Originally Posted by: jadaldouglas

Icing finger tips tonight. I've also been using alcohol a couple of times a day to the tips of my fingers the numb feeling finally went away and I did good for the first five minutes but the pain came back after that it's so bad. It's OK because I learned A minor and E tonight so the next time I start practicing I'm going to just continue to practice switching between the two. Oh the PAIN!! Lol

Something to be clear about; do not overdo it with your fingertips. Do not do that.

While your motivation is admirable, the whole 'practiced until my fingers bled' is junk. If you wanted to run a marathon and your muscles started to tell you that you were going to injure yourself, would you continue? I mean, sure, when starting out, there's always been a little tenderness. I've been playing to decades and I've seen many people fall off the wagon as a player simply because they could not take the fingertip soreness. Don't force your fingertips in to some sort of damage.

So, don't overdo it and it sounds like you might already be doing so. If you have to resort to soaking your fingers, you're probably going a bit to far.

That's not to say that you won't have some soreness. You will. It's the nature of the beast. That's why you build up to callouses. Honestly, soaking your fingers is counterproductive in doing that. The idea is to get calloused pads on your fingertips so that when you press a string, it's the callous taking the pressure and sheilding the fingertip nerve endings from the pressure. By soaking them, you're softening the fingertip instead of hardening it.

Your better bet is to work in shorter intervals for the time being. Slowly work up that callous. You do not want to practice until you feel agony. Eventually you won't want to play. Pick a short and targeted focus like one video or one chord change and work on that for a few minutes until you start to feel tender, then stop. You can always come back later and resume.

Truth is, I often even now practice this way. I think of them as micro-practices. I have in mind a little lick I think would be challenging and noodle on it for a few minutes when I can.

There's a million ways to get to where you want to go. One of them is not to damage your fingertips. Patience. Eventually you'll have such callouses on your fingertips that if you were to tap a countertop with them, they'll sound like your fingernails. It will happen but it takes a little time.