The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #70324 Message #1199582
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
03-Jun-04 - 03:49 PM
Thread Name: Improving Guitar Skills
Subject: RE: Improving Guitar Skills
Strengthening your hands does make barré chords a lot easier - and a way to do that is to get hold of a foam rubber ball (size of a tennis ball, but more flexible), and squeeze it repeatedly in odd moments. For the muscles going the other way (opening rather than closing the fingers) a rubber band, the kind posties have when they are delivering letters, will do the trick.
But you can get a long way without ever using barré chords anyway, more especially if you have a decent capo.
What I've always tended to do is, look for the note I want within a chord I want to play. Or pick a chord that has the note I want to play. And just doodle around picking out bits of tunes on my own, so my fingers know where the notes are without my mind telling them.
Different people have different shaped brains for this kind of thing. What works for one person won't work for the next. Some people like to know what they are doing before they do it, some have to do it before they actually know what it is they are doing. (And if that last doesn't make sense, you are probably one of the first sort.)