Q: Do guitarists who only use guitar to sing and play simultaneously need to learn to switch between chords as fast as the last sixteenth note?

A: This is a very interesting question, and the best answer is one that most guitar teachers won’t tell you:

On most songs, when accompanying a singer, strumming a chord pattern with a pick, if the last note in the sequence before a chord change is a sixteenth or a fast eighth note, you can move your left hand fingers DURING that note, leaving the strings open as your fingers are moving to the new position.

For example, take this common pattern (D=downstroke, U=upstroke, and _ =move the pick without hitting the strings):

D _ D U _ U D U

Suppose that each stroke is an eighth note, the entire pattern is one measure, and the tempo is a quarter note = 150bpm. Suppose the chord you are on is a C and the chord you are moving to is a G. On the last Downstroke in the pattern, your left hand would still be in the C chord position. Then, the instant your pick hits the strings on the last Upstroke, you would let go of the C chord and move your fingers toward the G chord, arriving just in time for the first Downstroke of the new measure.

Yes, it’s cheating, but the audience will never notice. In most songs, it will sound perfectly natural. The only exceptions would be 1) if the tempo is really slow, in which case you would have time to hit the last upstroke on the C and then quickly move to the G, or 2) if the song is mostly barre chords where the open strings would sound weird for the key signature.

Over time, with lots of practice, you can gain enough muscle memory to move your fingers fast enough to eliminate this trick, but this is a great way to sound good while you are learning.

Q: How can I make playing a six-string guitar easier when I have short fingers?

A: I disagree with most of the answers here that are basically telling you to buck up, tough it out, and play with pain and difficulty until you stretch your fingers and develop more finger strength and become better at playing guitar. Nonsense! Here is the correct answer to your question:

1.    Go buy yourself a smaller guitar with a shorter, thinner, and narrower neck and a smaller body. One of the best is the Taylor GS Mini, which is one of the best selling acoustic guitars in the world, and that’s one of the reasons. It is considered a 7/8 size guitar, but it has a nice, full sound. Women and young teens and others with short fingers love it.

2.    Use thinner strings that require less pressure to press. For example, the GS Mini comes with 13–56 strings. Use 12–53 strings instead. If you can’t afford a GS Mini and are using a full sized guitar, try 11–51 strings. Thinner strings don’t sound as loud or as rich, but they are a lot easier to press. In a few years, when you get better at playing guitar, then you can move back to the thicker strings.

3.    After you decide what guitar fits your hands best, and what strings work best for you, then take your guitar to a professional luthier to file the nut slots to lower the action where it matters most (frets 1–3), and to adjust the truss rod to fit your strings and playing style. All acoustic guitars come from the factory with a nut that is way too high for beginners, and most also come with truss rods that are not correctly adjusted, both of which make playing the guitar much harder than it needs to be.

If you do these three things, you’ll be smiling from ear to ear because of how much easier it is to reach and play the chords.

Q: How can I improve playing guitar? I’ve been playing for a while but I’ve only really started taken seriously recently and I’ve realized I’m nowhere near the level I should be. The problem is I’m not really sure where I’m going wrong.

A: You didn’t mention whether you’re taking lessons. If you are, then you may want to consider another teacher. If you’re not, then look for an excellent teacher in your area. There is only so much you can learn from online videos. A good private guitar instructor will be able to help you move along much faster than just “playing for a while”. That’s how to find out “where you’re going wrong.”

Q: Can a guitar cause carpal tunnel syndrome?

A: Yes.  I know a professional guitarist and guitar teacher who couldn’t play guitar for a whole year because he got carpal tunnel syndrome. It was a very bad year for him, as you can imagine. For right handed players, it is always the left (fretting) hand that is at risk. The way to avoid it is to use good form.

Contrary to popular opinion, it is NOT “repetitive motion” that causes carpal tunnel syndrome!!!!!! That is an extreme oversimplification that misses the main point. It is straining the tendons excessively at the point where they go through the wrist that causes carpal tunnel syndrome. You can repeat the same motion with your hands for hours and hours, every day, for years, and NEVER get carpal tunnel syndrome, IF you keep your wrists straight and relaxed. Every concert pianist, and well trained guitarist, and excellent typist, knows this.

Think of a bicycle brake cable. You know, the metal cable that goes through the metal flexible tube with the black plastic outside of it? What would happen if you took some vice grips and smashed down on that cable sheath, while trying to use the brake? Or what would happen if you bent that cable sheath at a sharp angle while using the brake? How long do you think the cable would last, with the additional strain added from the smashing or the sharp bend? The muscles that move your fingers are way up in your forearms, and they are connected to your fingers by very long “cables” called tendons. Those tendons go through the wrist. Tight, stiff wrists smash down on them, and sharply angled wrists bend them. What that happens, they inflame and swell, and if you continue to use them while they are inflamed and swollen, they can be damaged permanently.

To help you keep your left wrist straight, don’t play with the neck of the guitar pointing down, or even straight across. Always have it pointed up a little. Use a strap even when seated (or use a pillow) to raise the guitar and to keep the neck angled slightly up. All this helps straighten the wrist. And keep your hands and fingers in a curved shape, like holding a baseball. And don’t use heavy gauge strings (heavy gauge strings are 13-56, and are misleadingly called “medium” gauge).  Use 12-53 or thinner.  And have your guitar set up by a luthier for a nice, low action. And don’t play barre chords all day long. (Contrary to advice given elsewhere in this thread, using a capo can be a very good thing if it helps you to avoid too many barre chords, which strain the wrist FAR more than root position chords do!) Most importantly, focus on keeping your wrist relaxed.

By the way, when you do play barre chords, there is a trick that can reduce wrist strain. Instead of using your finger and thumb muscles to pinch the neck (smashing the forefinger down across the strings and pushing the thumb upward on the back of the neck), pull the entire guitar into your body using the elbow of your right arm against the guitar body, and pulling the neck side with your whole left arm (not just your index finger muscle). With practice and with a straight left wrist, you can actually do a barre chord without using the left thumb at all. You should use your thumb while playing, but using the pulling action into your chest will make it so you don't have to press your thumb as hard, and this action can significantly reduce the strain in your wrist from the thumb and forefinger working against each other.

Q: Why do guitarists have long nails?

A: Guitarists never have long nails on their fretting hand (i.e. left hand, for right handed guitarists). Long nails on fretting fingers get in the way, ruin good hand positioning, and dig into the fret board. Guitarists who exclusively flat pick also don’t generally have long nails on their right hand. They don’t need them because they are using a plectrum to pluck or strum the strings. However, many (not all) guitarists who like to finger pick choose to have nails on the middle three fingers of their right hand. The nails add a touch of brightness to the tone that cannot be achieved with the flesh of the fingers only. This is not limited to classical (nylon string) guitarists. Many who use steel string guitars also prefer the sound of strings plucked first by the flesh on the ends of the fingers then lightly brushing the nails as the fingers move upward. Additionally, the nail on the index finger can also briefly be used in place of a pick, in a pinch. For steel string guitarists, the nails are not excessively long; usually the nails just barely go past the end of the fingers, 1–3mm. Some guitarists use clear nail polish to strengthen the nails.

Q: How long can fingernails be while playing guitar?

A: LEFT HAND answer by Joseph Grossman (Irv agrees)

Conventional wisdom is that you want short nails on the left (ie fretting) hand for all string instrument playing.  How short?  Well, you want to be able to press the tip of your finger against a hard surface without the nail touching.

Depending on your finger anatomy you may be able to get away with a little bit of visible nail sticking out looking from the front, but if you look at your outstretched fingers from the palm surface side and can see any nail, its too long.

The left hand thumb tip doesn’t fret notes, so you can get away with as long of a left thumbnail as you like.

That said, if you don’t mind being limited in what you can play, you can potentially get away with more nail length.

Some players don’t use the little finger of the left hand on fingerboard. In my opinion, that’s really limiting and you really should be using that finger. . .but if you don’t, you can have a long pinky-nail.

You can get away with left hand fingernails of any length if you’re playing slide guitar, where you’re not actually fretting notes with your fingertips.

You can potentially get away with playing certain things if you use the pads of your left hand fingers to play with instead of the tips.  Your ability to play certain types of chords will be limited, your ability to execute clean slurs may be limited, etc. but you can certainly play “something” this way. Use of open tunings may help compensate here, too.

Dolly Parton has played her whole career with long nails, and still does. Wide fingerboard classical guitar helps, as it adds more room for her left hand fingertips. I don’t think anyone would mistake Parton for a “shred” guitar player, but she does well enough to accompany herself singing. She also uses the right hand nails as an asset to make percussive sounds.

A: RIGHT HAND answer by Irv Nelson

When using a plectrum (pick), there is a limit on how long your pointer finger nail can be before it starts getting in the way between the pick and the string.  It can extend slightly beyond the end of your finger, but not a lot.  Other than that, if you only use a pick and you never fingerpick, your other nails can be short or long.

When finger picking, there is an advantage to having a little bit longer nails on the middle three fingers. If you have super short fingernails on the right hand like on the left hand, and thus you only pick with the pads of your fingers, that gives a round, rich, dark tone.  If you have long nails and fingerpick with them, that gives a thin, bright tone with no bottom end.  The best tone comes from having nails that extend a tiny bit past the end of your fingers.  Then you pull the strings with the pads of your fingers and when the strings are released they brush past the fingernails.  This results in the fat tone from the flesh of the fingers plus some of the brightness of the nails only.

I keep my middle three fingernails on my right hand so that when I’m looking at the palm of my right hand with the fingers straight, I can see a few millimeters of nail sticking out past the end of the fingers.  I have them shaped like little guitar picks:

Q: Is it considered bad form to use your left-hand thumb to fret the 6th string on a guitar?

A: Only arrogant, classically-trained guitarists claim this… it’s the same type of people who teach that capos are bad form. If you ask for a valid reason WHY it’s bad form, they can’t come up with one. That’s because there is no valid reason.

I teach my students that they can play any way that works for them, as long as 1) it does not cause strain to their fingers and wrists, and 2) it sounds good to the audience.

Seriously, show me an easier way to play a D/F# that sounds all six strings and sounds great in G D/F# Em progression.

Q: How does one obtain a loud, and quality sound by playing notes on an acoustic guitar with the fretting hand, without using the other hand to pluck the strings?

A: Hammer on’s and hammer-off’s are very difficult make sound “loud” and “quality” on a steel stringed acoustic guitar. The volume of the notes produced by hammer on and hammer off techniques is limited by how hard you can smash the string (finger strength), how fast you can smash the string (finger speed), string gauge (how hard the string vibrates after you smash it), and the amplification properties of the soundboard. In no case will a hammer on be as loud as a solid finger pluck with the right hand on the same string/fret/pitch. No matter how good you get at it, that will never happen. And it will be FAR quieter than a pluck with a plectrum/pick. It’s not a matter of technique, it’s a matter of physics.

In contrast, hammer-on’s and hammer-off’s are super easy to make sound “loud” and “quality” on an electric guitar with its light gauge strings and the huge compression effect of the tubes, especially when the tubes are distorting, because very small (quiet) string vibrations come out of the amp at the same volume as very strong (loud) string vibrations. Eddie Van Halen was very talented, and he practiced a lot, but the fact of the matter is, his solos would not have been magic had he been playing an acoustic guitar, instead of a humbucker electric guitar with a Marshall amp turned up and the EL34 tubes screaming.