Hey all, so I’ve been playing keyboards since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and I was fortunate to learn a lot of music by ear which means I am useless reading it!

However, I really, really wanted to learn guitar and went through some tutorials (paid) to try and get going.

I hit a roadblock with the finger work required around the Frets/Fingerboard where I just can’t get the fingers in the right places on the strings and it just sounded awful. It feels as though the flat nature of the ends of my fingers prevents me from cleanly pressing down the required strings.

Does anyone have any tips, or has anyone been in this situation and perseverance won out? Thanks in advance…!

Hi Nathan,

Firstly ensure you have short fingernails!

But a lot of getting the fingering down comes down to practice. However, You might want to try rotating your hand around the fretboard to a different angle than you normally use.

With practicing you can even practice without playing, just grab the guitar and do the fingering without playing, it's good to stretch/strengthen your fingers like this.

I'm sure others can suggest more things.

It might be useful to get a video of you playing focusing on your hand on the fretboard if you can do that?

Hi Nathan!

Im not sure if this will help but I had similar problems in the early days and found rotating my thumb to be central on the back of the fretboard and always positioned behind the middle finger for stability really helped my fingering come to life. It's what a classical guitar teacher would encourage but it translates to a lot of steel string work as well. It helped me because I have big hands and playing in the beginning was a bit like a bear paw wrestling a ukulele.

Be sure to hang in there, progress is always just around the corner with guitar. My motto is you will see the work your doing now in a months time.

C