Tag: learning

Fingers and thumbs, or getting your digits sorted for playing

Nicole NealLeave a comment

I thought an appropriate subject to follow on from a very recent post on posture, and ensuring the body and arms are positioned well for playing, would be a post on your dexterous digits.

Muscles and other structures of wrist and palm
Muscles and other structures of wrist and palm (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As I stated in a very recent post, the foundation of your movements in playing the guitar should really come from the bigger muscle groups. Once you’ve identified the leverage-type shoulder movements in the left arm (or right arm, if you’re left-handed) and you’ve got a grasp on, well, grasping the guitar comfortably with the right hand, then we can move on to looking at the movements of the hands, fingers and thumbs.

Right then. Right hand.

Make a loose fist with your right hand as if you were going to punch something, curling your fingers under. Unleash your fingers in a relatively rapid reflex-kind of action.

Be aware of the finger movements here – the fingers should be moving from the big hand knuckle. This knuckle is the primary driving force behind both your free stroke and rest stroke. Of course, there will be some movement of the other two knuckles in the fingers, but the primary “stroke engine” should be your big ol’ hand knuckles.

Similarly with the right hand thumb. Unless you have some issues that prevent it, all of the right hand thumb movement should originate from the base of the hand. Check out that relatively long bone you’ve got there coming from the wrist and that big ball of muscle forming the base of the thumb – that’s what you really want to use to drive a bit fat juicy bass!

And the other hand. Don’t want it to feel “left” out….

Sorry. Bad pun. Love them.

Anyway, swiftly moving on.

You should aim to keep your lower left arm, wrist and hand in alignment. Obviously this is not going to be possible all of them time, but this is a key aim to prevent things getting all squished and smooshed together and rubbing and constricted and all things nasty going on in that very small conduit for all manner of tendons, muscles, nerves, veins, arteries and who knows what else that is the carpal tunnel.

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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My most important piece of advice here is to avoid unnecessary tension in the left hand. You need much less pressure than you probably realise to fret a note. A wee experiment: try just touching the string with a super, super light touch with the left hand, just grazing it and try playing the note. It will sound not like a nice note, but buzzy or thunking probably.

Gradually, ever so gradually, whilst playing the string with the right hand apply a little more pressure until the note starts to sound. I’ll bet you $50 that there’s really hardly any pressure at all there and you’re still pressing quite lightly.

Occasionally, we might need an extra bit of pressure,for an awkward stretch or squeezy barre for example. In this instance, use that leverage principal and take the pressure and tension our of your fingers, out of your hand, even out of your arm and shoulder, and lean in with the body. Lean your body in to the guitar to meet the required finger pressure – the greater the pressure required the greater the lean.

Have a think about these things next time you’re practicing – am I squeezing too hard? Do I need that amount of tension and pressure? Is that pressure and tension really helping?!

Practice time!

Nicole NealLeave a comment

So how do you set out your practice time?

Do you have a set routine that you always stick to?

That’s pretty good if you do. If you can get a habit formed in terms of a regular practice time and practice style then you’re setting yourself up well for some awesome productive practice. I hear it takes around 11-12 weeks of continuous practice for a habit to become ingrained. So if you’re not practicing regularly, but you want to start getting the habit of it built-in set a reminder on your desktop calendar or on your phone that tells you it’s time for practice!

And don’t beat yourself up if you’re not able to do it every single day (in fact I’d say giving yourself one day off out of seven is probably healthy). Just aim to practice most days out of seven in the week, even if it’s just 10 minutes. Something is better than nothing at all, and it is from these little baby steps that we gradually build up our practice, working with our natural abilities to become competent guitarists and fantastic musicians. One step at a time. And remember, if it takes around 11-12 weeks to build in a habit, it’s going to take you around three months to get that habit truly ingrained.

Set yourself a goal

If you’ve not got a regular practice time or practice schedule booked into the brain, set yourself a goal from now.

Right. If we’re in mid-September now, that takes 12 weeks out to around mid to end of November.

As well as that reminder in your phone, post in stopping points every four weeks to ask yourself where are you in terms of your daily or regular practice? Is it feeling ingrained? Is it working? Do you need to change something? Is there a better, easier or more productive time of day for you to practice?

Rinse and repeat – to a point..

I also hear that  it takes our brains around 20 or days to learn new patterns – so don’t be stressing if you can’t get that chord change or finger movement yet or a piece memorised after a couple of days.

Do pick out a tricky spot from the music – you know, that little bugger of a finger twister, that funny little run, that “thing” in bar 12 or whatever – and work it through slowly methodically. Pick it apart. Find out EXACTLY what is going wrong, or rather what is not quite working right and what you need to do with your left hand fingers AND your right hand fingers to get it working as you want it to sound. Back it up a mo – just checking, you do know how you want it to sound right? Good, because that’s half the battle in getting to work. Know exactly what you want, and then it’s just a case of working on some of the mechanics for your fingers to deliver that for you.

Yes, do pick out that tricky spot, but DO NOT go repeating it countless times. If it’s still not working go back to figuring out what you need to do to fix it up. And if you’re not sure what that is then it’s definitely one that your teacher will be able to help you with!

So, yes repeat it a few times when you’ve got it more or less figured out. Do this S-L-O-W-L-Y. Don’t be in too much of a rush to get it up to speed just yet. There’s plenty of time for that. Just focus on getting it right, getting it settled, getting it sounding exactly how you want. Speed comes later, and only ever to serve the music.

And then leave it to sink in for a while. You might want to come back to it later in your practice session. You definitely want to pick out that little tricky spot in your next practice session. I can pretty much guarantee it will be a lot less tricky the next day and the next, until you will have forgotten what all the fuss was about!