The Steve Stine Podcast is about more than just music — it’s about life, faith, and finding meaning in the everyday. Join Steve as he shares honest stories from decades of experience as a musician, educator, husband, father, and believer navigating the highs and lows of life. Each episode offers heartfelt conversations about purpose, spirituality, personal growth, and staying inspired — even when life gets messy or uncertain.
Whether you’re picking up a guitar, walking through a season of change, or just looking for encouragement to keep going, you’ll find something here to lift your spirit. With special guests, personal reflections, and real-world insights, this podcast is for anyone seeking a deeper connection to their creativity, their calling, and their faith.
Your guitar shouldn’t feel like a hand-strength contest, but a lot of players unknowingly make it one. We dig into the fastest ways to make guitar easier to play, starting with the stuff most people ignore: guitar setup, string action, and string gauge. If your strings sit too high or your neck hasn’t been adjusted in years, you’ll work harder for every note. And if your string gauge is heavier than it needs to be, bar chords and scales can feel brutal for no good reason.
From there, we get into the technique that changes everything: learning the “feather light” fretting pressure point. We talk through how to find the minimum pressure needed for a clean note, why pressing harder is just wasted energy, and how placing your finger closer to the fret instantly improves clarity. This is one of the simplest guitar practice habits that can reduce tension, improve speed, and help you play longer without fatigue.
We also break down bar chord mechanics in a practical way: thumb pressure, relaxed grip, wrist placement, and the subtle elbow rotation that helps you use the side of your index finger for a cleaner barre. If you’ve been frustrated with buzzing chords, cramped hands, or slow chord changes, these small adjustments can make a big difference fast. Subscribe for more guitar lessons, share this with a friend who’s stuck on bar chords, and leave a review with the one technique change you’re going to try first.
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Hey, this is Steve Stein from Guitar Zoom Academy, and today we're going to be talking about some things that you can do to make your playing easier on your guitar, whether it's scales, bar chords, anything like that. So let's start off with a few things I think are really necessary that you might not have thought of before. Number one is guitar setup and string gauge. Okay. If you have a guitar that's, you know, maybe older or something like that and hasn't been set up in a really long time, one thing that you could do is bring it into a reputable guitar store and have them adjust the guitar neck. If the strings are a lot farther away from the neck than they than they need to be, it makes it harder for you to play because you have to push that much harder to get the strings onto the neck. Some guitars are great, but if you don't know, you don't know. So it's worth looking into whether or not you can get those strings a little bit closer to the neck
to make it easier for you to play. The other thing that can make a significant difference is the string size or the string gauge. Now, again, you have an acoustic guitar, you have an electric guitar, whatever it might be. Maybe you don't know what gauge string is on there. If you go to a lighter set of strings, and again, a reputable guitar store will be able to tell you what you have on there and be able to suggest something a little bit thinner. The problem with all of this stuff, like guitar, string, gauge, and things like that, is people will tell you things like, Well, if you go to a lighter set, you're gonna lose some tone. What difference does tone make if you can't play the guitar? You need to make the guitar comfortable for you to play and then worry about tone later. You can always go to a thicker set once you, you know, accomplish the things that you're trying to do on the guitar, or not. It's not like everybody on the planet plays super thick guitar strings. They don't. You have to find something that's a balance between comfort and tone. And in the beginning stages, it's very important that it feels good to you. So a thinner string can make a really, really big difference. A good setup can make a really big difference. Worst case scenario, you have a guitar that just doesn't play very well. You know, you can go into a guitar store again, find a reputable guitar store, somewhere that you trust, and go in and try a couple of different guitars, try a couple of electrics or a couple of acoustics, and find something that feels better in your hands. Just because you have a guitar doesn't mean it's the right guitar. I'm not telling you you got to go out and buy something brand new. I'm just saying it's it's worth looking into. Okay? So that's the first thing. The second thing is I want you to be thinking about once you have this guitar that's set up nice and feels comfortable, your approach to playing, okay? When you go to play things like a bar chord, for instance, okay, what you want to get used to is figuring out where that touch point is, where if you press any harder, you're just wasting energy. And if you press any less, you don't get any sound. And so everything that you do in the guitar, whether it's scales or chords, you want to find that that
point, that feather-light point to where when you're pressing, you're getting the sound that you want. If you pressed any harder, you're just wasting energy. And you have to work at that. And an easy way to do that is just starting off by playing single notes. You might just go to the guitar
and play something, and then figure out like try and get as close as you can to the next oncoming fret. You know, don't be way back here, because it's gonna make it hard to play. Always get as close as you can without getting on top of that fret. And then figure out where that point is where if you press any less, you're gonna lose sound. Right there. That means any harder I press isn't doing any good. It's not making it any better. I'm just wasting energy. So that's the next thing to start figuring out is where is that point? The other thing is start thinking about your grip. When you go to play, you know, is your thumb over the top? Is it behind the guitar? Are you squeezing harder than you need to with your thumb? You need to learn how to relax from your neck and your shoulder and your arm on down as you play. You need to try and rest and relax a little bit. So, you know, your thumb can be up here, but you don't need to be squeezing super hard or down here. You don't need to be squeezing super hard. You need to find where that point is. Bar chords, same thing. Okay? Now, when I'm playing this bar chord, you won't be able to tell, but when I'm playing this, I'm barely pressing
on these strings. I could even take my thumb off the guitar and still be able to play this chord.
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Okay?
Steve
That's how comfortable this guitar is. That's how easy it is to play. All right, so the thumb is back there just guiding things. It's helping to squeeze a little bit, but you shouldn't have to, you know, just like just grind in there trying to play this. You shouldn't need that. Okay? Now a couple more things to think about, especially on bar chords, is where your wrist placement is. If you're doing this, it becomes very hard to try and create a bar chord, right? Because your first finger can't reach. You need to lower your wrist down, flatten out that finger, first finger, to create that bar chord. The other thing is think about the angle of your wrist this way. If you're turned this way, it's going to be really hard to make that cord, because your first finger's at this angle. You learn how to turn inward like this, like you're taking the elbow and coming inward and turning this way a little bit. What that does is it actually instead of
trying to play on the front part of your finger like this, you kind of start playing on the side of your finger over here. And for a lot of people, that's a little bit easier because even if your finger was turned a little bit this way, you've still got a straight edge over here. Where when you play this way, you've got your knuckles, and those things can be a problem too when you're trying to squeeze down. So don't think that you have to lay flat like this. You know, you can actually be kind of at an angle like this when you're playing. And the fact that the elbow is in a little bit pushes these fingers upward, which gets them out of the way. When you're doing this, they're all kind of you know getting in the way of each other. When you turn the elbow in, you have a little more room. So think about your guitar setup and then think about your approach and think about how hard it is that you're actually pressing down and start with some of those things when you practice. So it's not just doing the work, you know, practicing the scale or the chord or whatever. Think about the approach that you're taking as well. So stay positive, keep practicing. If you feel like you've been playing a long time and you're just not getting where you need to go and you're getting frustrated and you love to play the guitar, check out the Guitar Zoom Academy. See if it's something that we can help you with. You can head over to guitarzoom.com and you can sign up. We can have a conversation and see where it leads. All right. So take care. I'll talk to you soon.
