Clumsy fingers

[Riku Lainpelto]

First of all, hi to all of you. I’m Riku from Finland and I’m self-taught guitarist who has been playing on an acoustic for a little over a year now.
I feel like I have extra clumsy fingers some times and that just makes my motivation go down.. for an example; I have a lot of chords in the muscle memory but some times I can’t play one as simple chord as C.. I might press on the wrong string with one finger. When it happens I can’t even play a pentatonic scale because I hit the wrong frets with my fingers.. Hope you got what I mean.
I’ve tried everything and anything to practise, but it still happens Time to Time..

 

[idssdi]

Could you show what you mean? I’m not sure I entirely know what you mean exactly. It could be that you have trouble changing from one chord to the next or something but I’m not sure.

 

[Riku Lainpelto]

Well, I don’t have a video of it happening. I can normally play songs like So far away, Stairway to heaven and Nothing else matters without any problems on changing chords etc.
It’s just like if my left hand didn’t do what I wanted it to do some times. I can normally play without even looking at the guitar. When it happens though, I can’t play even the easiest things no matter how hard I try to focus to my left hand.
It feels kind a like if my left hand has a will on it’s own. Like it’s not connected to my brain..
If you still didn’t quite understand my explanation, I can try to make an illustrative video about it.

 

[Jamie London]

I have a similar issue at times. No matter how much I practice a scale, song, method, whatever, sometimes my clumsy fingers will just like trip over each other haha I just try to be very cognizant of what I’m doing and practice as much as I can. But it still happens from time to time

 

[Riku Lainpelto]

Nice to know that I’m not the only one with this problem haha. It’s so frustrating when it happens.
I made a short video with few staged examples and uploaded it to YouTube: https://youtu.be/WjWcbrLpdfA

 

[Ed Seith]

You pretty much described like every guitar player ever. After 35 years, I may rarely blow the fretting on a C major chord, but shit like that happens to everyone all the time. The difference between a beginner and a professional is in how you handle it during a performance. When you can learn to recover from it in such a way as anyone listening will believe you did it on purpose, you’ve hit pro level.

 

[AGA]

I do find it happens less and less as you play with relaxed muscles. We tend to tense up all over, fingers, arms, back, even shoulders. Practice small movements that give you trouble very slowly and breath deeply as you relax your hand. I call it guitar yoga lol. If you warm up this way for a few minutes it will help your playing afterwards.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

If they are clumsy slow it down a bit and try it again. Then speed it up when you’re ready to try again.

 

[Riku Lainpelto]

Thank you for all the great answers and tips!
Aileé Guerra Aréizaga I need to try that, let’s hope it helps with my fingers I usually tend to skip the warm-up, or I just play the pentatonic scale few times back and forth. Depends on the day and how much I have time I guess..
Calvin Phillips I have practiced every song like that and also tried that when my fingers “dont work”. No help at all. When my fingers feel clumsy I might not be able to play at all no matter how slow I try to play.

 

[AGA]

I hope it helps Riku! I used to skip warm up too, but now I always warm up before I play (even if it’s just for a couple minutes). I notice quite a big difference when I warm up vs. when I don’t.

 

[Riku Lainpelto]

Haven’t had clumsy fingers, atleast for now. Thank you again for all the great answers to my stupid question
Today I finished my version, and did a cover-video of the So far away arpeggio-part. Still getting a bit nervous on camera haha.