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My Baby’s Gone challenge
I love the sound of this and the technique challenge from yesterday, but, I am having trouble with the open string upstroke on the “and” beat. It seems the fleshy part of my palm just below the fingers touches the high e just enough to mute it, when I am playing the open base note; that is, when there is no grip on the guitar neck, aside from the thumb on the side of the neck facing me, which pushes the neck into my palm. Rotating my hand away on those open notes so it doesn’t touch seems to work but it slows everything down, and I play slow enough as it is. I don’t use a strap when I’m sitting; would it help steady the neck if I did?
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4 Replies
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I think I get what you are saying @BarbaraM , the fleshy part of your fretting hand right? Here is how I take care of that issue: when you need that fleshy part go away flatten your palm while keeping the thumb hooked with your thumb feeling the back of the neck hooking lightly, then roll your hand so only your hand pad connected to the pointer digit (that fleshy part of your hand) is touching and then roll back so all your hand pads are again touching on the bottom but with a flattened hand and thumb hooked. You can almost roll your hand away onto the side of your fretting hands index and back. Let me know if that is what you meant.
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I think I get what you are describing, basically pulling the fleshy part down and flat sort of? That sort of does work, but stretching my middle finger over to the low E string third fret brings it up again. And I have a small guitar! I do have one with a skinnier neck, but then I run into muting strings adjacent to the one I’m fretting, so I only use that for the one open D tuning challenge Tony has.
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Perfect! Now….when you get that Middle Finger over to the low E, that is when that hook made with your thumb gains importance. Let the fleshy part move away from the neck while keeping your thumb still hooked at the top so now nothing is touching the neck on the high E side leaving a small 1/2 inch gap between your fleshy part and the neck, this should give you enough finger length to get to the low E with your middle arched highly enough so it does not mute the A or D string or the High E for that matter. There should be only two things touching the neck here, Your thumb and the middle finger on the Low E string. If not keep moving the hooked thumb lower. This moves your hand away further making you fingers seemingly longer.
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Got it, thanks!
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