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Home Archives for jeanw

5 Helpful Hints for Perfect Guitar Nails

May 7, 2015 By jeanw 3 Comments

Guitar Nails - How Long?Guitar Nails: How Long?

One of the Worship Guitar Class students asked how to get a clear sound when holding down guitar chords. I decided to make a video for everyone about guitar nails and what’s a good length for guitar fingernails. If your guitar nails are too long, it’s near impossible to get a clear clean chord.

On the hand that holds down chords, your fingernails should be very short. Only the pads of your fingers should be touching the strings. You want to come directly down on the strings so no other string is damped.

The guitar nails of the hand plucking the strings are best, in my opinion, when they are quite short. Watch the short video below for closeup shots of my favorite lengths for guitar nails. You can hear the difference when tapping your fingers on an object, like the music stand in the video. You should not hear the  nail sound on the hand that holds down strings.

 

5 Helpful Tips For Perfect Guitar Nails

In summary:

  1. Your left-hand nails should be short. When tapping them, only the pads of your fingers should touch the table, etc.
  2. Your right-hand nails are best when they are short, but slightly protruding over the finger pads. Watch the video above to see how to find the perfect length.
  3. Use a good emery board to smooth the ends of your guitar playing hand so there are no rough edges that can snag on the strings.
  4. In my opinion, the perfect length for the hand playing the strings, is when you tap on a object your fingers touch both the pad and nail.
  5. When plucking a string, it sounds richest to use the pad and nail at the same time. Especially on classical guitars, the sound is much fuller then only using your nails to play.

For step-by-step lessons:

JW Worship Guitar Class Lessons

Step-by-step guitar lessons for learning to play worship songs on your guitar. Click here to Learn More

Filed Under: Guitar Technique, Thoughts

3 Common Guitar Playing Mistakes

June 27, 2014 By jeanw Leave a Comment

 

Sometimes just subtle changes can make a huge difference between pain and no pain or getting a clear chord vs. a buzzing chord. Here are 3 things you can change today that can help a lot with your guitar playing skills.

1. Are Your Nails Short Enough For Holding Down The Guitar Strings?

Guitar NailsThis is a common mistake that’s easy to fix. Many guitar players don’t realize how short your nails need to be. I’m talking about the left hand nails, or for the hand the holds down the guitar strings. As you can see the picture, you should be able to see finger padding right above the nails. A caution for those with a nail quick that is right at the edge of your finger. Don’t trim past the quick.

You can trim your nails with nails scissors or clippers, then use a nail file to even it out and trim a bit more.

My nails grow pretty fast and need to be trimmed every week. Once they start to grow, it’s harder to get the notes on the guitar clear. Your nails can get in the way. That make it difficult to hold down the notes without buzzing because the nail instead of your finger padding can be touching the strings.

This also makes it more difficult to get clean slides or hit on and pull offs when your nails are too long. I do like short nails for plucking the strings of the guitar, but no nails for holding down strings over the fingerboard.

2. Are You Playing With Too Much Tension?

This is a huge mistake I see in most guitar players. For example, at a Christian Guitar Convention several years ago, I was surprised to find only 2 students out of the classes I was teaching with relaxed technique. Did you know, for example, that you do not have to hold the strings down to the wood? You just need to hold the strings down to the frets.

Kids, in general, need to hold down the strings harder, but a lot of adults don’t. One of the ways to test if you are using too much tension is to see if you can completely relax the fingers you are not using. This applies to both hands.

In the classes, I went to each student and touched their right hand in the finger picking position above the guitar strings. Your fingers should be completely relaxed. It’s odd, but relaxing your shoulders and face actually helps you to relax your fingers.

After graduating from USC in Guitar Performance, I found that after playing 10 hours in a day, there was no hand fatigue at all. Playing with a relaxed technique was drilled into me by some of the teachers there. It really makes a big difference.

3. Do You Warm Up First?

Instead of just playing songs, if you work on changing chords better or finger exercises first, you’ll make faster progress. If there is a song with a chord change you find hard. Isolate just the chord change and play it over and over by itself. It’s also a great idea to warm up with guitar scales or exercises. For example, here are a couple good Guitar Technique Exercises you might like to try.

 

JW Worship Guitar Class Lessons

Step-by-step guitar lessons for learning to play worship songs on your guitar. Click here to Learn More

Filed Under: Guitar Technique Tagged With: guitar hands, guitar tecnique

Jesus At The Center

April 7, 2014 By jeanw Leave a Comment

Jesus At The Center is newer song by Israel Houghton, and two others. Hillsong picked it up and it has become very popular in lots of churches. I love this song too, and have made you a couple guitar arrangements with strumming and finger picking patterns. The first arrangement is in the key of ‘A’ and the 2nd is a bit easier in the key of ‘G’.

Here are a couple small screen shots:

JesusAtCenterWords

JesusAtCenterStrumGet instant access to both videos and the PDF music for just $10.00 

Add to cart$10.00

Filed Under: Our Guitar Courses, Song Arrangements

Prayer Journal

December 30, 2013 By jeanw Leave a Comment

prayerJournalFrontpicWebA prayer journal is a great way to keep track of your prayers and especially the answers. In the Scriptures, the writers are constantly remembering the miracles God performed. It’s good for us to keep a consistent record of His faithfulness too. Here is a book I’ve written that can help you in this endeavor.

Personal Prayer Journal

The ‘Personal Prayer Journal’ book can be a tool to make it easy to record and write down prayer requests and answered prayers. The book has three sections. They are as follows:

Personal Prayer Journal Sections

1. Calendar Section 2. Daily Praise & Prayer Requests 3. Answered Prayers

There are places to add the dates in this ‘Personal Prayer Journal’ so the Calendars can start on any month of the year. If you start a book in the middle of the year, simple start the calendar section from that month.

The Daily Praise and Prayer Requests also have a place to add the date you start. This 8.5″ by 5.5″ book is small enough to fit in most purse and easy to take with you. When items come up that you want to remember to pray about, add it to the appropriate section. Then you can remember to pray for your friends and issues that are important to you. With 125 pages, there is plenty of room to write down your prayer requests and answers.

In my prayer group, we love to take a day to thank God for all of the answered prayers at the end of each year. He is faithful and using a book makes it easy to remember his faithfulness.


New ‘Personal Prayer Journal’. Retail $9.99 on Sale $7.95

Add to cartPersonal Prayer Journals – $7.95

 

Filed Under: Articles, Thoughts Tagged With: prayer journal

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