I recently started learning the guitar. I don't have the money for lessons just yet, so I've been learning from online lessons and the odd book when I can get my hands on one.

Well, the web page I've been learning at showed me how to do a G Major chord one way, and this book I just got is saying to do it another way.

Is it of great importance that the chords be formed with the right fingers, or is it more of a "whatever works for you" kind of a thing? I don't want to start bad habits now, but by the same token I don't know what the bad habits are when my learning materials are contradicting each other

Thanks for the help!

learn guitar online

Hope this helps.

After a little (OK, a lot) practice I now find it easier to play it, middle on the 5th, ring on the 6th and pinky on the 1st. This makes the transition between G and other cords easier because the index finger isn’t at the opposite side of the fretboard from its position in most other chords. This is particularly true for the G - C move transition. Makes it faster and more natural.

I learned using the "proper" fingering" for all the chords. That is what feels right. After learning the first 12 or so chords very well, I could figure out logically what fingers to use without the "finger numbering" being shown to me. You can tell by what is most comfortable.

As I progressed into intermediate territory as a guitarist, (ok I don't consider myself beginnera t least I sometimes use "non standard" fingering for a chord ONLY WHEN it makes a transition to a proceding chord more easy/closer. I can't think of an example but I know I do this very occasionally. I think of a chord as a whole. When I first learned, I placed one finger down at a time. Now I place them all down at the same time as a whole unit unless I am doing something like starting out with a slide and then playing the chord once I slide down to it.

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Originally posted by marigold28:
I think the chords should be played with correct fingering otherwise. Why learn the wrong way?

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There aren't really right or wrong ways. Some work better for different songs.

For example, the standard G fingering is MIoooR on frets 320003. But if you use the fingering

RMoooL, you can lift the little finger and use your index on the first fret to get to and from G7 easily. The same thing can be applied to the cowboy D chord (XOO232), depending on whether you want to access the 1st fret of the b and e string or the 5th fret on the e string.

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Originally posted by marigold28:
...I think the chords should be played with correct fingering otherwise. Why learn the wrong way?

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When a teacher says ''that fingering is wrong'' to a learner, the student's brains do bad things. I just tell them ''Here are two more ways to play that chord I want you to have learned by next lesson so you can use them with that song.'' If they have some poor fingerings, they eventually fall by the wayside.

As a seasoned veteran player and teacher, one of the first things I endeavour to teach new students is 5 - 6 ways to play every chord somewhere on the neck, and many of them are partial chords which use 3 - 5 strings, instead of all six. As a fingerstylist, these are a piece of cake. Jazz players finger many three and four note inversions that a folk player would call ''wrong''.

Bigot to convert...
I got freed up from teaching only ''conventional'' fingerings as the right ones by watching an advanced student who hired me as her guitar coach. She had the tiny-est hands I've ever seen...in fact the tips of her fingers only come up to the joint line of my fingers (the joint before the tip) when we matched up our palms. She didn't even fool around with impossible fingerings...she found other ways to find the frets with a finger in sensible ways I might add. She could never reach around a neck to play a D/F#...but she uses that chord often, even on her full width classical neck guitars.

She never apologized or balked at anything we worked on, and came up with the most creative & inventive ways to finger inversions, and open chords as well. She was a fingerstylist, classically trained, who did many of her own arrangements, and just needed someone to come alongside and sow in new ideas. Had that privilege for three years, and if she doesn't read this note, she'll never know how many lessons I took from her.

I even had my last handbuilt guitar's neck/bridge design widened (before construction) because of these kinds of creative fingerings. By thinking outside the box and practicing multiple fingerings for chords, tough and near impossible stretches can actually become quite easy.

By the way, most of my students talk freely of ''Two finger G'' ''Four finger G'' ''Three finger muted G'' and other names we've made up to describe how we finger them in different styles and songs. They speak of ''one, three or classical 'A' chords'', and four finger b minors.

We talk about upside down 'D', open 'D', and modular 'E' inversions. These students play and write very creatively, and their music stands apart from the average guitarist because their skills and chord formation are deep. Their little fingers work well.

To speak to your post...
I'd encourage you to practice awkward fingerings till they feel natural, and until you can play them so well on the fly that you can choose mid switch which one you want to use without blinking. And don't only yield to fingerings which are just comfortable. Some of the most sensible fingerings are not very comfortable till they are learned and become automatic.

Sensible often involves what precedes and follows a chord.

I hope this helps...

Larry J

Talking of specific chords. I used to play 1st position A in the "standard" way using 3 fingers. Then I learned the "flamenco way" of using the index finger on the 4th & 3rd string and the middle finger on the second string. This leaves the ring finger free to hammer-on the 3rd string, 3rd fret (A#) to get that nice dark flamenco tension.

Now I find myself using the 2 finger A most of the time whatever style I'm playing

I'd re-emphasize Larry J’s point, that a fingering shouldn't be seen in isolation but should be seen as a position of the fingers that flows from the preceding to following cord.

The C to G to C transition described above is a good example. Hold a 1st position C chord and you will see the middle, ring and pinky are already in the G shape and the middle and ring are only a string away. Why move the index finger all the way over to the 5th string?

I don't use the standard G fingering because I find that a movement to most other chords requires a strong movement with the wrist whereas the other fingering for G requires little wrist moement when changing to another chord.

not quite the same, but for a couple years now I've been using a 1 finger A - ooIIIo, to hammer or pull the high F# or slide from the high G to F# back to open E, etc. using the middle. I like these threads that reaffirm I'm not completely off base in my "do whatever it takes to get the sound" method (and that have been resurrected for spam after 3 years).

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Originally posted by Bill McCloskey:
When I was learning 36 years ago, I was self taught and had no idea which fingers to use. As it turned out I learned to play a few chords completely wrong, especially the D. When I play a D chord, my middle finger is on the 3rd string and my index finger is on the 1st string. I've never been able to change back and I don't think it has ever hurt my playing. It is just the way I do it.

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Yeah, Bill, when I first played guitar n my mid teens, I learned from an Alan Lomax collection of folk songs that had a great chord chart in the front. All first position, but arranged so that you could understand the various chords of a key and transpose to other keys easily, but also no fingerings. I learned to play the D just like you with my index bent sideways behind my middle. Worked great when I was a youth with strong supple hands from years of piano playing. However, when I started playing again 5 years ago, after a lay off of 25 years, it didn't work so great with middle aged hands that were strong but stiff from years of carpentry and perhaps the beginnings of arthritis, and would get very painful after a relatively short session. But I had tremendous difficulty relearning and had to start by changing to a mini-barre D, which I still use quite a bit and is very useful. Eventually I wanted to play songs that pretty much required the normal D so I somehow found the practice to change. I guess now I often finger the D form up the neck as part of the augmented chord and such and don't really have to think about it.

In my brief time as a blues singer I haven't really tried to learn new chord fingerings just for their own sake, but in trying to recreate the interesting fingerpicked arrangements of the old players I find, as others have mentioned above, various fingerings are suggested by the way they moved from one chord to another, one or two strings at a time, instead of just jumping from one whole form to another.

G---->
3 (middle finger)
2 (index/pointer finger)
0
0
3 (ring finger)
3 (pinky)

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Originally posted by ljguitar:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by marigold28:
...I think the chords should be played with correct fingering otherwise. Why learn the wrong way?

---

When a teacher says ''that fingering is wrong'' to a learner, the student's brains do bad things. I just tell them ''Here are two more ways to play that chord I want you to have learned by next lesson so you can use them with that song.'' If they have some poor fingerings, they eventually fall by the wayside.

Bigot to convert...
I got freed up from teaching only ''conventional'' fingerings as the right ones by watching an advanced student who hired me as her guitar coach. She had the tiny-est hands I've ever seen...in fact the tips of her fingers only come up to the joint line of my fingers (the joint before the tip) when we matched up our palms. She didn't even fool around with impossible fingerings...she found other ways to find the frets with a finger in sensible ways I might add. She could never reach around a neck to play a D/F#...but she uses that chord often, even on her full width classical neck guitars.

Thank you so much!
I am so relieved to hear that! I also have tiny hands - just as you describe your students.
I tried to learn giutar as a child but found it too difficult for that reason, but i recently thought I would have another go. I am learning at home with an online course and have just been thinking to myself that it may be that it's just going to be a waste of time as it's simply imposssible to reach some of the chord fingerings. Your post has really encouraged me. I hope I can find a teacher with your attitude locally- I think I'm going to neeed some help!