I think I've mentioned that the last month or so I've really been trying to work on my barre chords. I realize the only way I'm going to get them down is to play them . . . a lot. So I've been concentrating on songs that utilize them, and worrying less about how they sound at this point and more about building muscle memory so I can eventually transition smoothly and fret them cleanly. Then I ran into a problem.

We all remember the first few months of playing when we had to build our callouses, and how painful it was. And there have been a few occasions when I bruised a fingertip (yes, I know, I tend to fret to hard) and had to lay off for a few days. But apparently this weekend I bruised the side of my barreing (is that a word?) finger and now it hurts like hell when I play.

I'm open to any suggestions. I suspect y'all are going to tell me to lay off it a few days, and then try not to fret so hard. But at this point it seems like I have to use a lot of pressure on that first finger to fret cleanly.