What does everyone do about soar finger tips?
I didn’t have to much pain when I just played my banjo, but since I started learning the mandolin they stay soar.
Soar finger tips
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Hi @johncooper2006 John After three years playing mandolin I am surprised you have sore fingers. It’s common for a beginner to have this condition since your generally building callouses as your learning to play your instrument.
Pressing too hard on the strings before building callouses is one of the main reasons your fingers become sore. If you have been working on slides a lot that may be the reason your fingers are sore. Tell tale signs are grooves in the skin and bleeding fingertips.
Take a couple of days rest.
Using lighter strings on your instrument may help ease the pain a bit.
In order to build callouses you need to suffer a little pain.
The good news is once you have good callouses the pain diminishes
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For some reason my banjo doesn’t cause me to press to hard. I have noticed that the harder I concentrate the harder I press the string on my mandolin.
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I’ve played guitar for three years, not too much mandolin, but I’ve done some. I’ve also played banjo, and I can confirm that it for some reason doesn’t take as much pressure on the banjo as it does in mando and guitar. Mando is harder because it’s two strings rather than one that you fret to get a note. I’ll have some pain when I’ve not played my guitar for a while. Recently, I went about a week without playing much, so my fingers have been sore over the past few days. The more consistently that you play, the tougher your fingers will get, and the less they’ll hurt. Hope this helps!
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Tension is the enemy. When you’re playing make sure you are as relaxed as possible. It sometimes takes extra focus to eliminate tension. I find that stretching my fingers and forearms helps to minimize soreness.
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I’m a gluten for practice. I like to practice for the out come… I guess need to slow down a little let finger get hard and quit hurting so much.
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@johncooper2006 just take a break when you need to. Just one day off is usually all I need to make my fingers feel fine again when they’re sore.
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