Norgz94

My grandfather recently got a guitar. An epiphone acoustic. I'm trying to teach him, but he's having trouble because his fingers are really thick and they take up two strings. I'm pretty sure from the looks of his guitar, it does have jumbo frets. I did suggest he should try an acoustic bass since the strings are more spaced out but that means he won't be able to play his favourite genre of music (criolla) due to the fact those songs don't have bass. So what should i suggest to him? How could i fix the problem?

GoldenGuitar

Two words: Andrés Segovia.

Hydra150

ftfy

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hemiola

Practice is always beneficial.

Hydra150

My brother is 25 and his fat fingers cover two strings. His fingers arent that fat though, he just can't play guitar yet - if he stuck at it he'd be able to. I have a guitarist friend with hands like a gorilla and he can play alright.

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shredder1980

It's the opposite problem of many female players and children. In that they have trouble holding down barre chords etc because their hands are often on the small side. They then believe they can't do it as a result.

This is BS and the only remedy is constant practice. With time the hands/fingers will re-position themselves to avoid unwanted muting. Tell him to keep at it daily.

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Zaphod_Beeblebr

Exactly this.

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Junior#1

The more he plays, the better he will get. Lot's of people make up excuses claiming "my fingers are too short" or "my fingers are too fat" or "my entire left arm was amputated due to a farming accident". Blah, blah, blah. No matter what your issue is, there are others out there with the same problem or worse who have worked around it and become incredible guitarists. Django Reinhardt only had use of 2 of his finger and he was still amazing. Tony Iommi lost his finger tips and replaced them with caps and he's still a master. Jeff Healey was blind but was still an absolutely phenomenal player. And Shawn Lane had the tiniest of hands, but he's still regarded by many as the greatest guitarist who has ever lived. Plus there are some people out there who don't have arms and have learned to play with their feet.

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