From The Straight Timber of Humanity, How Crooked A Thing Was Ever Made?

A few questions in clarification

I’m not an orthopod, just a common General Internist, but MDs who take much interest in practical problems aren’t that common, so I may be the best you get. First responder anyway, it seems.

Does the left hand ring finger have the same range of motion as the finger of interest on the right? If not, was there an injury to the right at some point? How much difference is there between range of passive, and that of active, motion (i.e., between trying to hyper-extend just with the intrinsic muscles of the ring-finger, and what you can get by using your other hand to apply pressure)?

Your fingers shouldn’t bend back. Smack those bad habits on the head early. More or less straight or slightly bent back fingers are necessary for bar chords with the root note on the A string, but all open chords should really be played with fingers in a loose ‘grip’ posture. Playing an open A should look like .

I took up guitar in my middle-age

Wait wait wait a minute. You’re what, 36, 38? Middle age? WHOA no.

If you have fat fingers (like me) you catch one string with your ring finger and two with your middle finger. Regardless, the A-form chord has always been the most problematic to me.

First, don’t give up. You have made the right choice. Love the guitar, and it will (often reluctantly) love you back. Practice & try, and you will become exceptionally dexterous within whatever limitations you are unable to push back.

If your ring finger refuses to flatten, a second tactic would be to pin down the three adjacent strings with two adjacent fingers–if you want to save your pinky for filigrees, step on those three strings with your middle and ring fingers together, perpendicular or tilted slightly to nail all three strings. If it works, a clumsy, imprecise grip becomes just what the doctor ordered.

But if you want to stop those three strings with your ring finger, keep trying–gently but firmly–every day. Sometimes the fingers are slow to understand or submit to what their owner wants them to do. With some chord shapes that felt impossible at first, I have found that my fingers accommodate them with practice. I’m not sure whether it’s increased flexibility or increased familiarity.

Also, are you using electric or acoustic? Because electrics tend to be much easier for barre chords–I still struggle with barre-ing on acoustics, whereas on electrics I can chord it up with the best of em.

My right ring finger is as you describe both of yours to be but my left contraflexes thanks, I’m sure, to perseverance at A-shape bar chords. I don’t recall any injury that would otherwise explain the difference. Keep at it and reserve pinky for those indispensable 6ths and 7ths.

Obviously, you need this capability for Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone but you might be too far gone to develop the flex. In the meantime, try C7 with the index finger barring the eighth freight and bounce the pinky on the second string tenth. How does it feel?

Mine bends back to about a 60 degree angle with the next joint down, so I don’t really have a problem with partial barres with the 3rd finger. I can place the top joint flat on a table and almost have the next joint perpendicular to the table — in the ‘fingers have feet’ manner. I think it’s developed that way through playing guitar though, rather than being ‘natural’ as until recently all of my other fingers only bent back about 10 degrees from straight. With work on particularly tricky ‘gypsy’ jazz chord voicings — which use multiple partial barres — the top joint on the 2nd finger is also beginning to be a bit more flexible now. So I can only assume that it’s possible to develop increased flexibility even fairly late on.

And yeah, you’ll need the pinky if you want to get into jazzier voicings.

“Gypsy” jazz chords using partial barres:

Major 6/9
Minor 6/9

It’s a good idea to practice as if you were doing some sort of sport. Gentle warm-up, start with easy stuff, build-up to things using bigger stretches, gradually work on increasing the range of motion, don’t push it, and it will develop over time.

If you are barring at the 8th, playing the A string at the 10th fret, leaving the D string open [to be fretted by the 8th fret barre], fretting the G string at the 9th fret, that’s a standard C7 [a dominant 7 chord]. The b7 [i.e. dominant 7] is the Bb being barred at the 8th fret on the D string. If you add the 10th fret on the B string [with the pinky], that’s a C13 chord [i.e. a C dominant 7 with A the 6th/13th added]. If you barred with the pinky to fret the top E at the 10th fret as well, then it’d be a C6/9 [as you are also playing D, the 9th].

With, the strings [from bottom E to top E] fretted 8-10-8-9-10-10.

The clown car feeling goes away. Especially once you learn to relax and the hand doesn’t feel like it’s being held in position by lots of little muscles cramped up together. Some fairly famous guitar players had fingers like sausages. Way way more cramped looking than even fairly biggish normal hands. They still managed.

I’ve played guitar since I was about six and continue to play. It will take a while, but it will bend if you give it time. Plus, also try different finger exercises like playing from E-to-E (starting off first fret) 1-3-4, 1-3-4, 1-3-4, etc. moving up a fret each time. This will help it move…and bend.

re stretching, this isn’t quite the same, but somewhere I read about a famous composer/pianist who damaged his ring finger doing exercises to increase its strength.

My advice is just keep at it. Practice chord progressions that include the A barre and play it in songs you’re practicing and don’t think about it too much (practice it like you would any other chord, in other words). It really takes a long time to get the hang of this chord, but don’t let that discourage you.

I am playing mostly violin these days; back when I was playing guitar, I didn’t play very many A-shaped barre chords because my fingers would not do it properly — when I did play them I would not play the bottom string because I could not get it to ring.

Me, I’m a pro player with around twenty years of experience (I’m actually wiped out at work today ’cause I got called to do a fill-in last night at eight, and again at midnight at a different venue) and my ring finger doesn’t bend back at all… it’s perfectly straight. I use two fingers to do a barred A-shaped chord. My forefinger frets the root note on the fifth string and barres on down to the 1st string, and my ring finger barres across the 1st-4th strings, and I don’t play the 1st string. This lets me use my pinky to play those filigrees. Another technique I like to use that’s related is to use my forefinger to bar across the 1st-4th strings, use my index finger to fret two frets up from that barre on the fifth string, forming the third of the major chord. This means that I now have both my index finger and my pinky to play scales around the chord shape… you can think of it as a barred G shape without the root note on the 6th string. I only really use my pinky down on the sixth when I’m doing a run that has to end on the root way on down there. This particular voicing and technique really rocks when you’re playing country or bluegrass in an arbitrary key.

If I really /need/ to use the 1st string 5th note of the chord, I switch techniques to using my forefinger on the 1st string barring across the 1st to 3rd strings, and my index and ring finger on the 2nd and 3rd two frets up. This can be nice because by alternately lifting off the ring finger, or by moving it up a fret, you can easily walk around on the 2nd-3rd-4th degrees of the chord.

When using the “double-barre” technique to play the A shape, I generally find the pinky is only useful for playing the sus4, the 6th, the 7th, and the maj7th degrees of the chord. If I need more than that, I switch by sliding my whole hand up two frets and using the open G shaped barre technique, which opens up more frets and more strings.

And hey, if you live near Kingston, Ontario… I teach.

My ring finger can bend back but it doesn’t when I use an A-barre shape. So yes, I’m going to side with those saying to tough it out and keep trying.

polyorchnid octopunch described an alternate voicing (the no-root G shape) that I’ve found useful (especially for chopping), but as weird and wonderful as some voicings are, someone just learning guitar really should start with the basic barre chords. If you need a cheat, rather than alternate voicings I’d suggest trying lighter strings (or nylon or “silk and steel” strings) and having the action checked out by a professional.

So you want to be a rock and roll star
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
Then take some time and learn how to play

And in a week or two
If you make the charts
The girls’ll tear you apart

If you don’t require the top open E to sound on an A chord, then there is no reason the ring finger needs to bend backwards at *all*, let alone more than a few degrees.

Mine doesn’t bend easily either, and more to the point, I have trouble holding the shape without hurting my ring finger. For the open position A chord, I pretty much always use 2 or three fingers, instead of 1, and for barre chords with that position, I usually use three fingers. I can bend down and barre the pinky to cover 2 strings for licks requiring the 6th (2 frets from the barre on the top string). I cheat by damping the third string (since it’s just doubling the root at the octave) if I need pinky to play more than that on the top string.

I’ve played classical for about 25 years now, seriously (regular performances, occasional paid gigs) during college and my early 20s.

In general, you’ve gotten pretty good advice here. Don’t go crazy trying to get perfect shape when you are just starting out. Keeping your fingers as relaxed as you can while still getting clear sound is the most important thing.

Also, it takes a fair bit of time and practice to get your fingers to recognize the chord forms and have it feel easy. The C7 described (bar on 8th fret) is one of the simpler barre formations, and eventually will feel very comfortable. Just keep practicing it, keep as relaxed as you can (it’s impossible to have fully zen fingers on barre chords in my experience), and let it sink in. If your chords sound crappy at first, just verify that your fingers are in the right place and live with it. After some practice, your fingers will start to feel more comfortable, then you can work more on the sound, and it will be much easier.

Also — barre chords are HARD. I know you need them to do three chord wonder songs, but in terms of good technique, they are some of the most difficult things to do well. Practice your open chords, and melody lines and scales, until they are very fluid, resonant and relaxing. The finger flexibility and fretboard familiarity will help get your fingers ready to do the harder stuff.

I’ve played 35 years and my ring finger doen’t bend back either. However I tip my hand slightly to the right so that I use more of the side of the pad to form A barres. No problems with all notes ringing as the effective angle can be whatever you want by tipping further.

To loosen up my fingers I will grip the first joint and try to rotate the whole finger – gently – back and forth. Do it on all your fingers once a day.

Also, guitaring doesn’t take much strength – it is just applying it only at the right time and at the right place. Find the lightest touch you can use to make a single note ring and that is all you need for a chord as well. Just has to be exactly right. A couple of million repeats should make you pretty good at it.

I guess I’ll just keep pushing it until it hurts, exercise-wise.

Please don’t do that – when I had to see a physio some years ago also due to music issues, (playing, that is) the word was “until you feel a stretch”. I think you should see a physio specialising in sport medicine. They’re very good at this sort of thing and will give you exercises to take away.

(Did you know you can get a golfer’s elbow from playing drums? And me only having ever played one 9-hole round in my life. Oh, the unfairness.)

Like Polyorchnid,Michael,and Andrew, I’ve been playing for 30 plus years,have played professionally doing more complex jazzy stuff with lots of extensions. I’m not Wes Montgomery, but I’d say I am a decent hack guitar player . My ring finger bends a little, maybe 20 degrees at the last joint. When I play a full barre “A-style” chord (what is it, third position?), most of the time I end up muting the high E. But in my opinion, who really cares? In any barre chord where you’re hitting all six strings you’ve got the root and fifth in there so many times, what does it matter if you get an extra fifth on the high end or not? In my opinion I and V aren’t the most expressive degrees of the scale, and the ones I drop first in playing partials. I’ve always had much more fun playing interesting notes on fewer strings, to the point where I developed a sort of half-conscious prejudice against barre chords.

Which isn’t fair to barre chords, I know.

Sorry about the delay on getting back to you after the questions answered @5, but Thursdays are the days I volunteer at the local free clinic, and today was a bad day in free clinic land. This has been a trend over the past two years or so, as the insurance picture becomes more grim.

If the finger in question is different from all the others in its decreased range of extension (except, if I understand, the pinky, but the pinky was able to “learn” to extend with guitar practice {aided by active hyperextension exercises?}), and can’t even get to full extension, much less any hyperextension, then the old injury you mention is probably to blame. Either that, or you’re at the very early start of a DuPuytren’s contracture.

With most joints, gentle but persistant stretching to push the range of motion gradually, would probably not do any harm, and might get you some extra range. But that approach isn’t quite so safe with the interphalangeal joints, because their range of motion is determined, not just by tendons intrinsic to the finger joints, but also by the flexor and extensor tendon system. These are the long tendons, one each flexor and one each extensor per digit, that run from the muscle bodies in the forearm, then over the back (extensor) or palmar (flexor) aspect of the hand, then into the fingers through little tracks that keep them in line even as they flex and extend the fingers. Unlike other joints, you don’t have muscles that flex and extend at each finger joint, you have these flexor and extensor tendons that transmit the pull from muscles in the forearm that do all of the work at both the interphalangeal joints of each digit simultaneously.

At any rate, the practical impact is that the repeated hyperextension pressure at the distal interphalangeal joint (the DIP) that might safely give you a few more degrees of range of motion by stretching intrinsic tendons if this were any other sort of joint, is not quite safe in this joint because it might instead damage the little tracks that keep the extensor and flexor tendons in line, and then you’ve got a real problem, and not just a minor abnormality like you have now. If you want to try to use hyperextension stretching anyway, you can minimize the risk by being careful to keep the proximal interphalangeal joint (the PIP, of course) at full extension whenever you apply your hyperextension pressure on the DIP. If you have the PIP flexed when you actively hyperextend the DIP, you create pressure tending to force the flexor and extensor tendions out of their tracks. Google “Boutonnierre’s deformity” to see what I’m talking about graphically. There’s uncertainty how it got that name, but one account is that this was an occupational hazard of boutonnierres, created by the repetitive and long-standing application of hyperextension on the DIPs of their index fingers as they grasped their needles very tightly with PIPs flexed so as to allow that firm grip required by their occupation.

You might consider going to see an orthopod, specifically a hand specialist. That isn’t clearly indicated, and has a lesser chance of yielding any good results for you, because the loss of range (sounds like about 10 degrees from your description) is not such as to make this pathological, as opposed to a mere abnormality. Another way of putting that is to say that, for the general population, the loss of that last 10deg of extension in the ring finger is not disabling. It’s not normal, but it’s not a disease. Specialists are wonderful, can’t live without’em, but their inherent limitation is that they tend to look down their noses on anything that’s not a disease, that’s “merely” a damn bother abnormality. (Generalists, of course, are too damn busy to bother.)

You are much more likely to get whatever help medicine might be able to provide, if you can find a hand specialist orthopod, and/or Occupational Therapist, who has cultivated an interest in the problems of musicians. You need someone who will take a loss of 10 degrees of extension in the ring finger seriously, because he or she is used to thinking of that as being, for a musician, a disease, something that’s disabling, and not just some mere abnormality. I have heard of such, but I don’t know any such, and actually, fellow musicians are your best bet for a sound referral in this department.

Overall, though, it seems you are most likely to get practical results by listening to fellow musicians about the technical dodges they have developed to work around this sort of problem, rather than by some medical correction of the problem. That reasoning changes if the loss of range becomes progressively worse, which would indicate a contracture that might clearly benefit from a medical intervention.

As a self-taught musician who wasted years re-inventing various wheels, I strongly advise you to get lessons at the beginning.

I prefer to play the A barred with my pointer finger. That way I can use my ring finger and pinky for notes on the 3rd,4th, and 5th frets – mostly on the B and High E. Might be worth a try . . .

I have had similar problems — I’ve recently picked up a guitar again and my decrepit middle-aged hands are very small in addition to not very flexible. However my ability to make difficult chord-shapes and so on keeps improving very slowly the more I play. I tried getting an electric guitar, which helped some, but then I thought that I might benefit still further from practicing on a smaller guitar. So I bought a 3/4-size guitar that I use to work on particularly difficult things – it’s been amazing to feel my hands sort of stretch out and get stronger and more limber or whatever. And when I switch back to the regular guitars I can do things that I thought were not physically possible. I also do stretching exercises with little resistance bands (the kind that the bunches of broccoli are fastened with :) .

I just browsed jamplay, and the site looks very cool, but I think it’s much more useful for somebody who already knows how to play and wants to learn a specific style. Like I’m thinking of signing up to see their bluegrass, blues and metal guy’s takes. In terms of developing your initial form, it may be okay to work with a site like that for much of the time, but I would strongly recommend finding an in-person instructor at some point fairly soon to make sure you are getting everything. Also, I would go for somebody who knows/plays classical or jazz among their styles, even if those aren’t your interest, because people who have studied those tend to be much more rigorous about technique than teachers who aren’t familiar with them.

django style you play barre chords just with index, mute as needed, add 3rd6th/7ths/9ths and alterations with ringy or pinkster….and solos with two fingers

whoa. then maybe in 5-6 years yll get to like avalon or yr first Duke E number.