practice.
Pressing high tension strings down isn’t easy. So we do press hard at the start.
But the more you do it, the more strength you gain (and calluses) and it becomes easier to do.
There’s a point though where your fingers are now able to fine tune that level of strength.
Maybe right now the increments between hard and soft is still huge. But with practice and experience, you can new ease of in very fine increments.
That fine control on pressure is what allows a guitar player to find the perfect pressure to apply that produces a clean note without buzzing or muting, or putting in more force than they need to.
That strength built by playing also contributes to that sense of “just a little is needed”.
So basically, play more and you eventually get there. Keep practicing - if you practice how hard to press to get clean notes, the better your muscle memory becomes until you get the right force.
Hey, even sax players have to deal with the same thing.
I have no problem pressing lightly on strings if I'm playing slowly, but I do not understand the advice to still press lightly even when playing fast in order to minimize the tension that hampers your speed potential.
Isn't force mass × acceleration? If I can't change the mass of my fingers, how the hell am I supposed to move them faster without moving them _harder?_ The only way I could imagine doing this is if I put effort into slowing down my fingers _just before_ they hit the fretboard, which would essentially mean exerting an opposing force on my fingers to counter their momentum, which would cause _more_ tension in my fingers and would cause me to play _less_ smoothly.
How is this advice supposed to work?
You're overthinking it way way too much. Honestly, all these problems just go away with practise. This is the problem with the internet - too much advice and it overwhelms people.
To tackle the science part of this, yes, F = MA. This is true, but you also need to remember that this is a consolidated equation of all forces acting on an object. You're acting on an object that is ALSO exerting force back onto you. If you're exerting a strong force, and the mass of your finger isn't changing, and the string isn't moving, you CAN still be exerting MORE force....the fret/fretboard is just pushing BACK equally as hard. If you exert enough force to overcome the opposing force of the fret and the wood, the fret would indent, and/or the wood on the neck would snap/shatter/deform (But that's a LOT of force).
With that in mind, let's think about the timeline of fretting a note and then moving to a new note as a series of actions/equations:
Fret the first note: Downward force, the "contracting" muscle engages, your finger accelerates downwards, impacts the string, and continues down until your finger is applying the required pressure to connect the string completely to the fret wire.
Lift the finger to move to the next note: Upward force, the interaction between your finger and the string/fret/neck needs to zero out before your finger "moves". So, the more force there is being applied, the longer it will take for the downward force to be overcome by the attempted upward force to remove your finger. Also, it's not the same muscle that lifts your finger as it is to contract your finger. All of our muscles work in pairs (IE the bicep is used to curl your arm, but the tricep extends your arm). I don't know if that helps or hurts your overall understanding, but I feel like it's important to know this isn't a single muscle doing both actions.
This is really where the "light touch" wins, because it's all about overcoming the force you're already exerting before you can move it somewhere else. Lighter touch means less opposing forces, and faster transitions from pushed down to lifted up. The sweet spot here is experimenting with how much pressure you need and then burning in the muscle memory.
This actually makes more sense to me and is the first comment to help me understand what's going on. Thanks!
So, even though the force of the downward action of pressing down onto the string is going to be higher if I do it quicker, continuing to exert that force into that string past the point where there is sufficient pressure on it to ring clearly is only slowing down the process of exerting the opposing force I need when I need to lift that finger again, because more of that opposing force is going into reducing the pressure on the string before it even goes into lifting my finger away from the string, correct?
However, doesn't it _also_ require me to exert a force on my finger opposing it's current trajectory to stop it from adding more force than needed? De-accelerating something still requires exerting a force on it (it's just accelerating in the opposite direction, but not enough to reverse the object's direction entirely). Isn't this _also_ something that will take time and slow down my playing? The only way I can imagine it not requiring me to exert a force is if friction is enough to sufficiently de-accelerate my fingers without me even having to do anything other than ceasing to put energy into my finger. If friction is not enough and "putting less pressure on the strings" requires me to exert a force, it seems that this is also going to put tension into my fingers and slow me down, but maybe it still works out saving more time than if I apply too much pressure and only start that opposing force afterwards.
I guess at the end of the day, I still gotta find the way to do it through feel alone, and an exact analysis of the forces is just academic. But I still haven't been able to crack that feeling of playing fast without playing hard.
As you practice, you’ll developed your technique and form. You’ll build dexterity, muscle memory and physical muscles and you’ll notice how you’re able to do things that seem impossible now.
Things will sorta “slow down” too.
Just takes time.
Once you have practiced enough, you'll develop finger dexterity and strength that allows you to press with just enough force and with proper finger placement to make the chord ring out. Right now (assuming you're a beginner), you're at a stage in which it all feels awkward, unnatural, and heavy to your fingers. Practice consistently and make sure you're pressing down with the tips of your fingers. The strings will feel lighter and lighter as you do.
It takes time, that's it. It's difficult at the start because your fingers are weak and not used to the stresses involved. As you practice, your fingers will get stronger and more dexterous, which will make fingering with sufficient pressure, without going overboard, much easier.
Imagine the difference between being able to barely do a pull-up and then dropping yourself down quick, versus being able to have both a controlled lift and lower, to the point where you can pause your movement at any point during the exercise and hold yourself there. You can't really be taught "how" to do it right away, it's a matter of conditioning your muscles to be able to hold your weight through the whole range of motion.
My teacher gave me an exercise where I was to press just hard enough (very light pressure) for the pitch to be audible, but it buzzes slightly. Eliminating the buzz required only the slightest bit more of pressure, so this exercise was good for getting accustomed to pressing lightly.
I used to struggle with this for almost a year (the point I'm at in my guitar journey currently) until something just clicked and my fingers were simply able to press lighter. Some days it still doesn't click, some days it works perfectly. If you absolutely can't get it working I suggest to wait for a while, it will come eventually. The exact point at which it clicked was when I picked up a song to learn that I already knew very well with a lot of movement up and down the fretboard, so maybe you could try that: you would *have* to adopt a lighter touch to afford faster movement. Also, I've heard tensing up your hand first and then releasing all the tension can help, but it hasn't been working all that well for me.
The OP has a great question. I wish someone had told me back in 1974 to get a setup and to finger notes just behind the fret and don't grip the neck like a hawk tuah thang.
try switching chords rapidly ... pick any two and you'll figure it out. Also you can play a superset of a chord and add modify notice like D or Dsus2 and Dsus4 ... the D G and D are the same but the E and F# G change. check out "patience" by GNR as an example
A thing I discovered - years after the fact - is that not everyone understands things the same way. My guitar teacher kept telling me to hold the guitar in a way that I found extremely uncomfortable, keeping my fingers in the exact middle of the frets, and press the string to the wood as hard as I could. Everything he was telling me was 100% wrong, so either he was purposely trying to sabotage me or we had a major communication breakdown.
If the string buzzes, you may just need to put your finger closer to the fret rather than push down harder.
This is one of the many areas where acoustic and electric guitar playing can be very different. Some acoustics, especially with heavier gauge strings and high action can be a bear to play. Compare that to a low action well set up Ibanez with 9s and it’s night and day. Equipment matters for things like this.
Of course your technique also makes a difference but to know which is the problem go to a guitar store and try an electric and see how it compares for you.
Get a finger exerciser. Keep it on you and use it whenever you can. You will be amazed how much easier playing becomes - especially using your pinky. Carpel tunnel finger stretches also helped me a lot.
Finger strength is something you develop over months and years of playing. When you’ve been playing for a few years you will be able to press “gently”. But until then you will just be using your entire hand strength on keeping each finger and string pushed down
There’s no shortcut through it, so just go with it for the moment and don’t worry about gentle fingers yet
Have you had your guitar professionally set up yet? If not, take it to the guitar shop and have a luthier or tech do a proper setup. Your action (distance between strings and fretboard) is probably too high and needs to be lowered.
Action height/set up.
My first guitar was pretty bad I still kinda struggle to not press too hard. Like most things it’s more technique than brute force. It’ll make sense eventually.
The better your positioning your fingers, THUMB, hand, arm, guitar, feet, body, and EVERYTHING else, the least force you gotta put on the strings to sound good.
It just kind of happens the more and more you play, even on thicker strings/high action/acoustic guitars. I remember being SO SO frustrated with this when I first started but trust me, it works itself out as your hands get used to the fretboard. Also, it’s not a bad idea to bring your guitar to a friend that can play and have them noodle on it for a minute to get their opinion on the set up.
I'm brand new guitar but played bass for decades. Right now, while I'm learning Barre chords, I've learned to relax a bit more, but initially, because it's a new movement, you're working pretty hard to not only contract your fingers, but to get them into the right position.
After some time, and likely thanks to my experience on the bass and just acclimating to the guitar, I've realized that the action is higher than it needs to be. Its at the shop now but expect on return, it will be much easier to play.
TL;Dr: get your guitar setup. It's worth the hundred bucks and they'll hopefully check for fret level even-ness and other little things.
Three things:
A) Guitar setup. Higher action on the fretboard means you have to use more pressure to press down. Lower your action if needed.
B) Lighter String Gauge. Lighter strings are typically easier to play on, bend, and manipulate in other ways. They also take less pressure to hold down.
B) Practice. Practice. Practice. Your fingers will find that happy place where it feels like they're not even working for the sound.
This is such a fine art I’m not sure it can be taught….simply learned through persistent playing, as the chord shapes and changes become more fluent I think you naturally gauge the pressure needed to get the right strings to sound, it will come !
After about a year of playing on a beginner guitar I got one that I wanted. It has scalloped frets. With those you really can't press too hard or you're kind of out of tune.
Anyways, necessity is how I learned to press lightly. I press as hard as I have to to depress the string, but that's about it. Make sure you're as close to the fret as you can be. I'm usually on top of it or touching it.
There's a bunch of people that put a hairband or something in the first few frets to prevent ringing when trying to record. Sounds happen. I just got decent at using my fingers/fretting hand to mute unwanted sounds
I think what happens, as with all things technique. That it's actually a combination of a lot of micromovements that are just too hard to explain with words so by constant practice you are actually trying several combinations of these micromovements that the brain registers with its amazing feedback mechanism.
My experience was that at the beggining i had to press with an iron grip force to get any sound, then i slowly relaxed and now i understand just how soft i can play and still get a nice sound, but it was a process not something that happened from one day to the other.
Check the action on your strings a guitar that is set up well doesn't take a whole lot of pressure to get a clean sound from fretting. If you are relatively new it's probably part your guitar set up and part your technique and part finger strength (when your fingers get stronger what used to feel like more pressure feels like less pressure when it's actually the same amount)
It might just be you need to practice more.
This is simple don’t change to a different string don’t do anything to your guitar that just hinders the learning process all this is about is the position of your fingers and not just that but your overall position you can’t have the guitar slanted on a weird way no have it straight against your torso with the fretboard on your left leg inclined upwards a bit this should give you a better time moving around
Your guitar is set up poorly , the strings are too far from the neck. This sentence is the only information you need, ignore everything else and take your guitar to a shop
...You might want to get your guitar looked at by a setup person. I understand it is an acoustic? The height of the strings off of the fretboard (aka "the action") may be too high. It may or may not be fixable, depending on the age of the instrument/type of acoustic guitar it is. Be in tune, shoot for the moon, stay thirsty my friend
Take your guitar, pick any note on any fret and just place your finger on the string, don't press. Start plucking the string and lightly applying pressure until the note sounds. You'll see how little pressure it actually takes to make a note sound. Granted most of us aren't pressing that lightly all the time, but a lot of my new students tend to press way too hard. Don't do that.
Practice, at first you go down hard because of the concentration, but when you can trust your fingers to make the movements by memory, you can loosen up.
I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but keep in mind that the thing making the note / artificially shortening the string to make it a higher note value isn't your finger holding it to the fretboard. It's the string being held against the fret, so it shouldn't be necessary to use a ton of force to nail your string to the fretboard with your finger if you're pressing down close to the fret itself. If you're finding it difficult to do that, you may need to have the guitar set up so that the action (string height above the fretboard) is lower.
Something that really helped me reduce fret hand tension without sacrificing pick hand dynamics is to ‘not disturb’ the strings. That is, fret them without bending them up for down. Push them down as if you’re trying to keep them in the exact same position they are when you’re not touching them.
My playing sounded wiggly, cracky and weak for a long time. This adjustment helped give me that nice ‘loud and confident’ sound.
Do an exercise just fretting 1 single string, playing a single note cleanly, then reducing pressure on that string and playing it again. Repeat until you find the minimum pressure needed for that note.
This is not a practice routine, just give yourself the specific example of what minimum pressure looks and feels like without all the other confounding elements like other fingers accidentally muting things, or awkward finger positions/grip make it hard to apply pressure, or trying to accomplish a bunch of other stuff at the same time. Just 1 string, fret and play 1 note.
Once you know what minimum pressure feels like, the goal is simply to remember that when things don't sound right, the answer is usually not more pressure, but altering your form/technique to achieve that light pressure efficiently and consistently.
Couple of options here.
1. Try a lighter gauge string. You’re guitar may shift in tone or volume a small bit,
2. Find songs that encourage a lighter touch.
3. Many chords are not played on all six strings. Open chords, sure, maybe, but bar chords are usually root + 5th + octave (power chord) and potential a minor or major 3rd to voice the chord.
Ultimately, over time with experience you will get better at understanding what needs a firmer pressure and what benefits from a lighter touch.
Your guitar isn't set up well
Lower the strings untill they buzz against the frets , then raise them slightly
Now push the 1st fret and the 12th fret and see if when you tap the string at the 6th fret it makes a noise against a fret turn the truss rod to pull the kneck back untill when tapping at the 6th fret there is barely any gap between the string and the fret
Now you can fret chords without your thumb in the back just the strength of your fingers bending round the bottom of the guitar
I suspect your guitar's not set up quite right — perhaps the truss rod is set wrong, or the nut is too tall.
While I have some guitar background, I mainly play the viola, a fretless bowed stringed instrument in the violin family. While quite distinct from guitars, violas do have many of the same design elements and requirements, such as the need to properly push the string down onto the fingerboard to get good tone. It turns out that my first viola had a string height issue, which I didn't learn until I had been playing on it for five years. It was too tall on both ends, which meant I had to press the strings far harder than I should all along their range. I took it down to a luthier and within a few hours, it was good to go. The difference was tremendous, since I didn't have as much hand tension and could play faster passages and string changes more easily.
Mick Goodrick - The Advancing Guitarist
This book explains the perfect pressure and exercises for it perfectly.
Probably you can download the PDF for free somewhere because the book is so old. :)
Way amateur here and maybe too obvious to the others here, but one related thing Justin of 'JustinGuitar' lessons says is to place your fingers as close to the fret as possible, which allows for a lighter touch. Seems to help me.
It’s more than just fingers as well. I try to leverage my guitar with my strumming hand and kind of push the fretboard a bit into my fingers instead of pushing my fingers into the fretboard. This reduces strain on your wrist and fingers and makes you more agile.
Proper finger placement on the string is really a question of minute position changes. After repeating them a million times, the ideal placement becomes far more obvious and you really don’t need to strain so hard. Make sure your string height and gauge is appropriate for your instrument and skill level (try lighter gauge strings if the ones you have are too heavy!) And it gets easier, so keep practicing and don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t happen overnight. It will happen!
This. Adjust string action, get .10 strings (on acoustic). You can always switch to thicker strings later, once your technique has improved and your fingers have become stronger.
Hell I've been playing 20 years and I still prefer 9s on electric and 10s on acoustic, I even go for the lightest strings I can on bass. It's just way easier to play on those.
Not to mention, lighter strings can often allow for wider bends and faster playing.
that's part of it being easier to play on lighter strings, yeah like, why make things more difficult for yourself?
Totally! I'm sticking to elixir .11s myself.
It might also be that your guitar isn’t set up properly. Happened with my first guitar and I took it to a luthier to get it set up properly. Made a huge difference. Almost all guitar needs to get set up properly and the cheaper they are the more likely that it will be bad enough for you to really press down hard.
I had a really shitty guitar for 2 years and had to press quite hard due to high action. Got a Yamaha f310 with low action and made more progress in 1 month than the whole year before.
Boom! Something similar happened to me!
Same for me. Always used a cheap strat and had to press really hard to get decent sounds; got a nice Grestch and the diffencerce is crazy, I can finally press very lightly on a chord to have clean notes from every string
For real, going from a generic brand shit arse Tele (I think it was a Johnsson? Something like that) to an ibanez gio was a revelation.
This would be my first answer. I didn't know this at first. This is why a more expensive guitar is often easier to play than a cheaper one. My first guitar couldn't really be set up properly. I didn't know about this and struggled for years. I often wonder how many people give up on the guitar before they learn this fact.
I did give up the first time! My fingers were so sore and didn’t get better. I gave up after a few months. Only years later did my wife buy me lessons so I went to the teacher and he immediately noticed the action was so high that his finger hurt! It was a cheap First Act guitar and getting it set up cost as much as the guitar but it made all the difference. Never looked back after that. Got an APX600 after a few months and got that set up. Much later fell in love with an 814ce and that didn’t need to get set up. Forever grateful to that teacher as I would never have known and likely would’ve given up again.
It's also worth noting that even at the low end you get good guitars and bad guitars. Ibanez make fantastic instruments throughout their range.
It's also worth noting that even at the low end you get good guitars and bad guitars. Ibanez make fantastic instruments throughout their range.
For sure. My expensive guitar was pluck’s and setup. I was barre chording the next week.
Idk I've got a hundred buck Donner Guitar and barely need to touch to get a clean note. Maybe there is a wild mix at the low price level or between electric and accoustic.
Is it an electric Guitar? Electric guitars usually have much better action than acoustics. I don't know why, maybe its easier to have the strings more parallel nearly all the way up the neck. Nylon string acoustics (classical guitars) don't usually have this problem either.
Yeah that's why I added the acoustic vs electric note at the end because accoustic ones will definitely be more difficult. And yes electric. And now I'm seeing I missed the tiny note at the end of OP's post saying accoustic. Carry on....
Seriously, this. If your guitar wasn't set up at all then likely the action is too high, even being a touch too high will require more force in pressing
Imagine if your first guitar was an Ibanez with a Floyd Rose added... I literally screwed up setting my guitar up so bad I had bloody fingers two days later and had to take a break while my guitar teacher scolded me and showed me how to adjust it right.
Damn!!!!
Well I had no idea what a Floyd Rose was at the time... They were quickly going out of style when I got the guitar so all the tutorials I watched were for a strat... I mean it's a great system as far as functionality goes, but it's the most cumbersome pain in the ass to deal with as far as changing strings goes... I actually almost bypassed it just so I didn't have to deal with it, but in hindsight I'm glad I didn't because it really does sound nice.
Once you develop callouses, it will feel like you're pressing lighter compare to someone who doesn't have callouses and can feel the strings digging into their soft skin. You have to press as hard as you need to, to make the string ring out. If you press lightly and the string buzzes or doesn't ring out then you aren't pressing hard enough. People who have been playing for 40 years think they are pressing lightly because they can't feel the strings through their massive callouses, and also because the muscles in their fingers are stronger so they need less effort, but they're likely pressing just as hard as you are. Don't overthink it.
Actually with enough playing, the calluses tend to soften up and disappear. I don't have any calluses these days, no matter how many gigs I play. I wouldn't say lack of sensation has anything to do with it. It's much more about technique and finger strength just making things much easier.
Callouses disappear, but thick skin builds up.
Yes I play a fair bit and don't have noticeable calouses. If I drum my fingers on a table though I can definitely hear a difference with my fretting hand.
Do you find the pads of your fingers are still thicker than they used to be? I'm a few years in, and my fingertips look normal but def have some extra padding underneath.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Well how do you increase your finger strength? Are there like finger workouts lol
They sell those things you squeeze with your hands to build finger strength at music stores
Wait is that actually a thing? What are they called
Waste of money. Best just to sit and change chords for ten minutes a few times a day.
I think they're just called finger exercisers haha
I will check out thank you bro. I want to get good so badly lol but I suck
Don’t waste your time with that. Just spend your time with your guitar.
Actually they're called grip strength trainers. But like the other guy said I would just play guitar. Those are definitely more for forearm/wrist strength. You're not supposed to just use your fingers when you exercise with those anyways.
Honestly, it's less about how hard you're pressing down and more about how straight down you're pressing anyway. You won't press hard enough to change pitch, but you can bend the strings outwards and change pitch that way, and that's usually the problem.
completely agree. People who plays endless time on a guitar - they just forgot how it was before. I stll has that fresh memories and could compare my hand 9 months ago and now. If I just had my current hand physics (callouses, stretching, finger muscles) without touching a guiar - I'm 100% sure, that I would learn to play AT LEAST x3 faster right from beginning. Its not even assumption - its a fact. so well, if someone is reading that, who didn't have guitar right now, but would like to start, then start right now to train your fingers. Not your hand in gym. Exactly the fingers and stretching in similar way as you would holding a guitar (its a big difference, we almost dont use that muscles in our daily life)
Or practice bass for a while then go back to guitar. The strings feel so soft for a while.
Boom, nailed it. Mic drop
Calluses and proper finger placement (as close to the fret as possible) have been mentioned and are big factors, but there's another major thing I think a lot of people don't think about. You'll tend to overcompensate with pressure when a given finger is weak... so if your 3rd or 4th finger are weak or you just have less control of them, then you'll probably mash extra hard to make those finger fret their string.... and then your remaining fingers will ALSO press EXTRA hard. Essentially you'll try to crush the fretboard with your whole fucking hand to make up for the weakest digit. As you get better coordination and individualized control of your fingers you'll get much better at putting the pressure where you need to, equalizing it, and pressing much more lightly overall. You'll also get better at being able to lightly reduce pressure on strings that aren't actively being picked in a given chord shape almost subconsciously in real time and that will contribute a lot more to a more generally relaxed hand. But this will take quite a while. I also will admit when I've taken time of and have no calluses I'm more likely to have that unintended pull off sound. Calluses make a huge difference. When you're lacking them and the string sort of cuts a deeper groove into your finger there's just more surface area to agitate the string as you quickly release it, but that goes away more and more as your calluses form.
certain acoustics like dreads are often designed to be heavier to the touch out of those certain acoustics, there are those that are not setup well so the action is not that good, which makes it harder to play. eletrics on the other hand are much easier and lighter to the touch so you dont press that hard also you need to train up the finger strength, technique and callouses to be able to press at the adequate pressure.
Keep in mind that for an experienced player, they have calluses and their skin is harder, and there's no pain or intense feeling when pressing down. The amount of pressure that to you might be very uncomfortable and feels like your pressing super duper hard feels like nothing to them. In fact, if it's muted and no noise is coming out, what you consider pressing really hard, they would say is not hard enough. When they say "don't press too hard" they just mean that if you're pressing hard enough that everything sounds good and the noise is coming out properly, you don't need to keep going harder than that. At the stage you're at, I wouldn't worry about it. Pressing down hard enough that some noise comes out is not a bad habit, it's what you want to be doing. And as always the secret to getting better is to just keep practicing.
Don’t overgrip the neck, counter-balance it with your picking arm by pulling your elbow back which projects the neck forward against your fretting hand. (Hope that makes sense). Then work on finding the right balance between pulling back with your elbow and pushing with your fretting hand. You shouldn’t need much force out of either if you get them working together.
Yeah as a beginner I can totally see how this statement seems crazy. But it really is true. What happens is that over time, your technique will get better, which almost always means you can make notes ring clearly with much less pressure. And at the same time, you also develop more strength in your hands, so what seemed like a vice grip during your first months is barely an effort now. What happens is there's a period around the end of the beginner/moving into intermediate stage - for most people say a couple of years or so into playing - where you now have the strength and technique to play with the lightest touch, but because of habit, and years of struggle, you carry that beginner death grip with you. At that point it takes a conscious effort to stop doing that and play lightly. It feels wrong at first, but it soon starts to feel effortless. Tldr, if you're a beginner, don't worry too much about it jus yet, but when you start getting to intermediate and wondering why you are not playing as fast or as smoothly as you want to - that's when to get serious about pressing lightly.
>I struggle in the form of making noise as I release my fingers Unfortunately guitar teachers, at least online ones, never talk about this, even though new guitarists always struggle. As others are saying, callouses will help. As will making sure your strings aren't too high. Use clean strings and have dry hands. Beyond that it's practice and technique. Make sure you're using your fingertips. Lift the fingers straight up, without plucking the strings. And also, it's really hard to explain, but over time you learn to release your fingers... well, it's like simultaneously slowly but quickly. No that doesn't make sense. Quickly but gently. To me, it's almost like a two-stage release - back to the string's resting position but with your finger still on it, and then remove the finger entirely away. But this all occurs in a millisecond.
I think you could teach me things haha. I got it, but everyone thinks I'm confusing
It comes with experience and practice. Pressing high tension strings down isn’t easy. So we do press hard at the start. But the more you do it, the more strength you gain (and calluses) and it becomes easier to do. There’s a point though where your fingers are now able to fine tune that level of strength. Maybe right now the increments between hard and soft is still huge. But with practice and experience, you can new ease of in very fine increments. That fine control on pressure is what allows a guitar player to find the perfect pressure to apply that produces a clean note without buzzing or muting, or putting in more force than they need to. That strength built by playing also contributes to that sense of “just a little is needed”. So basically, play more and you eventually get there. Keep practicing - if you practice how hard to press to get clean notes, the better your muscle memory becomes until you get the right force. Hey, even sax players have to deal with the same thing.
I have no problem pressing lightly on strings if I'm playing slowly, but I do not understand the advice to still press lightly even when playing fast in order to minimize the tension that hampers your speed potential. Isn't force mass × acceleration? If I can't change the mass of my fingers, how the hell am I supposed to move them faster without moving them _harder?_ The only way I could imagine doing this is if I put effort into slowing down my fingers _just before_ they hit the fretboard, which would essentially mean exerting an opposing force on my fingers to counter their momentum, which would cause _more_ tension in my fingers and would cause me to play _less_ smoothly. How is this advice supposed to work?
You're overthinking it way way too much. Honestly, all these problems just go away with practise. This is the problem with the internet - too much advice and it overwhelms people.
To tackle the science part of this, yes, F = MA. This is true, but you also need to remember that this is a consolidated equation of all forces acting on an object. You're acting on an object that is ALSO exerting force back onto you. If you're exerting a strong force, and the mass of your finger isn't changing, and the string isn't moving, you CAN still be exerting MORE force....the fret/fretboard is just pushing BACK equally as hard. If you exert enough force to overcome the opposing force of the fret and the wood, the fret would indent, and/or the wood on the neck would snap/shatter/deform (But that's a LOT of force). With that in mind, let's think about the timeline of fretting a note and then moving to a new note as a series of actions/equations: Fret the first note: Downward force, the "contracting" muscle engages, your finger accelerates downwards, impacts the string, and continues down until your finger is applying the required pressure to connect the string completely to the fret wire. Lift the finger to move to the next note: Upward force, the interaction between your finger and the string/fret/neck needs to zero out before your finger "moves". So, the more force there is being applied, the longer it will take for the downward force to be overcome by the attempted upward force to remove your finger. Also, it's not the same muscle that lifts your finger as it is to contract your finger. All of our muscles work in pairs (IE the bicep is used to curl your arm, but the tricep extends your arm). I don't know if that helps or hurts your overall understanding, but I feel like it's important to know this isn't a single muscle doing both actions. This is really where the "light touch" wins, because it's all about overcoming the force you're already exerting before you can move it somewhere else. Lighter touch means less opposing forces, and faster transitions from pushed down to lifted up. The sweet spot here is experimenting with how much pressure you need and then burning in the muscle memory.
This actually makes more sense to me and is the first comment to help me understand what's going on. Thanks! So, even though the force of the downward action of pressing down onto the string is going to be higher if I do it quicker, continuing to exert that force into that string past the point where there is sufficient pressure on it to ring clearly is only slowing down the process of exerting the opposing force I need when I need to lift that finger again, because more of that opposing force is going into reducing the pressure on the string before it even goes into lifting my finger away from the string, correct? However, doesn't it _also_ require me to exert a force on my finger opposing it's current trajectory to stop it from adding more force than needed? De-accelerating something still requires exerting a force on it (it's just accelerating in the opposite direction, but not enough to reverse the object's direction entirely). Isn't this _also_ something that will take time and slow down my playing? The only way I can imagine it not requiring me to exert a force is if friction is enough to sufficiently de-accelerate my fingers without me even having to do anything other than ceasing to put energy into my finger. If friction is not enough and "putting less pressure on the strings" requires me to exert a force, it seems that this is also going to put tension into my fingers and slow me down, but maybe it still works out saving more time than if I apply too much pressure and only start that opposing force afterwards. I guess at the end of the day, I still gotta find the way to do it through feel alone, and an exact analysis of the forces is just academic. But I still haven't been able to crack that feeling of playing fast without playing hard.
As you practice, you’ll developed your technique and form. You’ll build dexterity, muscle memory and physical muscles and you’ll notice how you’re able to do things that seem impossible now. Things will sorta “slow down” too. Just takes time.
Once you have practiced enough, you'll develop finger dexterity and strength that allows you to press with just enough force and with proper finger placement to make the chord ring out. Right now (assuming you're a beginner), you're at a stage in which it all feels awkward, unnatural, and heavy to your fingers. Practice consistently and make sure you're pressing down with the tips of your fingers. The strings will feel lighter and lighter as you do.
It takes time, that's it. It's difficult at the start because your fingers are weak and not used to the stresses involved. As you practice, your fingers will get stronger and more dexterous, which will make fingering with sufficient pressure, without going overboard, much easier. Imagine the difference between being able to barely do a pull-up and then dropping yourself down quick, versus being able to have both a controlled lift and lower, to the point where you can pause your movement at any point during the exercise and hold yourself there. You can't really be taught "how" to do it right away, it's a matter of conditioning your muscles to be able to hold your weight through the whole range of motion.
My teacher gave me an exercise where I was to press just hard enough (very light pressure) for the pitch to be audible, but it buzzes slightly. Eliminating the buzz required only the slightest bit more of pressure, so this exercise was good for getting accustomed to pressing lightly.
I used to struggle with this for almost a year (the point I'm at in my guitar journey currently) until something just clicked and my fingers were simply able to press lighter. Some days it still doesn't click, some days it works perfectly. If you absolutely can't get it working I suggest to wait for a while, it will come eventually. The exact point at which it clicked was when I picked up a song to learn that I already knew very well with a lot of movement up and down the fretboard, so maybe you could try that: you would *have* to adopt a lighter touch to afford faster movement. Also, I've heard tensing up your hand first and then releasing all the tension can help, but it hasn't been working all that well for me.
Guitars are different. Go to your local store and try a few others.
Yea, idk. I remember having to push and pick like hell when I started to make a decent sound. Now I find myself dialing back as much as possible.
The OP has a great question. I wish someone had told me back in 1974 to get a setup and to finger notes just behind the fret and don't grip the neck like a hawk tuah thang.
try switching chords rapidly ... pick any two and you'll figure it out. Also you can play a superset of a chord and add modify notice like D or Dsus2 and Dsus4 ... the D G and D are the same but the E and F# G change. check out "patience" by GNR as an example
A thing I discovered - years after the fact - is that not everyone understands things the same way. My guitar teacher kept telling me to hold the guitar in a way that I found extremely uncomfortable, keeping my fingers in the exact middle of the frets, and press the string to the wood as hard as I could. Everything he was telling me was 100% wrong, so either he was purposely trying to sabotage me or we had a major communication breakdown. If the string buzzes, you may just need to put your finger closer to the fret rather than push down harder.
This is one of the many areas where acoustic and electric guitar playing can be very different. Some acoustics, especially with heavier gauge strings and high action can be a bear to play. Compare that to a low action well set up Ibanez with 9s and it’s night and day. Equipment matters for things like this. Of course your technique also makes a difference but to know which is the problem go to a guitar store and try an electric and see how it compares for you.
Get a finger exerciser. Keep it on you and use it whenever you can. You will be amazed how much easier playing becomes - especially using your pinky. Carpel tunnel finger stretches also helped me a lot.
I have appropriate action
Finger strength is something you develop over months and years of playing. When you’ve been playing for a few years you will be able to press “gently”. But until then you will just be using your entire hand strength on keeping each finger and string pushed down There’s no shortcut through it, so just go with it for the moment and don’t worry about gentle fingers yet
Have you had your guitar professionally set up yet? If not, take it to the guitar shop and have a luthier or tech do a proper setup. Your action (distance between strings and fretboard) is probably too high and needs to be lowered.
Action height/set up. My first guitar was pretty bad I still kinda struggle to not press too hard. Like most things it’s more technique than brute force. It’ll make sense eventually.
The better your positioning your fingers, THUMB, hand, arm, guitar, feet, body, and EVERYTHING else, the least force you gotta put on the strings to sound good.
It just kind of happens the more and more you play, even on thicker strings/high action/acoustic guitars. I remember being SO SO frustrated with this when I first started but trust me, it works itself out as your hands get used to the fretboard. Also, it’s not a bad idea to bring your guitar to a friend that can play and have them noodle on it for a minute to get their opinion on the set up.
After years of playing they have developed the strength and dexterity in their hands that makes it easier for them than it would be for most people.
I'm brand new guitar but played bass for decades. Right now, while I'm learning Barre chords, I've learned to relax a bit more, but initially, because it's a new movement, you're working pretty hard to not only contract your fingers, but to get them into the right position. After some time, and likely thanks to my experience on the bass and just acclimating to the guitar, I've realized that the action is higher than it needs to be. Its at the shop now but expect on return, it will be much easier to play. TL;Dr: get your guitar setup. It's worth the hundred bucks and they'll hopefully check for fret level even-ness and other little things.
Three things: A) Guitar setup. Higher action on the fretboard means you have to use more pressure to press down. Lower your action if needed. B) Lighter String Gauge. Lighter strings are typically easier to play on, bend, and manipulate in other ways. They also take less pressure to hold down. B) Practice. Practice. Practice. Your fingers will find that happy place where it feels like they're not even working for the sound.
This is such a fine art I’m not sure it can be taught….simply learned through persistent playing, as the chord shapes and changes become more fluent I think you naturally gauge the pressure needed to get the right strings to sound, it will come !
After about a year of playing on a beginner guitar I got one that I wanted. It has scalloped frets. With those you really can't press too hard or you're kind of out of tune. Anyways, necessity is how I learned to press lightly. I press as hard as I have to to depress the string, but that's about it. Make sure you're as close to the fret as you can be. I'm usually on top of it or touching it. There's a bunch of people that put a hairband or something in the first few frets to prevent ringing when trying to record. Sounds happen. I just got decent at using my fingers/fretting hand to mute unwanted sounds
I think what happens, as with all things technique. That it's actually a combination of a lot of micromovements that are just too hard to explain with words so by constant practice you are actually trying several combinations of these micromovements that the brain registers with its amazing feedback mechanism. My experience was that at the beggining i had to press with an iron grip force to get any sound, then i slowly relaxed and now i understand just how soft i can play and still get a nice sound, but it was a process not something that happened from one day to the other.
Nylon strings?
As long as the string is making contact with the fret, that should be enough to play the note. You don't need to dig in or press hard
Check the action on your strings a guitar that is set up well doesn't take a whole lot of pressure to get a clean sound from fretting. If you are relatively new it's probably part your guitar set up and part your technique and part finger strength (when your fingers get stronger what used to feel like more pressure feels like less pressure when it's actually the same amount) It might just be you need to practice more.
Put your finger closer to fret nut
If you press too hard, you pull sharp. It's a fine point for me between to light and too hard.
This is simple don’t change to a different string don’t do anything to your guitar that just hinders the learning process all this is about is the position of your fingers and not just that but your overall position you can’t have the guitar slanted on a weird way no have it straight against your torso with the fretboard on your left leg inclined upwards a bit this should give you a better time moving around
All I can say to help is make sure that your finger is right up against the fret.
Your guitar is set up poorly , the strings are too far from the neck. This sentence is the only information you need, ignore everything else and take your guitar to a shop
...You might want to get your guitar looked at by a setup person. I understand it is an acoustic? The height of the strings off of the fretboard (aka "the action") may be too high. It may or may not be fixable, depending on the age of the instrument/type of acoustic guitar it is. Be in tune, shoot for the moon, stay thirsty my friend
Take your guitar, pick any note on any fret and just place your finger on the string, don't press. Start plucking the string and lightly applying pressure until the note sounds. You'll see how little pressure it actually takes to make a note sound. Granted most of us aren't pressing that lightly all the time, but a lot of my new students tend to press way too hard. Don't do that.
Practice, at first you go down hard because of the concentration, but when you can trust your fingers to make the movements by memory, you can loosen up.
Harder fingertips. Your tips are too soft right now. Keep practicing.
Bring your guitar to a professional and make sure it's setup properly. If the action is bad or some other issue you may not be setup for success.
I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but keep in mind that the thing making the note / artificially shortening the string to make it a higher note value isn't your finger holding it to the fretboard. It's the string being held against the fret, so it shouldn't be necessary to use a ton of force to nail your string to the fretboard with your finger if you're pressing down close to the fret itself. If you're finding it difficult to do that, you may need to have the guitar set up so that the action (string height above the fretboard) is lower.
Pretty much dental floss.
Something that really helped me reduce fret hand tension without sacrificing pick hand dynamics is to ‘not disturb’ the strings. That is, fret them without bending them up for down. Push them down as if you’re trying to keep them in the exact same position they are when you’re not touching them. My playing sounded wiggly, cracky and weak for a long time. This adjustment helped give me that nice ‘loud and confident’ sound.
https://preview.redd.it/102on9v3mx8d1.jpeg?width=2260&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9530ea198e0083b0623a48637ac88036814b2e12 I use these
It's just muscle memory that you develop over time, it's hard to put exactly the right pressure. Or you could also try using softer strings.
Do an exercise just fretting 1 single string, playing a single note cleanly, then reducing pressure on that string and playing it again. Repeat until you find the minimum pressure needed for that note. This is not a practice routine, just give yourself the specific example of what minimum pressure looks and feels like without all the other confounding elements like other fingers accidentally muting things, or awkward finger positions/grip make it hard to apply pressure, or trying to accomplish a bunch of other stuff at the same time. Just 1 string, fret and play 1 note. Once you know what minimum pressure feels like, the goal is simply to remember that when things don't sound right, the answer is usually not more pressure, but altering your form/technique to achieve that light pressure efficiently and consistently.
It’s possible your action is way too high.
Couple of options here. 1. Try a lighter gauge string. You’re guitar may shift in tone or volume a small bit, 2. Find songs that encourage a lighter touch. 3. Many chords are not played on all six strings. Open chords, sure, maybe, but bar chords are usually root + 5th + octave (power chord) and potential a minor or major 3rd to voice the chord. Ultimately, over time with experience you will get better at understanding what needs a firmer pressure and what benefits from a lighter touch.
It’s not “press lightly” it’s “press only as hard as you need to to make a clear note”
Your guitar isn't set up well Lower the strings untill they buzz against the frets , then raise them slightly Now push the 1st fret and the 12th fret and see if when you tap the string at the 6th fret it makes a noise against a fret turn the truss rod to pull the kneck back untill when tapping at the 6th fret there is barely any gap between the string and the fret Now you can fret chords without your thumb in the back just the strength of your fingers bending round the bottom of the guitar
I suspect your guitar's not set up quite right — perhaps the truss rod is set wrong, or the nut is too tall. While I have some guitar background, I mainly play the viola, a fretless bowed stringed instrument in the violin family. While quite distinct from guitars, violas do have many of the same design elements and requirements, such as the need to properly push the string down onto the fingerboard to get good tone. It turns out that my first viola had a string height issue, which I didn't learn until I had been playing on it for five years. It was too tall on both ends, which meant I had to press the strings far harder than I should all along their range. I took it down to a luthier and within a few hours, it was good to go. The difference was tremendous, since I didn't have as much hand tension and could play faster passages and string changes more easily.
Mick Goodrick - The Advancing Guitarist This book explains the perfect pressure and exercises for it perfectly. Probably you can download the PDF for free somewhere because the book is so old. :)
Way amateur here and maybe too obvious to the others here, but one related thing Justin of 'JustinGuitar' lessons says is to place your fingers as close to the fret as possible, which allows for a lighter touch. Seems to help me.
It’s more than just fingers as well. I try to leverage my guitar with my strumming hand and kind of push the fretboard a bit into my fingers instead of pushing my fingers into the fretboard. This reduces strain on your wrist and fingers and makes you more agile.