How To Develop Your Touch


Use three guitars:

  1. The guitar you normally play.
  2. A guitar with very heavy strings, high action.
  3. A guitar with very light strings, low action.

Switch between the instruments when you’re working on something.

The idea is to make your hands more sensitive to the touch, the feel of the instrument. To make your hands more able to adapt.

It’s something tennis players have to do all the time; they adapt to the conditions. Piano players have to adapt to the instrument that’s available.

I use a 10s set on my guitar, so a heavy set would be anything from 13s up, light strings would be 8s and under.

Aside from the musical benefit of feeling more connected to your instrument, getting used to this kind of thing will help you adapt to in other ways too. Like when your hands are cold, or the room is humid, or you feel tired, or the sound is weird. It’s no fun wanting it all to be ‘just right’ – you’ll go NUTS waiting for that :)