5 Helpful Hints for Perfect Guitar Nails

May 7, 2015 By jeanw 3 Comments

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:

Your left-hand nails should be short. When tapping them, only the pads of your fingers should touch the table, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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

5 Steps to Blossoming People

April 28, 2015 By admin

How to Blossom People

A number of years ago, I took a class at my church that was for all of the Sunday School Teachers. It was how to teach anything to anyone based around a book by Bruce Wilkinson called The 7 Laws of the Learner: How To Teach Almost Anything to Practically Anyone. He is such a fine Bible Teacher and writer! You may have read his books The Prayer of Jabez or Secrets of the Vine.

Probably my favorite Chapter was on how to blossom people. Bruce shares 5 steps in his book. I’ve consciously thought about them and have seen what a huge impact they make!

For example, I had a teenage guitar student that wasn’t practicing. I caught him doing something well, and went through the 5 steps. The following week he came back prepared to learn. It was like night and day. People need to know that you care and that you believe in them.

Here are the 5 Steps

Notice when people do good things.
Tell them what they did.
Tell them how you feel about what they did. (You were proud, excited, etc.)
Take it out to the future. Paint a picture of what they are becoming.
Seal it with a hug, a touch, or even a nod. Whatever is appropriate.

The first step just involves being aware of when someone does something that is helpful or when they have a breakthrough. An example for teachers would be to notice when a student plays something well.

Step two is to tell them what they did. For example, “Your chord changes are getting much faster!”

Step three is to tell them how that makes you feel. “I’m so proud of how you are progressing.”

Step four is to give them a future vision. “I bet you’ll be a fine worship leader some day!”

Step five is to end with a hug, touch, or big smile. What ever is appropriate.

Try blossoming the people around you today!

JW Worship Guitar Class for Kids

Step-by-step guitar lessons for kids. Click here to Learn More

Prayer Journal

December 30, 2013 By jeanw Leave a Comment

A 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.

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Personal Prayer Journals – $7.95

Your Questions 1

December 22, 2012 By jeanw 8 Comments

Answers To Your Questions:

Do you have a question? Email us, or leave it in the comments below this video and I’ll try to answer those that may be helpful for others too. Here’s a short video with a question from Del and Bonnie.

Del wanted to know how to figure out the key of a song that has already started. I suggest making sure the instruments lead out so the songs will be in the same key as the music. If that isn’t possible, then ear training and knowing guitar music theory will definitely help.

Answering Your Guitar Playing Questions

He is also asking about playing without looking at the sheet music. That happens when you ‘own’ a song… when you’ve played it so much you no longer need the music. Again, knowing guitar music theory will be helpful here too since you’ll actually understand the relationship of the chords to the song.

Bonnie wanted to know about transposing songs… [Read more…]