Muting strings when practicing chords


tangelosante
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Joined: 03/25/20
Posts: 5
tangelosante
Registered User
Joined: 03/25/20
Posts: 5
08/06/2020 7:24 pm

Anytime I'm practicing chords that use three fingers, I'm noticing I'm muting at least one string. It's very hard to get fingers as close to that frets as possible. I notice this especially with the A chord. How do I fix this? Any exercises I can do?


# 1
Guitar Tricks Admin
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Joined: 09/28/05
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Guitar Tricks Admin
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Joined: 09/28/05
Posts: 3,476
08/06/2020 11:43 pm

Hi there,

This is an interesting questions because everyone struggles with this. If you're play an A major open chord, then you only have to hold the three notes across the D, G and B strings.

If you play them with y our 1, 2 and 3 finger, it should be alright. Are you saying that you are muting the high E string, or the A string?

And again, for the sake of learning, I would not put too much pressure on yourself to play it perfectly without muting one or two strings in the process. The important thing is that you can move your fingers in time, to place them on the notes that create the chord. The important thing is to be holding the right notes, everything else will come later as you get more comfortable playing.

-Billy


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# 2
Herman10
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Joined: 12/04/19
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Herman10
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Joined: 12/04/19
Posts: 318
08/07/2020 12:04 am

Other and better fingering for the A chord is ( I play it like this all my live already ) ringfinger 2nd fret 2nd string, index finger 2nd fret 3rd string and middle finger on the 2nd fret 4th string, this makes all the grip smaller and way lesser chance at muting unwanted strings and it makes it way easier to change to a D or E chord since you only have to move 2 fingers instead of all 3

Herman


# 3
dbvirago
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Joined: 05/17/20
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dbvirago
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Joined: 05/17/20
Posts: 22
08/07/2020 12:38 am

I've been playing for three months now. A was my second chord.

By now, I can nail C, G, G7, D, Dm, D7, Am, E, Em and make them perfectly and change between them without missing a beat.

But I still struggle with the A. Getting better, but it's a tough one.


# 4

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