[Satans Mother]

I am on week 4 (I think) of learning to play and I have very nice calluses on my fingers, however!! I am having problems getting the F chord to ring true. The part of my finger I use for the E and B strings is just not tough enough as I don't seem to use it very much when practicing the other chords I know.
Does anyone have any exercises or tips I can try to toughen up my skin on the still soft parts of my fingers.
Thank you!
xxx

[felixdcat]

Roll the finger to the boney side. You'll get calluses there with time, too.

[allthumbs]

4 weeks isn't long when it comes to learning to play. Some people take many months to get a clean F and Bb chord down at the nut. Your doing fine. It will come with time and practice.

[Satans Mother]

Thanks!
(Deep down I knew it would be "keep at it", but I'm always after a quick shortcut!)
What about a bit of sandpaper?

[Aunt Doty]

I have a very crooked index finger d/t arthritis so I have to turn my finger sideways to hold those 2 strings down. Also I've found that because it is crooked that sometimes it's easier to bar the whole first fret with the index finger. When I do it that way my F chord sounds much cleaner!

[coldethyl]

Speaking from my own experience, I find that since I play every day the fleshy part of my fretting fingers are nice and hard. But as I've discovered in the past, if I don't play for a while, my fingertips soften and so when I grab the guitar again, it hurts like hell for a while until the tips of my fingers toughen up again.

So based on what I have experienced, my advice would be to make sure you try and get some playing time every day and eventually your fingertips will toughen up. Just takes a bit of time and patience!

[karcey]

To Aunt Doty,
After reading your post I've suddenly discovered a new way to play the F chord which has always been muddy. Thank you.

[IainMYamaha]

Took me two years to play a (halfway) decebt Bflat - FMaj came sooner - hang on in there

[jdpaz]

My fingers have never gotten calloused there. Just roll your finger toward the nut like felix said.

[Satans Mother]

Miraculously, the F chord is ringing really quite nicely this week!! (No idea how that happened!!) I tried your tip Aunt Doty but I couldn't make it ring, am rolling onto the bony part of my finger and practice appears to be making perfect!!
I am practicing at least 15 mins every day (lovely way to start the day before heading to work!!) and if I ever get off this interweb, I'll practice some more!!
Thanks for the tips and encouragement.
xxx

[felixdcat]

I have a question. Do you have same way of playing F major and F minor? There's a way I can do it, but I prefer playing F using slightly different technique, which makes it a lot easier. What I do is use less of my index finger, so there's no boney side on the G string, which is then covered with the ring finger.

Hope I make sense .