1. Fingers Bruise Easily From Playing Guitar Video
2. Fingers Bruise Easily From Playing Guitar Music
3. Fingers Bruise Easily From Playing Guitar For Beginners
4. Fingers Bruise Easily From Playing Guitar Lessons
5. Fingers Bruise Easily From Playing Guitar Chords

A rigorous guitar playing session involves repeated stress to the hands and finger tips causing muscle, bone and nerve damage. This tingling, sharp sensation guitar players experience is from overuse and can be avoided with proper stretching and warming up/cooling down. Soak a cotton swab in rubbing alcohol and wipe your fingertips with it. Since the rubbing alcohol dehydrates your skin, it dries out your fingers and makes it easier to form calluses while you play. Even Eric Clapton used this trick before he played! Rubbing alcohol may also relieve some of the soreness you feel from playing guitar.

Fingers Bruise Easily From Playing Guitar Video

How to Play Guitar Power Chords

Guitarists need a lot of techniques for their proverbial toolbox. Few, though, are as important as the ever-useful power chord.

They are a staple of the rock genre. You'll find power chords featured front and center in more songs than you can probably name. Rock songs aren't the only place you'll find them, though.

Guitar Power Chords Chart

Jazz, rock, country, reggae -- you'll find power chords useful for every style of music. That is, if you learn how to use them to their greatest effect. We're getting ahead of ourselves, though. First, we'll need to define power chords and show you some of the basics.

What are Power Chords?

In essence, a power chord is a two note chord that is neither major nor minor. Savvy music theorists will note that this is because it only consists of the root and fifth notes of a given chord. Since the third is what determines if a chord is major or minor, power chords remain neutral.

Fingers Bruise Easily From Playing Guitar Music

There are plenty of ways to play them all. We'll start, though, by diving into the most common variation. Here's how it works...

Let's say you want to play a C power chord -- the C5 chord. You'd start by placing your first finger on the root note, 'C.' Head to the 5th string/3rd fret for this one. Now, we'll need our fifth, 'G.' You can find this on 4th string/5th fret. Play these two strings, and mute all the others.

Fingers Bruise Easily From Playing Guitar For Beginners

Hear that? It's a C power chord at its most basic. As we mentioned earlier, it has the 'C' sound, but doesn't swing major or minor. It will get the job done in situations that require a power chord, but try this next.

Keep your fingers in that original C5 position, but add your fourth finger to the 3rd string/5th fret. Hear the difference?

Your chord sounds stronger now, because you've taken the root note and doubled it. You can switch between these two styles of playing your C power chord, and even move this shape around the fretboard to form other power chords. Here's what we mean...

How to Play Guitar Power Chords

A5 Power Chord:

• Place your 1st finger on the 6th string/5th fret
• Place your 3rd finger on the 5th string/7th fret
• Place your 4th finger on the 4th string/7th fret
• Mute strings 1, 2, and 3

G5 Power Chord:

• Place your 1st finger on the 6th string/3rd fret
• Place your 3rd finger on the 5th string/5th fret
• Place your 4th finger on the 4th string/5th fret
• Mute strings 1, 2, and 3

D5 Power Chord:

• Place your 1st finger on the 5th string/5th fret
• Place your 3rd finger on the 4th string/7th fret
• Place your 4th finger on the 3rd string/7th fret
• Mute strings 1, 2, and 6

See how you can move that same basic shape to different locations to produce new power chords? That simplicity is part of the power chord's beauty, but it's not the only way you can choose to form such chords.

Let's go back to the C5 chord for example's sake...

C5 Power Chord -- Variation 1:

• Place your 1st finger on the 5th string/3rd fret
• Place your 2nd finger on the 1st string/3rd fret
• Place your 3rd finger on the 3rd string/5th fret
• Mute strings 2, 4, and 6

C5 Power Chord -- Variation 2:

• Place your 1st finger on the 2nd string/1st fret
• Place your 3rd finger on the 5th string/3rd fret
• Place your 4th finger on the 1st string/3rd fret
• Play string 3 open
• Mute strings 4 and 6

C5 Power Chord -- Variation 3:

• Place your 1st finger on the 4th string/5th fret
• Place your 4th finger on the 6th string/8th fret
• Mute strings 1, 2, 3, and 5

C5 Power Chord -- Variation 4:

• Place your 1st finger on the 6th string/8th fret
• Place your 2nd finger on the 2nd string/8th fret
• Place your 3rd finger on the 1st string/8th fret
• Mute strings 3, 4, and 5

As you can see, these variations differ in their placement on the fretboard. The similarity, though, is the fact that they all contain but two notes: 'C' and 'G.'

Once your knowledge of the fretboard increases, you'll be able to find combinations like this for different power chords in different areas all around your guitar.

E5 Power Chord

For the last of our power chords, we'll be sticking to two fingers. Come back to the top of the guitar neck for this one:

• Place your 1st finger on the 5th string/2nd fret.
• Place your 2nd finger on the 4th string/2nd fret.
• Play string 6 open.
• Mute strings 1, 2, and 3.

Wrapping Up

You can play such chords with ease using the rudimentary fingering we covered at the beginning of this lesson.

With time, you'll discover new fingering patterns for all your power chords. Use these as the situation calls for, and you'll find your playing improve to a degree you might never have thought possible.

Next Lesson:

Along with pianists and violinists, guitarists are one of the most vulnerable musicians to hand injuries. Guitarists frequently develop repetitive strain injury and tendonitis (tendinitis/tendinitides) that may coexist with compression nerve syndromes because of non functional posture and positioning of the upper extremities during long-term practice and performance. Musicians aren’t generally known for their athletic prowess, but it is physical exertion all the same.

Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) (also known as overuse injury) is an injury of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems that may be caused by repetitive tasks, forceful exertions, vibrations, mechanical compression (pressing against hard surfaces), or sustained or awkward positions. Here is the list of 5 most common guitar related hand injuries.

1. Nerve compression syndromes:

A. Carpal tunnel syndrome:
Carpal tunnel syndrome very often occurs in stringed guitarists and other stringed instrument musicians who use to play with their wrists in excessive flexion. The medical reason behind this injury is the compression of median nerve in carpal tunnel in the wrist leading to complaints like tingling, pain, numbness or discomfort in the lateral 3 and 1/2 fingers.
Further Reading: To understand more about carpal tunnel syndrome

B. Cubital tunnel syndrome:
This syndrome is caused due to ulanr nerve entrapment as the nerve passes through the anatomical structure called cubital tunnel in the elbow region and will usually only involve the fingers with ulnar nerve supply i.e. medial 1 and 1/2 fingers (ring and pinky). This is the same nerve that causes the tingling sensation when you hit in elbow. It frequently affects your fretting fingers (i.e, in left hand for right handed guitarists and vice versa). Since, both carpal tunnel syndrome and cubital tunnel syndrome are nerve compression syndromes, they involve common complaints along the region of nerve supply.

However, cubital tunnel syndrome is not as common as carpal tunnel syndrome.

2. Tendonitis:
Tendonitis/Tendinits refers to the inflammation of tendons and guitarists commonly get it in their wrists leading to tightness of muscle, connective tissue constriction and pain. This is called wrist tendonitis and it is caused due to friction and strain produced due to overuse of the wrist muscles. If you get it due to long hours and bad posture during guitar practice, you may call it guitar tendonitis.

3. Tennis elbow:
Tennis elbow, also known as lateral epicondylitis, is an inflammatory process located in the outside part of the elbow (the thumb side of the elbow). The main symptoms include pain on the outside edge of the elbow, pain when gripping especially while extending the hand at the wrist. In guitarists, the main cause leading to this injury is over-practicing and putting extra pressure on fret board than necessary.

4. Focal dystonia:
Focal or functional dystoniae are painless, stereotypic, localized movements encountered in some professional groups of patients that perform many times per minute the same tasks. Several fingers on a musician’s hand just curl up and stop responding. The management of patients with focal dystoniae is challenging.

5. Arthritis
Arthritis is the wear and tear of joints, for guitarists this could be frequently in the hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder. It usually occur at the carpometacarpal joint of the thumb and may lead to instability. The most common case is osteoarthritis where joints get worn down through overuse and begin grinding against each other.

How to prevent guitar related injuries?

Most of the times its already too late when you realize that playing guitar can cause injuries and it can be prevented easily.

1. Warm and stretch your fingers for some time with easier stretches and motions before playing complicated and swift ones. During winters you can try warming up your arms and hands with a warm water soak or shower.
2. Don’t hang your guitar too low so that you need to flex your wrist more. Metal guitarists may look and encourage you but this type of playing style encourages injuries. Learn the basics correctly from reputable teachers, be it offline or online.
3. Avoid practicing and performing for lengthy period of time and take breaks in between.
4. Always try and keep your wrist as straight as comfortably possible.
5. Icing 20-30 minutes after prolonged effort will reduce inflammation and reduce potential damage.
6. You can use ergonomic guitar and pick
7. If you experience pain, swelling, or weakness then stop playing and seek advice from doctor.
8. Taking plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration
9. Getting ample sleep

Treatment:

Fingers Bruise Easily From Playing Guitar Lessons

Hand and upper extremity disorders of the musicians should not be treated surgically and guitarists are no exception. Surgery should always be considered a last resort. Treatment may involve:

Fingers Bruise Easily From Playing Guitar Chords

1. Physical therapy
2. Psychological support
3. Rest
4. Use of braces
5. Use of medicines, ice, vitamis, essential fatty acids, etc.
6. Use of muscle gel or deep heat