Small Hands Players -- What Do You Do To Compensate?

[KarlK]

There are guitar players with the perfect hands to play -- long flexible fingers sitting atop a thin non-fleshy palm, and a thumb that can easily hook over the top of the fretboard, while the remaining fingers can position themselves....well, virtually anywhere.

A player like, say, Nick Lowe.

And then there's me.

Short stubby fingers, thick palm, a stump of a thumb that when it tries to get over the top of the fret board, it only serves to buzz the low E string. And when I try play a barre A shape up the fretboard, my ring finger top knuckle is so small, I can barely get all three strings depressed. Same with my single index finger 2nd fret open A--tough to get that knuckle down. And then to play the blues hammer on with that A and the ringer up the on the 4th fret D string -- well, "struggle" is an understatement.

I hate my hands. Hate them.

So this is a thread for you stub handed people like me. How do you compensate?

......


Oh, all right-- you thin fingered maniacs can chime in too.

[TBman]

1 11/16 nut width, use a capo and/or get a short scale guitar, maybe 24 to 24 1/2".
I don't have really small hands, but I don't have piano hands either, yet I manage to play a classical with its wide neck and my folk with a 1.8" nut. My folk has a shorter scale and on my other guitars I like to use a capo whenever possible, but I will still play without one to keep my hand flexible and its strength up to par.

[kcnbys]

I feel your pain. I have never been able to hook my thumb around to cover bass notes, and struggle with "less than optimal guitar player hand size". I don't really do anything to compensate, I just make it work as best I can. A smaller nut-width is no major help to me. Interestingly enough, I actually prefer 1 3/4. I have to do bass notes with my middle finger sometimes. 90% of what I play, I can do fine, but that other 10% is definitely frustrating. You just have to do the very best you can with the tools God gave ya!

[jaymarsch]

I struggled a bit until I found the neck shape and scale length that are best for me. I agree with some of the suggestions given here - the use of the capo and possibly tuning down helps with ease of fingering so you do not use as much pressure.

Also the angle of the neck helps things tremendously for me. This is also why folks use a footstool or neck up device that helps keep the angle of the fret board friendlier so the hand does not have as much work to do to get in a good position.

I also know folks who play in altered and open tunings to take better advantage of open strings so they do not need to fret as many notes. Lots of ways to adjust depending on each guitarist's needs - size of hands, arthritis, hand and wrist injuries. Lots of folks have gotten creative to find what works for them.

Best of luck and keep at it!

Jayne

[creamburmese]

I have small hands too - it's frustrating. However if you have the patience, learning classical style helps a lot with reaching things (though personally I'm never going to be able to do thumb over unless I buy a guitar with a 1 5/8 neck).
Reaching your hand around the front of the guitar neck allows you to fret a lot more than if your palm is plastered against the back of the neck, though admittedly it feels really weird until you get used to it. I don't know if it's possible to do that without the neck pointed up though. Similarly for barre chords it helps to get creative - in addition to all the usual advice regarding trying different positions of barre fingers (move it more or less across the fretboard, roll it, weight it down in the direction of the bridge against the fret - that one works wonders for me especially if you have to have other fingers fretting at a stretch and you can't roll the barre-finger ) The other technique that works for me is to make the barre finger truly rigid and flat if you need the middle of the finger to be actively fretting...

[Bingoccc]

I have neither small hands nor long thin fingers. They're fairly large though. Having said that I've never been satisfied with the spread of my fretting hand. Two things that I have struggled with mightily are the G and D chop chords on a mandolin and playing a blues shuffle up the neck rather than across. I set about routinely doing stretching and strengthening exercises, especially with my fretting hand, while I watched TV. I just use one hand to stretch out and hold the fingers of the other hand. I also use each hand to provide resistance against the fingers of the other hand a I move them through their range, both for grip and spread. It has helped enormously. When my fingers are cupped, there is a noticeable difference between my fretting and non-fretting hand as to how wide I can spread my fingers. It takes time for the difference to become apparent but it clearly has helped.

[Fruitloop]

I have short and stubby fingers but I've never really had big problems apart from a few chords here and there (Bach's first prelude in C from the well tempered clavier comes to mind). My pinky is 60% of my ring finger and curled towards it. Long and skinny fingers aren't necessarily the best for the guitar in my opinion, look at Segovia for example.

The main thing is you have to practice, a lot. The reality is that hand sizes aren't that radically different. A big hand might reach an extra fret or 2 but even with my small hand with a curved pinky I can reach frets 1-5 comfortably with index-pinky. There's really not much I couldn't fret that a person with bigger hands could.

Sorry for the bad advice ha but that's just how it is really. Practice enough and you will manage just fine

[fitness1]

I have hands just like yours Karl and I love steel strings with 1 13/16 and 1 7/8 nuts and classicals with 52mm nuts!

As small as my hands are, the tips of my fingers are very flattened and I almost require the wide nut's string spacing to fit them in where they belong.

Shallow neck profiles help me a great deal, especially on the classicals.

[mchalebk]

I've started moving to 24" scale guitars. I will shortly be receiving a custom 12-string with 24" scale and 1.75" nut. I plan to order a matching 6-string with 1 11/16" nut and 24" scale.

[RustyZombie]

Though I don't have stubby fingers, I do have small hands for a guitarist. Certain stretches put a lot of strain on my wrist, especially. I eventually switched over to the classical way of holding the guitar because of it. It alleviated almost all of the strain, as well as other benefits.

However, if you go this route, you need something to hold the guitar at the correct angle. Footstools can cause lower back problems. The various guitar supports often have suction cups that can mar the finish and come loose without warning. What I found to be the simplest and most effective solution is to use a strap. But that usually means you will need to install a strap button.

[rick-slo]

Usually when the topic of small hands is brought up Muriel Anderson is mentioned. So here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETsDdX3S2c

If thumb wrapping does not work well with your hand size then don't bother with it. The ring finger A shape barre clearing the high E string is pretty difficult if your fingertip does not bend back very far - I never do it that way. There is plenty of stuff you can play without running into the relative few hand size limitations.

[softballbryan]

She has well developed finger stretches. I admire it.

[KarlK]

Originally Posted by mchalebk

I've started moving to 24" scale guitars. I will shortly be receiving a custom 12-string with 24" scale and 1.75" nut. I plan to order a matching 6-string with 1 11/16" nut and 24" scale.

My go to guitar is a Gibson J45 Standard, where the specs are 1.725 nut and 24 3/4 scale. See specs here.

http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Acou...ard/Specs.aspx

The neck profile is a reasonably thin curvature -- it's a lot easier to play that my Harmony Sovereign Jet Black, which I think has a baseball bat neck.

Still even on the J45 I can't get the curvature of my hand high enough off the fretboard to do certain chords smoothly, let alone do essential hammer ons.

Like this one.

http://www.jguitar.com/chordname?str...g1=0&string0=x

[Random1643]

There've been other AGF threads about this exact topic. In addition to this thread you could search and find some other ideas.

I have small hands and this has not been issue for me. I've never compared my hands with the hands of other players. I just play. So am trying to think about how I compensate. Not sure I can offer anything super useful.

~ +1 on shallow neck shapes and friendly nut widths.
~ Maybe explore open tunings, if you haven't already. Open D & G and other alternative tunings offer a lot of 2- and 3-note chord shapes that give you a great, full sound and offer a platform for a range of music genres.
~ Another thought is fingerstyle guitar. If this is not already a focus you might want to consider. With fingerstyle, a lot of what you do is fret the note with a finger on your (in my case) left hand, while your thumb or other finger on your other hand is just then playing that note.
~ One thing I've noticed over the years is that when I play barre chords I press the chord down just as I strum or pick the notes, then I release the fretting hand pressure. Even where I'm strumming a series of barre and other chords for, e.g., playing rhythm on a swing tune, I only apply left-hand pressure when I'm ready at that moment for the right hand to join in.

Good luck!

[wcap]

Larry Pattis has written posts here on the forum about small hand issues (and other hand issues). At one point he replied to a post of mine asking about good guitars for my daughter when she was younger and had smaller hands (actually, her hands are still much smaller than mine).

I recall him saying that in his opinion scale length was a very important factor. If I am recalling correctly, for him he felt that short scale length was more important than narrow necks.