Where does your fretting hand contact the neck?

relic245 · September 2023

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?

roberty · September 2023

Same here. Just a bit of thumb for orientation. Thumb position changes from neck to neck, I can usually find a comfy spot. Tension is the enemy, spotting and eliminating it is critical to improvement

BillDL · October 2023

My hand and thumb position changes frequently while playing and the position and grip are entirely dependent on what I am playing at any specific time. There is no "one size fits all" kind of grip with guitar playing. With classical guitar it is obviously more normal for players to have the thumb on the back of the neck and fingers arched a lot of the time, and this is often also the case with acoustic steel string playing, but electric guitar necks are different and most often the styles of music played on them are different to that normally played on acoustics, so different grips are more suitable for string bending, muting other strings while sounding others, using the thumb over the top to fret or mute the 6th string, etc, etc.

axisus · October 2023

I had to go pick up a guitar to see! basically the fleshy bit at the base of my index finger touches the neck most of the time, my thumb has a very light touch somewhere near the top edge of the neck.

DavidR · October 2023

Classical left hand teaching won't do for other traditions. Thumb mobile up and down fingerboard, placed in centre of back, fingers at 90 degrees to fretboard with fingers arched and kept close to strings when not on a string just doesn't work for acoustic where a much more laissez faire attitude has to prevail. Biggest difference is in holding down bottom E string with thumb which is just an essential for an acoustic player but frowned on by the classically trained.

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!)

sev112 · October 2023

You can use much less left hand force if you pull the bottom bout of the body into your belly with the underside of your right elbow.

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

octatonic · October 2023

When not bending strings the thumb is behind the neck aligned with the 2nd finger (like a C clamp).
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.

Roland · October 2023

This:

axisus said:

I had to go pick up a guitar to see...

And this:

BillDL said:

My hand and thumb position changes frequently while playing and the position and grip are entirely dependent on what I am playing at any specific time. ...

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.

And lastly, I hold my guitar similarly to this:

sev112 said:
You can use much less left hand force if you pull the bottom bout of the body into your belly with the underside of your right elbow…

I trap the top bout with my forearm, and have the strap button on the back of the upper horn

guitarjack66 · October 2023

I simply cannot mute the low E with my thumb on any type of guitar. I simply don't have the spread width to do it. Paradoxically I think this has helped with string targeting and string avoidance.

GuyBoden · October 2023

Try playing with no thumb or hand on the back of the neck, just use your fingers for fretting notes.

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.

BillDL · October 2023

GuyBoden said:

Try playing with no thumb or hand on the back of the neck, just use your fingers for fretting notes.

I used to have a friend who was born with very thin thumbs. They were slightly shorter than "normal" thumbs but were as slender as his pinky fingers. That is how he played the majority of the time.

JonnyBgoode · October 2023

DavidR said:

Classical left hand teaching won't do for other traditions. Thumb mobile up and down fingerboard, placed in centre of back, fingers at 90 degrees to fretboard with fingers arched and kept close to strings when not on a string just doesn't work for acoustic where a much more laissez faire attitude has to prevail. Biggest difference is in holding down bottom E string with thumb which is just an essential for an acoustic player but frowned on by the classically trained.

That's a popular misconception but not true. There are numerous examples in the repertoire where the thumb is used to fret a note, and is clearly indicated in the score, notably in Baroque and Classical period repertoire. Giuliani and Carulli played thumb over for example, and some Bach pieces benefit from this as well (eg the Koonce edition of the Lute suites)

The modern classical guitar has a very wide flat fretboard compared to its ancestors and this is the main reason thumb over is used less often these days, not because of some unquestioning adherence to Segovia's influence. CG pedagogy begins hundreds of years before Segovia, and has developed a lot since his time. Whilst his contribution to the instrument was huge, he does not have the iron grip on classical guitar approach/technique you seem to suggest, indeed a lot of what he did is viewed critically these days - including by his former students (John Williams being a good example).

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Where does your fretting hand contact the neck?

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