Always been a bit inconsistent as a player. Some days my hands move effortlessly around the fretboard, other days it feels like they are glued to the spot.
Just been having one of my good moments and noticed something that I've not before.
The back of my hand wasn't touching the neck at all . It was like my fingers were free floating and thumb was on the top almost for stability but nothing else. If my thumb was half way down the back of the neck it would have almost been a classical postion.
Just realised (after playing for about 40 years) that other days it's like I'm gripping the neck like a baseball bat and the back of my hand contacts the neck over quite a large surface area. No wonder I find it hard some days.
Think I may have just had a breakthrough and now understand one of the biggest limitations in my techinique. Now that I've noticed, I can start to fix it.
How would you describe your hand position?
Comments
Horses for courses!
A lot of classical teaching still dates back to the dominant teaching of Segovia whose students describe his teaching as of the 'my way or the highway' variety. In reality everyone has different hand in terms of both anatomy and size. Rules like not going for big stretches and not doing anything if it hurts have always seemed more pragmatic to me. Hank Williams was just a genius but was taught originally by a Blues player and had virtually no music theory or training. Guitar is such a broad church there's room for just about anything. From Segovia to Hank!
In answer to @relic245 my thumb, not that I think about it much, usually lies at an angle across the back of the neck, nearer to the base strings than central, and makes frequent forays to the bottom E string! It probably doesn't move up and down the neck as much as it should. Usually, if there's too much pressure something's amiss with my left hand fingering. So a light touch preferably. Similarly in my hold generally. One thing I did learn from having some classical lessons was that squeezing the soundbox too firmly will decrease the resonance of the soundbox. I think this is true for steel stringed acoustics too, although less so.
I don't know anything about electric technique. Never played much apart from archtops and they probably don't count. Is it different to acoustic? (Shows ignorance!)
this pushes the neck upwards towards your left hand, and mean you can use much less force when fretting, which in turn allows you to place your thumb in better positions.
lots of people on here complain about hand pain, arthritis, carpal tunnel etc - keeping a loose left hand allows you to keep the left hand at 180 degrees to your forearm much of the time, and this helps prevent those conditions
When I bend strings the thumb moves to the top of the back of the neck and I make contact with most of my 1st finger and the part of the palm that leads to the thumb and band as a mixture of mostly wrist with a little bit of elbow.
You need to reinforce bends so that you are doing it with the wrist/hand, not the fingers.
If you don't do this then you will probably end up damaging your hand.
On 'loose'.
You need to avoid unnecessary tension sure but, but try bending 2 tones up on a G string at the 8th fret with no tension in your wrist and hands.
You deploy the movement with the correct amount of power, release it and the tension it causes.
Some tension in the hand is unavoidable unless you are playing very lightly and without much expression.
Lighter strings helps but a lot of people (men) are macho about that.
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And this: Most of the time there’s contact between the base of my index finger, either the finger or the adjacent part of the palm. It’s contact because they are close, but it’s not support. Thumb contact depends totally on what I’m playing. I can play with sharp fret ends, except when I’m sliding chord shapes held with thumb over.
It's a good exercise, especially for single note playing. You begin to realise than you don't need very much pressure when fretting notes.