Hi Alan,
Just my 2 cents as somebody who played for quite a while and is interested in musical pedagogy.
First of all, congratulations on wanting to learn something new, that is always a great start.
Of course, your fingers are not the same as they were in your youth, however even if you were 15 and strong as a bull, I would expect you to be putting way too much pressure on the strings, way more than required.
In other words, there is a chance that your fingers might be after all strong enough to form chords, but you might lack the technique to use them properly.
As a beginner, or even as an experienced player who never thought of doing it otherwise, the most logical thing is to put pressure on the back of the neck with the thumb, and then a bunch of pressure on the strings with the fingers. Essentially a death grip.
This is not the most effective way of playing though.
The pressure I put on my thumb is generally little, and I pull my arm back gently, which allows my fingers to put enough pressure on the strings without straining my tendons. At least, when playing the kind of chords you would need to play for your style of choice.
However, this works if you are holding the guitar well, so that it rests against your body and requires no help from your fingering hand to stay where it need to be.
Also, even as a young beginner, you would be putting lots more force because you would not know how to apply it precisely. The required point of contact between fingers and strings is in reality very small, and the smaller the area, the more a small force will achieve. Essentially it is the same difference between using a blunt blade or a very sharp one in woodworking.
There are examples of guitar players with severe fingers issues, such as Django Reinhardt, who managed nonetheless to do stuff that most young people with perfectly working joints will never achieve. So, with patience, there are ways. And patience is a requirement for anybody wanting to learn to make some music.
Also, there are a few points worth nothing:
- The open strings chords which are normally taught for country styles sounds big but are actually the same three notes repeated twice on 6 strings. This means that it is possible to play them partially (on less strings with less fingers) and still get a similar, or sometimes better, result.
- There are way to play enough chords for a full song by essentially only moving one or two fingers at time, rather than removing all fingers and reposition them, which is the bane of beginners.
- As pointed out in another answer, some guitars are easier for playing simple chords. The easiest guitar is generally an electric guitar, because the neck is narrow and the pressure required on the strings is very light. Classical guitars are easy as for finger pressure required, however the neck is also typically quite wide and they do not sound great when strummed with a pick, acoustic guitars are a bit more challenging as for string pressure required, but again with the right technique it is not a dramatic obstacle.
Another approach is playing slide guitar, which essentially require limited fingering and relies on sliding a metal or glass tube on the strings, placing it where the frets are to play that notes. It can make for a beautiful, haunting sound, it requires tuning the guitar in alternative ways but also it requires very good ear to produce well tuned notes, unlike normal guitar playing.
- Becoming able to play does not happen overnight, neither at 83 nor at 38. Our brain and body needs to get it, and that happens with constant, if not necessarily intensive, practise. So, if you can keep your guitar at hand somewhere where you can grab it for 10 minutes whenever you have time and feel physically fine, if you manage a total of 20-30 minutes , 5 times per week, you should see results relatively quickly. But you need to be patient with yourself, your skills of today are not a reflection of your skills of tomorrow.
I am not familiar with the gizmo you mention. I guess it could work, but with patience, and the right approach, your fingers might to.
Well. if you are determined playing the instrument you were gifted, this is pretty much all I can suggest.
All I can offer, if you think it might be useful to you, are one or two lessons in videochat, free of charge of course, to help you figure out how you could proceed.
They would be about the things I mentioned above, to see which ones might apply, and what would work best for you. Ideally, you would need a webcam you can move around so to allow me to see exactly what you are doing with your fingers, the placement of the instrument and so forth.
If you wish, send me a private message. I am mainly available late afternoons and evenings, because of my daytime job.
Aldo
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