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Left Hand Placement Challenge
My biggest challenge is left hand placement on the neck when trying to play triads and specifically that range across 3 frets. It is very much a foundational issue that stops me dead in my tracks.
I can spend up to a minute contorting my fingers and hand placement to play a C Chord and with “shorter sized fingers” (no excuse) can’t seem to arch my fingers enough (ring finger especially) without muting the D string below it, while not muting the highest E string with my palm.
The bottom line is proper hand placement while moving from chord to chord, and this isn’t addressed at least in the 30 Day to Play challenge. Any advice or a focus on this crucial foundational component is appreciated. Thanks
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2 Replies
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So, a couple of things here. There are challenges to online learning. A good teacher can physically show you hand and finger placements. A bit more difficult learning online. That said, some issues may be your guitar, and how your hand fits the neck. All instruments are different, and have different sized necks, scales, bodies etc.. Another suggestion is trying to lower your elbow, creating more of an angle so you can create more of an arch. A bit difficult to explain. Also, as I’ve progressed, I have gotten more “arch” when forming chord shapes, and don’t mute as much as I used to. This also helped with the fleshy part of the palm that can mute the high E string sometimes. Others will chime in with words of wisdom.
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Every beginner goes through this. When I started learning chords about 20 months ago, I couldn’t do any of these chords without muting strings: C, G, D, E, B7. About 6 months later most of these were resolved but by then I was learning barre chords and the struggle started over again. It took me about 15 months to finally play an mini barre F chord with fair consistency.
Some things that might help:
Remember to fret with the tips of your fingers, right under the finger nails, and not the pads. Keep your finger nails on the left hand as short as possible! By playing as much as you are now, you should develop callouses soon and this will help!You wan to place your fingers close to the fret wires whenever possible. Certain fretting shapes will go counter to this, but this is a principle.
Hand positioning is very important, raise the neck closer to your eyes, this might produce a more comfortable position. Be sure to push your hand under the neck and curl the knuckles so that the last segment of the fingers are coming at the strings perpendicularly (or as much as possible). The more angled they are, the more likely they are to touch and adjacent string.
Is your guitar set up well? When the action is too high, it makes playing way more difficult so that’s something to consider.
New players will tend to play with the wrong amount of pressure(too much). Practice doing each note one at a time and feel how much pressure you need to play it clean; you may find that you don’t have to press nearly as hard as you thought you had to!
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