I spent a couple years as a teenager learning clawhammer and then life got in the way and I didn't pick up a banjo for the next 25 years, until a few weeks ago. I'm now absolutely having a ball going back and re-learning the songs I used to play and challenging myself to learn more. In fact, I was thrilled to find that the very songbook I used back then is still in print--The Banjo Player's Songbook by Tim Jumper. It has a nice variety of songs with simple beginner/intermediate arrangements. One stubborn challenge I'm having, though, comes up whenever there's a F# note (4th string, 4th fret) immediately before (or alternating with) a D7 chord brush. The problem is that the fingers on my left hand just aren't long enough to span the distance of fretting the C and A on the 2nd and 3rd strings and reaching for the F# on the 4th string. My pinky lands pretty far back from that 4th fret, and it's a very awkward and uncomfortable stretch to do even that. It also often means my first and second fingers creep up on top of their respective frets, damping those strings. I can pretty much never play a D7 chord cleanly while also fretting the 4th string at the 4th fret. Do other people have this problem? What do you do when your fingers just don't reach? Is there a good workaround? Is this just something that many people struggle with for a long time until they get it?
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