How To Play Something Impossible On Guitar
Do you want to do the ‘impossible’ on guitar?
Do you want to overcome things that you think can’t be done?
Do you want to play songs you never thought you could?
Well, I have lots of advice for how you can do this, but I want to start with the most important one.
Remove the word ‘impossible’ from your vocabulary
It should be obvious that to do something impossible, you can’t think that it’s impossible.
(Reread that slowly)
Too many people completely hamstring themselves by living in the safety net of “that’s too hard, I’ll never be able to do it.”
Guess what? You’re exactly right, as long as you continue to think like that.
If you give yourself permission to believe you can play anything you want, only then will you actually have a shot to do the things you truly want to do.
Alright, enough motivational speaking (half of you do not even believe a word of it anyway).
I want to give you some tips based on real examples of guitar players who are doubting themselves and believing that certain things are impossible.
And these “impossible” things are resolved immediately.
Do you know what isn’t impossible? (Not that anything is, but this definitely isn’t impossible) Learning chords all over the fretboard of your guitar. If you want to expand your knowledge of chords on harmony on guitar, check out my Complete Chord Mastery guitar course
Transcription
Hello, internets Nice to see you today I’m going to show you how to do the impossible on guitar. Lately on YouTube, I’ve been receiving a number of comments saying some things on the guitar are completely impossible outside the realm of human possibilities. So let’s go and see what people think it’s impossible. And let’s see how we can solve these. In a very short amount of time,
I realized that what Mr. Music Theory for guitar is telling us is that there is no easy way to know this stuff. And you have to put a lot of work into it to get anything out of it.
That’s a question on learning the notes on the fretboard. And let me tell you, there is a very easy way to learn all the notes on your fretboard. But it’s not impossible. And the very easy way is practice the exercises in that video, five minutes a day, five minutes a day, five minutes a day. It’s not impossible. Everybody who said that this is impossible is because they haven’t tried.
Before you know it happens a lot more slowly for some of us than others. I’ve owned guitars for over 20 years, and I can’t do this.
I am fond to say it’s when you practice something, the result happened before you know it. I am fond of that. Because it’s true. If you practice something, if you practice anything on your guitar and you practice the correct way and you practice consistently, result happen before you know it. There is a problem though, it’s not enough to own a guitar.
And then know, I may be sarcastic here. But you can own a guitar for 20 years. If you don’t practice it consistently and correctly. There are those two conditions consistently and correctly, you’re not going anywhere. Now, why? Because if you don’t practice consistently, okay, people always try to practice at high intensity.
So they try to get the hardest thing they can play the fastest thing they can play the more complex thing that they can play. That’s our recipe for disaster, scaled down intensity, practice the easy stuff, but practice them consistently every day, every day, few minutes.
But every day, and this is going to take you far I know this is the advice that nobody wants to hear and advice and nobody gives you on YouTube because I know that half of you right now are turning off the video, because that’s not what you want to hear.
But that’s the reality few minutes a day, few minutes a day of of practicing on every specific topic and keep it easy, and you’ll go wherever you want to go. And that’s consistent in that correctly. Okay, you have to do those movements in a correct way in a relaxed way, and practice the correct way.
There are a lot of things going on into correct practice. You guys can write in the comment if you want suggestion, or I can give you contacts with other guitar teachers who do spare they specialize in guitar technique. I personally recommend my friend Mike Filippov. Okay, who’s great and technique, you follow?
The advice do you do you practice consistently and correctly, nothing can stop you and the result will come? Before you even know it.
My experience vibrato cannot be practiced. It’s a personal trait.
In my experience, vibrato is a personal trait that like every personal trait can be practiced and perfected. No body has a great vibrato from the outset simply because the motion that we need to have to create a good vibrato, vibrato, in my opinion, of course, okay, I’m not natural, you practically never move the hand in that specific way with that amount of strength pulling on something.
So you need to practice it. Once your hand is conditioned to do this movement, and you can do this movement reliably without too much effort because you know how to do it, then your personality will shine through there is no there is no other way.
I mean, it’s you cannot play a vibrato it doesn’t feel okay. It’s not going to happen. But of gift to practice for that, okay, no more than less than anything else. Okay. It’s like I don’t know. You can learn how to draw. It’s a personal expression, but every time you study how to draw something, okay? You grow better.
You can learn how to drive your car it’s a personal expression different people drive in different way angry people drive an angry ways, people driving colorways and so on and so forth. But of course you are not born knowing how to drive car and you’re not born knowing how to make nobody How to know Lincoln my broccoli essentially okay.
So, it is a personal expression that is doesn’t mean you cannot train it. It doesn’t mean that you have it at the outset when you start learning guitar. Studying vibrato making your vibrato better. It’s not impossible, it’s actually very natural. It’s what I do every day, guys. And in my experience, I see people that when they get the exercises on how to practice or a rattle video in, you can find the link of the video on top right, that when you guys get that everybody improves, improves really fast.
And then they get the vibrato, they actually feel not the limited thing that hand can do at the beginning.
There are tools specifically designed to stretch the tendons in the hands, so you can actually do the spot sign, etc. Most people cannot stretch the fingers in the way you do in this video, think of stretching tools or lazy persons means to do everything you’ve demonstrated.
Man, the person cannot stretch their hands this way. So you’re telling me that it’s impossible for those people to stretch their hands this way. But let me tell you one thing, when I started, I couldn’t. Now before you go and get hurt, do not use any of those infernal tools, okay?
That stretch your fingers, or those incredibly horrible things that we do the springs where you strengthen your fingers by pushing on the springs, those things are more likely to hurt your hands than doing anything else. Okay, the stretching of your fingers, like the Spock position, and everything else I show in that video, in the video on finger independence, it needs to be done under your hand on power.
At the beginning, nothing will happen over the interview, we’d be there and we try to separate those fingers and nothing will happen. You can use the other hand to help you separate those fingers and just hold them in position.
Like I said at the beginning of this video, not intensity, but consistency, okay, consistency, not intensity, you should not start doing these 100 times a day in the first day, you’re gonna get hurt, just get there in position, and hold it for 10 seconds, and then do it the same tomorrow and over and over before you know it, you’re gonna gain control of the fingers and you’re gonna be able to move them in ways you never thought possible before, okay, like independently of semi independently.
But they you need to move your hands under their own power, otherwise, you risk hurting them, okay, you cannot have a machine or a tool or machine those fingers for you in strange ways you’re gonna get hurt. It will take some time. But good news, there are two pieces of good news and really no bad news.
The first piece of good news is that you can play guitar even before you have all these kinds of finger independence. This helps, but it’s not necessary. And the second is it doesn’t matter our tangled are all your tendons right now. I mean, unless you’ve got an injury and you’re paralyzed, but except for death.
It doesn’t matter how much you think though your your tendons do not work for you. The other thing is to not move this way. You have to build it up gradually. And when you build it up gradually, consistently every day, you’re gonna go way further than you thought possible and it’s gonna happen before you know it. Just do it.
Great. Yet another man with man size hands complete ignoring the fact that those of us with Double X chromosomes have tiny hands compared to even small men’s hands. My hands are the size of a child and no, that doesn’t give me some advantage while playing.
I physically cannot reach the strings because my palm is too short to wrap around the neck of the guitar. That is a measurement that matters and I’m sick to death of men gaslighting me about it.
So you’re telling me I have been handsplaining guitar? It’s possible. I’m not saying No, I haven’t seen all the hands of all the people in the world. But my hands are fairly small for being an adult, Caucasian male with Italian technically made that mean they’re not really that big.
I practically everybody plays an instrument that has bigger than mine. I mean, I can show you can you can you hold your hand out Gesture your hands on screen? Good. I mean, I don’t know if you can see a difference but Kamil send a giant respect to mine. Okay. Thank you, Kamil. Kamil, is the guy reading the comments?
Okay, so, and I’ve taught a number of people that have small hands, okay. Some of them were male. Some of them were girls, some of them were kids. I have seen a lot of kids just sitting down taking it easy and gradually consistently getting to be able to play a full size guitar with no problem.
Now you say in your comments that you cannot get your hand to wrap around the neck. You should not have your hand wrapped around the neck. The correct position that I explained that video is to put the thumb behind the neck rather than wrapping it around.
If you wrap it around your fingers I’m not gonna get any extension. This is good for other things like lean fiber I thought okay or banned for this kind of thing, but whenever you want extension, okay, you have to put your your thumb has to go down. Okay, this way your wrist has to bend a little bit, and then you can get more extension I explained in detail in that video.
But again, who am I to know maybe, for some reason you cannot do that maybe, maybe it’s truly impossible for you, maybe the genetic lottery was completely unfair to you. And your fingers are not only small, but they have no lateral movement. And there is no way you can do that. Let’s assume that he has my recommendation.
Get a three quarter guitar that’s still an adult guitar. I know it doesn’t look like an adult guitar. It’s a three quarter the length of the strings. It’s three quarters in normal length of a guitar of a full size guitar. The frets are closer by the string size slightly closer by two and so this is way easier to play for people with small hands. Okay.
So if hand size is a problem for you, and all the advice I give you is completely null and void and unusable and who knows maybe even sexist, I don’t know. Get a smaller guitar if you really want to play if you really want to play nothing can stand in your way get a smaller guitar and learn how to play on a smaller guitar and maybe later try again on a bigger guitar and see if your hands or B are more fragile and then you can play it but if not no problem these more guitar sounds beautiful anyway, there’s no problem nothing can nothing should stop you if you really want to play. If you practice gradually and consistently every day you’re gonna get there before you know it.