Guitar: G without pinky: An Open Learning Guide

This article is only intended for guitar players who have already learned a little guitar and have perhaps learned a chord (especially G major) with a different fingering.

Unfortunately, people who are changing their way of playing the guitar often have problems playing G major with their little finger ("I've always played it like this, why should I play it differently...").

New learners, on the other hand, have much less trouble learning G major with the little finger. For them, every chord is difficult anyway. They don't even notice that G major should be more difficult than any other chord. It does represent a small hurdle, and you may have to make do with a slightly imprecise chord for a few days, but it rarely takes more than two weeks (or two lessons) to master G major. And after three weeks you'll wonder what the problem actually was. But once you've mastered G major with the little finger, I can guarantee that you'll pass the campfire and folk diplomas. Future lessons (including melody picking, solo playing, other chords with the little finger) will also be easier because the little finger has been trained right from the start.

If you can already play the guitar a little, you may have looked in other books and noticed that the G major chord can be played in a different way. It will often happen that a book or a guitar player plays a chord differently than the one taught in this course.

The G major chord can also be played without the little finger. We can only hope that no one is now thinking "Why didn't they tell you that right away, it's so much easier!" This chord may be easier to play at first, but this supposed convenience comes at a high price.

Switch from the G major chord to the chords C, D and later F major as well as E and A minor.

With some chord changes, you will not notice any significant advantage or disadvantage. But with many other fingering changes, the disadvantage will be very noticeable. The change between G major and C major will be shown below, sometimes with one fingering and sometimes with the other.

With the first, more advantageous grip change, the fingers only have to move a little. With the second, supposedly "easier" grip, however, a kind of mass migration occurs.

The grips with the supposedly more comfortable fingerings may "work" for the first time, but sooner or later you will simply not be able to progress any further and will remain at a modest level because you will no longer be able to increase your own speed when changing. But even if you can change quickly enough, it will be much more difficult to follow the lessons in this course. Because a lot of things simply build on one another.

Switching to other grips is in most cases more ergonomic and therefore easier, faster and smoother with the pinky-variant.

Source and licence

Text adapted from Guitar/G without pinky by Wikibooks contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.