Importance Of Finger Placement

Music has always been a huge part of my life, considering I've been singing ever since sound could come out of my mouth, but I never gave interest in learning how to make music with instruments (besides my vocal cords, of course!) until I realized how essential the background instruments are in modern music. So i'm calling out all those people, like me, who love music and want to learn how to make it themselves to try and learn guitar with me!

As I've learned the hard way, you can't just pick up a guitar and start magically strumming beautiful music; you have to learn the basics before anything. A crucial part of strumming chords on the guitar, although sounding like a waste of time, is to know where you put your hand and fingers on the guitar. David Brewster proves that knowing this information is important to playing the guitar by recommending where to put your hand that holds the fret of the guitar from his book Teach Yourself To Play Guitar:

"Place your thumb on the underside of the guitar neck" (6). 

This tip is important to remember because the pressure from your thumb, I find, keeps your fingers close enough to the guitar at a comfortable position to press down on the strings to create a chord! When I first picked up a guitar and started strumming, my hand wasn't supporting my fingers and when I put my fingers on the strings, the sound was not pleasant. It turns out knowing the basics of a simple thumb placement is crucial to playing well! 

Now that we know where our fret-hand should be to help with our finger placement, Brewster gives tips on finger placement in order to get the correct sound. He explains that you should

Arch your fingers in order to not only make sure you can reach all the strings, but also because flat fingers could result in a muted sound of the string. Brewster adds that the pressure you use to push down on the strings should only be coming from your fingertips so that the sound quality is good and it doesn't press down on the string below it (6). 

This was a very stressful and complicated thing for me to get down, which seems ridiculous to me now because it's such a simple concept. Whenever I put my fingers on a string and strum, the sound would be dulled down. I realized I was using too much of my finger tip with not enough arch, so it's essential to keep those tips in mind when attempting to play chords. The first video shows a dulled and muted sound in result of pressing down flat on the strings instead of arched, which the second video shows, resulting in a proper sound of the chord you're playing.

So what do you guys think: Is learning the basics a waste of time or worth it? Would you rather just painfully work through your mistakes?

     Brewster, David M. Teach Yourself to Play Guitar. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2004. Print.