PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Woodshedding - Learning to Play! Picking up the guitar agian

Hi all,
Listening to all you great guitar players in the forum has inspired me pick up the guitar again. As a young teen, I played guitar exclusively then later taught myself to play piano. Now it's been like 20 years since I've played guitar regularly.
So here I go rebuilding callouses on my left hand fingertips (ouch!)and trying to remember how to I played this thing. Finding time is the real problem. Wish me luck.
SD

SD,

Like riding a bike, but you will have to train those fingers again, a little bit anyway!

Break a leg!

Later,

Teacup filled with warm salt brine.

Soak the fingertips in there for about ten minutes at a stretch, to more rapidly harden the tips.

Also helps relieve the pain.


--Mac

Good for you, Go for it!

You are going to do great! Just have fun and stay inspired anyway you can! Time for practice? I really understand. I started getting up at 4 am to guarantee some productivity! I have found we can make time fopr anything we are dedicated to. best wishes on the process!

Thanks for the encouragement gents. I'll definately the salt water brine treatment. Thanks Mac.
SD

Hey SD,

You are not alone. <grin> And my fingers are so sore it's not excruciating but believe me - I sure feel it typing....

Mac,

How much salt do you add to the water? I've been just using rubbing alcohol on the tips of my fingers.

Thanks.

"Brine" Jo. That term usually suggests a saturation point.

I don't measure, but then I don't measure when cooking either.

For a small teacup, I'd suggest trying at least a tablespoon or two of table salt to the WARM water.

Stop with the alcohol application, that will only serve to dry out natural oils and keep the fingers more sensitive in the long run.


--Mac

Similar problem - played in a duo with BIAB/PT backing tracks until a few years ago. Lots of bar chords on the electric although the finger soreness only really affects the acoustic stuff with heavier strings. Came out of retirement for one gig and playing chuck berry shuffle for several verses caused a complete cramp in my arm!. Had to stop before the song finished. The best exercises are actually doing it I think. Mind you a while back I had awful back problems and was prescribed ibruprofen gel. Before we went on I rubbed it generously into my back. Ten minutes into the set began to lose the sensation in my fingers until they went completely dead. I'm not the world's greatest guitarist but that night i was probably the worst.

Chuck Berry shuffle is actually involving only the three low pitched strings most of the time.

Holding the Grand Barre finger in place to do that is asking for premature tiring and even pain, but relearning the hold such that only the two strings actually involved are being fingered works very nicely. (the 3rd string in the barre is typically an octave of the root anyway, or sometimes the dom7)

The "rhythm" guitar player can find and study other chord fingerings that work even better in a lot of cases than the Grand Barre scenario, often leaving out notes that are superfluous to the chord when playing with other players, keyboard, bass, etc. And the results will sound less "muddy" while you enjoy playing more, without resorting to having to "clamp and cramp" like that.



--Mac

The Chuck Berry shuffle isn't as difficult as the Chuck Berry Duck Walk.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3rG73VOqyo

Other than treating symptoms from guitar playing, you may also consider getting a proper setup for your instrument to possibly lower the action (height of strings over frets) through truss rod adjustment, bridge and saddle height adjustments, neck angle and nut adjustment, and also string gauge/type (coated/not coated, nylon vs steel/nickel compound, etc.) selection. All of these instrument details, when optimally set up, can make playing less painful and more fun, keeping you on the instrument longer and helping build happy fingers. And to be clear, not all instruments are created equally. So, be kind to yourself and scan some youtube videos on improving the action, or doing a "setup" on a guitar, and if you aren't comfortable making any of the above adjustments, seek assistance from a reputable guitar store with access to staff/guitar techs/luthiers to take a look at your instrument to see what they can do for it. I still pay around $35 bucks once a year or so to have one or another of my performing guitars adjusted to improve intonation or some aspect of an instrument that lives and breathes like the material it came from, changing over time, from constant or changing string tension, temperature and humidity change, as well. Also, a comfortable, tuned instrument is a joy for multiple generations, with care. Enjoy.

I've never heard of soaking in salt water..... not for callouses. I always thought salt had a drying quality too.... they salt meat for that reason and to preserve it.


No.... just set aside a regular time each day to play the guitar. 30 minutes or so daily and in a week or two the callouses will be more than sufficient to let you play without discomfort.

Having the action set properly will make playing easier regardless of the callouses.

Be sure to use an electronic tuner as well. Tuning the guitar precisely makes it sound so much better and playing a guitar that is properly tuned will be a pleasure, and therefore, not so much of a chore to keep playing for longer periods of time.

Herb raises another important point in how a guitar plays based on how it's tuned. Simply, a well tuned guitar sounds better harmonically, and more pleasing, and will reinforce more playing when it is well tuned. Additionally, a guitar can be tuned to non-standard reference frequencies (standard A=440)that can change the tension in the strings making them easier to fret and bend as well. Tuning a guitar to a lower frequency standard (say, A=439) loosens the strings, and therefore the tension, and viola, it becomes easier to fret and play. Many famous guitarists, including Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix and others tuned down from a half step to a whole step to make their instruments more playable to their personal styles of playing.

Over the years, working with old cats who can PLAY, I've learned lots of tricks like that salt brine that really did work for me.

If it didn't work for me, I wouldn't even remember it, much less recommend giving it a try.

And, "give it a try" is important there, if you try something and it doesn't appear to be working for you, for whatever reason, by all means stop doing that. Common sense should apply.

As for lowering actions, there's a point where I find an action too low for good sound, articulation, etc.

But then I also find the same kind of situation happening for me with those "slinky" string gauges. I like the larger gauges for their sound, and the amount of "bite" I can get with the plectrum on them, which translates to faster speed in my case. That, and the larger gauge strings transfer more energy from the bridge to the top.

If you think the Salt Brine trick, which came from Blues playing stringbenders, is out of the ordinary, then don't investigate Stevie Ray Vaughan, who used to put Superglue on his fingertips and would even go so far as letting the overexuberance of the playing style actually rip a fingertip off of one of his fingers - and he would glue the fingertip back on with the Superglue and keep on playing all night. I don't think I'd like to go that route. But Stevie certainly did.


--Mac

+1 to Mac's suggestion about learning how to play rhythm without grand barré. About 10 years ago, I got schooled in this topic from a guy who I was on a worship team with me - he a much more skilled player - and one time in the middle of a song he got really upset with me and said "Scott- quit playing those barré chords - here, let me show you"

And he showed me about 4 different forms for the top 3 and 4 strings for major and minor chords, that sound significantly better and are much easier on the fore-arm muscle than ye olde grand barré.

Here's just a starter:

You likely know the open D shape on the DGBe strings. Now, drop the D string and slide that shape all up an down the fret board. Up one fret, you are at d#/eb - up two you are at e, up 3 you are at f, etc. Memorize. You can move from there to the 'mini-barre' minor - index finger across top three strings. You can do this with every grand barré shape you already know, look at the 3 or 4 string-wide shapes that make up the important chord tones and derive your own smaller, easier on the fretting forearm shapes. You can do it with the open 'A' shape on the DGB strings. That's a major chord that you can slide all over, watching not to strum the E, A and e strings. When my playing used to involve probably 50-75% grand barre shapes, now I would say it's less than 10%. This was probably the biggest revelation that was ever shown to me and has allowed me to really enjoy playing rock rhythm guitar in our worship team. Going alongside learning all of these 'mini' shapes and inter-relationships, is the skill of learning how to mute adjacent open strings or at least not play them. Both right and left hand skills needed.

Economy of fretting hand motion comes into importance to move fluidly amongst these shapes.

Now, for building up finger-tips, I've never tried the salt-brine method, but I can vouch for superglue use to some extent.

I do the superglue thing to repair cracked skin on fingertips. Here in Colorado, particularly in the winter, it can be difficult to keep skin moisturized, particularly calloused skin, and I don't like getting lotion on my axes. My fretting hand fingertip callouses will sometimes split along the 'whorl-lines' and it's a dull soreness that goes along with it left untreated and if playing guitar, can really get painful as the crack spreads farther along the whorl line. Loctite 420 superglue wicked into the crack, with pressure applied (not directly on the glue of course) will seal up the crack quite nicely. Loctite 401 (thicker) does make a nice surface on top of the callous, but takes quite awhile to dry. I will only do this a day ahead if there's a fingertip crack that persists and I have to play an upcoming set.

I'll have to give the salt-brine treatment a trial period. My 'gigging' consists of 2 20 minute 'performances' each month, with a 2.5 hour rehearsal/learning session that goes with each of those, and about 3-4 hours of practice time for each of those, for a grand total of just over 5.5 hours of playing a month. It's enough to keep a pretty good callous going on all 4 fretting hand fingertips. I usually only deal with the cracking issue. If the brine method might help to prevent that, I'm in!

That's for sure!

SpaceDog,


Get your guitar set up professionally and get a set of Elixers.


http://www.elixirstrings.com/



Regards,


Bob

None of ya have even SEEN SpaceDog's guitar.

For all you know, it could be already set up just fine...

Here's another "old school" tip that some may find useful and others may poo-poo:

I have always kept at least one guit around that the action is intentionally set higher than it could be, with slightly larger gauge strings on it. This, for practice purposes and building hand strength. The current "POS" practice guit for the past ten years or so is a nice old American made archtop Kay. The idea here is that, practicing on this action, then moving to the fully set up and more modern guit makes it seem like a breeze to play the same thing.

Keeps that fretting hand ready and able to play a long time, or snatch a payphone off the wall backstage, whichever comes first.

Whenever I meet someone who tells me they are a guitar player too, usually at a gig, one of the first things I do is ask to see their fingertips.

Can tell at a glance what's up.


--Mac

“None of ya have even SEEN SpaceDog's guitar.

For all you know, it could be already set up just fine...”



I don't need to see his guitar. SpaceDog is, by his own account, an amateur. It would be a safe assumption that his guitar is not professionally set up, and would probably be easier to play once properly set up. Lower action and lighter gauge strings would make it easier to break in his fingers. The Elixers are easier on the fingertips than standard non-coated strings.

Just my opinion; I'm not an "expert".