Do you do this with your left hand?

Playing Technique
#1

Ok, this might be a weird/silly question. I’m reassessing my left hand technique and I found a weird quirk of mine that I think it’s setting me back.

I tend to push the first knuckle of the index into the guitar neck (palm-side, where the index finger “starts”). i.e. I grab the neck like, say, a bycicle handle or a hammer.

I don’t see any obvious mechanical advantage to it.

Do any of you do this, conciously or unconsciously, and when? I wonder if it’s a common thing.

I find myself doing it if I’m playing an open A with an index finger barre and related licks, but also with Chuck Berry style licks.

I first noticed it on my mandolin playing because it became a bit painful, and I worked on changing my left hand position, which was a great thing. I’ve only begun noticing on my guitar playing now, and I think it might be worth fixing.

#2

Hmm, I think it’s something I tend to do, but not entirely sure which part of the finger you mean. Could you take a picture of it? :slightly_smiling_face:

#3

I’ll try to take a pic tomorrow, but I can describe it better. If you look at the palm of your left hand, it’s where the index is “inserted” in the palm, i.e. the knuckle, but on the palm side. Does it make sense?

#4

Can’t say about ‘pushing’ but I’m consiously learning to touch strings with my index finger. Because my first guitar was an acoustic I tend to leave all strings untouched so that they could sound simultaniously… And now I’m playing an electic with a lot of gain and I have to learn opposite technique for better muting.
As for pushing, sometimes I find that I press highest E string too much, thus it becomes fretted and makes unwanted noises. Partially it’s because I sometimes use diagonal barre with clean sound, which implies that kind of fretting.

#5

I anchor my hand the same way I always have, adding pick slant to my technique only required a bit of fiddling to find the right wrist motion.

#6

My two cents, the more you can bring your hand into a classical position with more of a space between the bottom edge of your neck and your palm, broadly speaking you’ll have more range of motion and be less tense and there’s less friction against the neck.

I find that cradling the neck like you would a violin, mandolin, banjo and similar instruments is more restrictive for guitar and e. bass/double bass where you have to stretch and position shift much more.

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