Improving Your Fretting Hand

[dvuksanovich]

Many of us have found that after years of practice and commitment that something is still not quite right with our fretting hand. At certain points during our development as guitarists, it is important to reassess what is going on physically and potentially make some conscious adjustments.

 

Most teachers recommend an exercise regimen to address fretting hand problems, but exercises by themselves wont help you understand why you have problems with your fretting hand, nor will they help you pinpoint specific muscular inefficiencies within your hand that get in the way of fluid, accurate play. In fact, in my experience, exercises typically focus attention in the wrong place (getting through the exercises) instead of on pinpointing underlying problems.

 

In other words, in order to have a solid, agile fretting hand it is important to get comfortable with the way that the muscles in your hand work:

 

The muscles that close your fingers into a fist are called flexors.

The muscles that straighten your fingers are called extensors.

When you use these muscles at the same time, your muscles work against each other and unnecessary tension is the result.

The goal is to make sure that in as many cases as possible (there are always exceptions to a rule) only your flexors are used when fretting a note, and only your extensors are used when releasing a note.

 

The most common problems that cause both the flexors and extensors to be used at the same time are:

 

Holding unused fingers rigidly above specific frets because a teacher once told you to do this arbitrarily as a rule. Drop this rule and dont look back. It will only cause you problems. Looking ahead to what notes you will be playing and adjusting your hand and fingers accordingly is one thing, but holding your fingers in place just to hold them there makes no sense.

Not releasing with the flexors before using the extensors to lift a finger off the fretboard.

Putting your thumb in a position that causes tension in the rest of your hand. Your thumb will most likely be comfortable outside your fretting hand (try this without a guitar and see what I mean). The more you move your thumb towards your pinkie finger, the more tension you will build.

Not putting your hand in the most comfortable position for whichever finger happens to be fretting a note at the time. This can be over or under rotation at the elbow, tension in the wrist or shoulder, etc.

 

With this in mind, spend some time getting in touch with which muscles youre using when you fret notes. This should be done without a metronome and without trying to play any actual music. Just fret some notes using each of your fingers and start to monitor whats going on inside your left hand. Youll be amazed at what you can learn and how quickly you can improve just by becoming aware of the muscles youre using when you play. The important thing is to become more comfortable and reduce unnecessary tension.

 

Once you get comfortable with this you can start monitoring your left hand while playing passages within songs.

 

For a video version of this lesson please see

 

***Spam Content Removed***

 

[Gifthorse]

Welcome to the forum dude, but people will probably accuse you of major SPAM unless you interact and become part of the forum. You know because everyday we have guys who drop by, spam and are never heard from again.

 

You video was entertaining. Nice approach you have taken, though I am not sure I would agree with your opinion of George Lynch and John Petrucci being the greatest on the planet-- but to each his own.

[dvuksanovich]

Thanks for the comment, and yes we all have different views on greatness.

 

My goal is to provide value to readers of this forum whether or not they choose to click on any links. As I add more lessons on the site I will write up text versions of them to post in this forum so that people can improve their guitar playing. No baiting people to click or holding valuable information back from the forum.

 

If people have follow up questions that they want to ask in the forum I will be happy to respond.

[Eric Iverson]

Good food for thought, and yes, exercises are FOR A PURPOSE, not just to do exercises. As my flute teacher reminded me at my last lesson. They are not really music in and of themselves, although of course you still want to practice them with good tone, time, phrasing etc. Why practice playing badly?

Of course, some of Chopin's Etudes for piano and Villa-Lobos' Etudes for guitar are beautiful pieces in their own right, and often played in concert.

 

We often don't give much thought to how we use our bodies, do we? And not just our hands - we do things so automatically that we forget that there may be more effective (or less harmful) ways to do them.

 

I have a book on practicing whose title I forget - primarily for classical over-achievers who put in 8 hours a day and often injure themselves, or put themselves through mental torture trying to be their best. Although most of us play different styles, some of the PRINCIPLES in that book on how to practice more effectively without mental/physical injury are great. If anyone is interested, I can dig the book out of the pile somewhere, and tell you more about it.

[A String]

Feel free to participate and offer help. The more knowledgeable folks we have around here, the better! However, we do have a strict rule regarding spam. Please refrain from posting spam content but, as I mentioned, feel free to answer questions, help out and of course, hang out and chat with the good folks here.

[dvuksanovich]

@Eric - Was the book called "Pumping Nylon"?

 

@A String - Would you consider my post here spam, even if it does offer valuable advice to forum members?

[A String]

@A String - Would you consider my post here spam, even if it does offer valuable advice to forum members?

 

Don't forget, a lot of folks here are music teachers, professional musicians, etc. etc. You are "preaching to the choir", so to speak.

 

About once a month, someone comes in here and posts lessons claiming to "offer valuable advice to the members". Truth is, there are enough of us here that we can offer advice ourselves.

 

Now, what I'd love to see is someone with your knowledge join our ranks and be available to help out, should someone with a question come along.

 

I'm happy to see you aren't just another "hit and run" spammer. What do you say? Are you up to sticking around and helping offer advice when those who need to come around? Should you become a regular member, I see no reason that you couldn't post a link to a free video lesson (on Youtube etc.) should someone come in looking for a particular answer and you happen to have a video set up that answers the question.

[dvuksanovich]

No problem. Thanks for getting back to me.

[Larryz]

Welcome aboard dvuksanovich...

[dvuksanovich]

Thanks, Larryz. Glad to be here.