Very Small Fingers !!

There are, but you shouldn't look into them now. Hand strength and hand size do not have a relationship. Everyone has problems with the F barre chord when they first start. Keep trying it, your hand will build up strength.

Hand strength and hand size do not have a relationship. Actually they sort of do...your fingers like many other parts of your body are essentially levers with the fulcrum at your knuckles. So if you have shorter fingers you muscles acutally need to exert less force to produce the equivalent force at the end of your fingers. Of course due to this your finger muscles will be compratively weaker which leaves everyone in pretty much the same position overall.

I'm not trying to be contrary but it's just something to consider...

I am a beginning guitarist and I'm frustrated with my very small fingers. How do I overcome hurdles like the FMaj chord and barre chords? I worry that I wont have the hand strength to hold down some of these. Are there ways to get around this?

Dude ... F maj sucks for everyone. Whether you are playing it with a barre or the more traditional fingering ... it just plane sucks and will take time to develope the proper finger strength, feel and comfort that will allow you to make that and any other chord shape.

In time it will come ... it took me a year before I could finger an F Maj with success.

And yes ... small hands can be a problem, but I've seen people smaller than me just fly over the neck so ....

Logan5

I am a beginning guitarist and I'm frustrated with my very small fingers. How do I overcome hurdles like the FMaj chord and barre chords? I worry that I wont have the hand strength to hold down some of these. Are there ways to get around this?

Dude ... F maj sucks for everyone. Whether you are playing it with a barre or the more traditional fingering ... it just plane sucks and will take time to develope the proper finger strength, feel and comfort that will allow you to make that and any other chord shape.

In time it will come ... it took me a year before I could finger an F Maj with success.

And yes ... small hands can be a problem, but I've seen people smaller than me just fly over the neck so ....

Logan5

I too have small hands and trust me you'll get it if you keep working. I thought my small hands would be a permanent road-block, but their not. I found a new teacher recently and he has smaller hands than me and can sure play.

Hand strength and hand size do not have a relationship. Actually they sort of do...your fingers like many other parts of your body are essentially levers with the fulcrum at your knuckles. So if you have shorter fingers you muscles acutally need to exert less force to produce the equivalent force at the end of your fingers. Of course due to this your finger muscles will be compratively weaker which leaves everyone in pretty much the same position overall.

I'm not trying to be contrary but it's just something to consider...

I have to agree with reasonableman, mostly because, I, too, have small hands and small fingers. I've been playing for a few years now and I STILL have problems with certain B chords and certain F chords. I have to think about them when I know they're coming up, where I don't have to think about it with anything else, I just "automatically" do it, because I've spent hours and hours and hours practicing to make it come automatically. In the beginning of the learning process, you have to remember that you are essentially training the muscles in your hands/fingers to do things they've never been asked to do before. You are asking them to make shapes they've never made before - and on top of all that, you have to hit the right darn strings! And that only comes with practice. I've been teaching my 13 year old nephew to play and he has "giant" hands, and actually, I think he's having a harder time with those big, long fingers with these little short ones. (I'm thinking maybe we ought to switch him to bass guitar......) :cry:

I took my youngest daughter to the music store to buy her first guitar. We were concerened that she may have trouble with her small hands. Well, much to our surprise, the lady at the store has even smaller hands than my duaghter (smallest hands I ever saw on an adulst) she picked up a full size drednaught and played flawlessly.
That convinced me that hand size has very little impact on the ability to play guitar as long as you are willing to put enough effort into it.

Thanks everyone for the moral support. I was worried for a while. I am a woman, and it seems that i see several men who just pick the damn thing up and play with no previous experience. I attributed it to innate hand strength. I feel better knowing that other women have this struggle and it is somewhat overcomable over time. And it does help a little knowing that the guys have to work at that F chord too.

:)

Yeah, small hands run standard in my family. Good luck with it, keep on plucking away.