My problem w/ short fingers is inadvertently pulling notes sharp. I've played for a long time and can get to a lot of notes and chords cleanly, but my playing sounds pretty crappy on anything other than washboard-type rhythm guitar; I was typically the singer/rhythm-guitarist so it never bothered me that much.

My voice now sounds ridiculous and ancient so I've tried for the last 6 months to take my guitar-playing to a non-embarassing level. I remember long ago my first and only guitar teacher, who was classically trained, pulling my hand so far around the neck that my fingers were nearly vertical. By then I could strum and sing "Nowhere Man" so I blew it all off.

I recently got one of those tuners that are like dials, and it's remarkable how much sharper (higher) my normally fingered notes are than when playing slide (poorly) or just holding my left hand hovering over the neck and pushing directly down with the very tips of my unbent fingers. Now it's impossible to play anything- I just poke out "nice-sounding" single notes. Barre chords sound a little better than open ones, but the notes that I bar with my index finger are still sharp. I've tried tuning to compensate, but it's so irregular it just makes it worse. When I hold my hand in "classical"position now, my wrist and fingers get numb and spastic.

I was starting to really enjoy playing and making some stylistic progress when I realized how objectively bad it sounded. Any advice?