Hey everyone, it’s been a while since I’ve made a post on here because I’ve been more busy playing than engaging with the forum. I need help from the community again. This issue pervades my playing and makes achieving my goals and learning solos on the instrument very difficult.
Instead of typing up an overview of the issue in question, I made a quick video that showcases things. Sorry for being a little awkward; I didn’t exactly have a script made for this video.
My two cents:
In my experience, left hand technique is VERY wrist-engaging. I’d dare say sometimes I feel like my fretting hand wrist moves more than my fingers, and on that note, it seems like you are trying to execute your fretting patterns with your fingers in isolation.
Take this with a grain of salt as I don’t know what I’m talking about half the time.
I’ll watch this tonight and weigh in if I can (and don’t worry about the lack of a script, lol, we’re all nerds here) but without seeing anything else I’ll second Steve here. I’ve got a similar thread going I started pretty recently where the upshot was I realized I’ve been trying to keep a fairly neutral, fixed wrist position, and I’m now realizing allowing it to move has made everything perceptively more fluid.
Yeah, I think that the wrist does play a big role in my issue. I’ll be curious to see what you have to say since you play very well
I’m not sure if you mean me or Steve (who’s a great player), but if you mean me, thank you!
I’ll go mess around on video myslf a little too and see if I come up with anything that can help you, but on thing thay jumped out at me - look at your wrist on that descending run arounf 4:00 that you think feels pretty good - it starts with more of an open" wriat postion, the sort of thing Tom Gilroy encouraged me to look at to smooth position shifts, amd then closes right at the very bottom, becoming more parallel right at the end. Might be something to dig into there.
EDIT - ok, at a minimum this should give you one more data point, someone else’s wrist postion to look at. And, at the very end of this something occurs to me about how mechanically a pull off feels to me, and why that descending position works for you; watching this, I think what I’m saying is a little unclear as I’m not saying you SHOULD try to cultivat that wrist position, so much as mechanically the face the downwardf slides are putting you into that position is making that descending run easier, and then thinking about how you can either cultivate a little more angle, or gt that similar pulling-downward feeling out of your pull off runs from a more neutral position.
Idunno. Maybe this will help, maybe it won’t, worth a shot though! Plenty of screw-ups, and too little warmup, with either too little or too much coffee. 
Hey Drew, I appreciate the response! Just now getting to this. That definitely helps. You’re farther along in the technique honing journey than I, so it’s great to get your insights.
I believe there is a correlation between my difficulties and a lack of chunking amongst the ‘low on the neck to high up on it’ gradient. Many players work around this challenge, namely through musical cleverness, like you explain in your video.
*James Murphy comes to mind, as it seems like he plays more in terms of little ‘cells’ to manipulate and shred within, rather than blazing up and down scales, scaling entire octaves at once. That’s more of a Tony Macalpine kind of thing, and I have no idea how he can do it so comfortably
I’ve concluded that my problems stem from underutilizing my left wrist and having and allowing tension in various muscles while I play
One thing you can incorporate into your practice (if you’re not already) is doing trills with different fingers groups. For instance:
Fingers patterns (only two fingers at any given time)
Index - Middle
Index - Ring
Index - Pinky
Middle - Ring
Middle - Pinky etc
Try and find a tempo where you can do 16th notes and run these patterns across all strings and positions. Focus on being in time and having a clear sound for each note.
As an example, assuming we’re in the 5th position you could do something like:
E - 5-7-5-7
A -5-7-5-7
D -5-7-5-7
Etc.
At this point we should have a set of pinned posts for why things like this are a bad idea.
Trills exercises? I am also skeptical of these and haven’t found them to be beneficial in the past. What’s your rationale on why we shouldn’t do these?
I am not advocating doing any excessive trill work. The point of the post was to illustrate another practice option if you have finger combinations that are lagging.
Really confused how trills (with lagging finger combos) is a bad idea.
The following isn’t exhaustive (we have some folks here who are real experts on the left hand, which I am not), but is sufficient:
Everyone’s got at least one combination of fingers that’s anatomically disadvantaged (for me: pinky + ring, for some: middle + ring). Compensating for that is effectively 0 juice for nigh-infinite squeeze.
My ring and pinky fingers are extremely interdependent, yet 4 3 1 combinations are the most comfortable for me. 1 2 3 feels extremely awkward and sometimes 4 2 1 does, too. Wonder what that’s about
Yes, familiar via @Tom_Gilroy and others points about efficient cycles etc.
My take would be that almost anything can be improved. Certain combinations (for me it’s index - middle - pinky) will always be easier and faster though, and I appreciate that.
To the OP, if you don’t have any success with trills, another option would be working on the ‘Holdsworth’ approach where everything is a hammer on (rather than a pull-off for descending patterns)
i think my argument is that it can be a really bad idea to improve some things! RSI etc. and there’s no actual need for me to use ring as the lowest finger for any trills. Middle is … maybe it could be useful?
100% never play through pain and also have regular breaks!
General thoughts, because I’ve been mentioned a few times.
@gw12505, much of your hand sits outside the frame for most of your video. I can still infer what’s happening, but I would be more comfortable with a video where your entire picking arm is in view.
Firstly, hammer-ons and pull-offs are not equivalent. To perform a pull-off requires that the fingers extend at the MCP joint and flex at the PIP joint simultaneously. This requires the coactivation of an extensor (which depends on which finger is used) with a flexor called flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS). As the DIP joint can’t be totally slack, there must also be some contraction of another flexor callded flexor digitorum profundus (FDP). FDS allows for a little selective use of the individual fingers, but FDP allows for essentially none.
At 0:42 I can see that your position involves a significant difference in the relative extension of your 3rd and 4th fingers, with the 3rd finger more flexed and the 4th finger more extended, like a “D” shape. The discrepancy in this position requires the extensor for the pinky to pull against the stronger flexors. You also appear to have your pinky internally rotated, indicated overactivity of the hypothenar muscles.
I can’t be certain (poor video angle), but when you start playing, it appears that your 3rd and 4th fingers extend together while your 2nd finger stays flexed. This indicates an overactive extensor, but I can’t see the MCP joint of the 2nd finger so I can’t determine the exact problem.
Your pull-off mechanic between your 3rd and 4th fingers is inefficient. Your pinky is flicking up and out to pull-off. This can be useful situationally, but it involves a muscle being activated for both pull-offs and fretting or hammering, so it doesn’t allow an efficient hammer-pull cycle.
Generally, you want your pull-off to pull down towards the palm, so that your large knuckle extends (MCP joint) while your middle and small knuckles flex (PIP and DIP joints respectively). Then, we fret or hammer by reversing the action, the big knuckle flexes while the middle and small knuckles extend.
This hammer-pull cycle is more strenuous than the basic fretting cycle, but much less strenuous than what you’re doing.
Your descending diagonal run involves a different fretting posture than the examples you’re struggling with. You don’t apply it in those situations because you haven’t learned how to track across strings and positions reliably with that posture.
This is all fixable, I’ve seen students overcome worse, but you do need to retrain your fretting postures and your mechanics.
As @steve506 and @Drew mentioned, movement of the wrist and arm is critically important in fretting technique, it’s not all about the fingers.
Regarding @JAB’s suggestion of trills, I’m ok with it if done in a particular way with a particular set of goals. As @eric_divers mentions, you are absolutely guaranteed to have at least one combination which is anatomically disadvantaged. You have four fingers and three extensors (or only two, one muscle can be absent), there’s no getting around it.
If you practice trills slowly, allowing the movement of your wrist to facilitate the trill, and focusing on feeling how you can make the movements feel smoother and easier, then that’s fine. It will help you to develop awareness of your stronger and weaker finger combinations, and will help to improve your weaker combinations for situational use where they can’t be avoided.
Still, trills are inherently strenuous for the fretting hand, and most of the possible trills simply aren’t used frequently in real playing, so the benefit is limited. You absolutely should not aim to isolate all movement to the fingers or to bring all combinations to the same level. I would very strongly recommend against trilling to “build endurance” or to “increase speed” between all combinations. This is a situation where you could absolutely injure yourself.
There are mechanically more efficient methods of trilling (John McLaughlin’s and Marshall Harrison’s approaches) that are applicable in real playing and which are much less stressful on the hands.
Hey Tom, thanks for your input. I understand what you’re saying and can see all of this taking effect in my playing. I just don’t know how to go about retraining my fretting hand and I’m kind of skeptical of whether or not it can really be fixed. It’s everywhere in my playing, whether I’m able to work around it or if it causes problems. If I sound a little demoralized in this video, well.. it’s because I am 
. Not trying to disregard your help, though.
Hi @gw12505.
Please, don’t be discouraged. All of this is fixable, and I don’t see any problem that would indicate a biological limit.
You do need to retrain your movements to achieve the results you want. This is a process, it’s not a matter of discovering a new movement pattern and everything immediately “clicking” into place. It takes some time, but progress is absolutely possible.
First, you need to change your positioning. Your shoulder is abducted and externally rotated with scapular depression and retraction. This forces your wrist to be in constant deviation.
This is an extremal position for your shoulder; it’s actually the position created by the Americana shoulder lock in BJJ/MMA. As a general rule, something that an opponent would try to do to you in a cage fight is probably not something you should be doing to yourself.
The classical position with the guitar flush to your body is creating this problem (and no, despite what people teach, classical position isn’t necessarily better for electric guitarists than other seated positions).
Try to angle the neck out from your body, so that the fretting hand comes to the middle of the neck with your elbow bent at roughly 90°, your forearm pointed forwards (neutral shoulder rotation) and your hand slightly supinated, like you’re holding an EZ Curl bar.
Learn the position of your resting hand. Nothing is easier than resting, so start there.
Here’s an old video that I made and had previously shared on the forum.
Return to this position frequently. Next, learn how to apply the resting position of your hand to achieve functional fretting postures. I don’t have time to go into detail here, but I’ve made some previous videos and shared them here before, like this one:
We’re working on a full CTC course on all of this stuff, but this should be enough to get you started.
My own experience here, I thought the same, and further initially thought all this stuff was kind of irrelevant and your fretting hand just “figures it out.” Tom very quickly convinced me I was wrong (digging around his posts here is worthwhile; it comes down to the way tendons connect on the fingers and some combinations just don’t work well because they’re not capable of a high degree of independence, from a pure physioligical standpoint). And, more recently - like, within the last couple weeks, that thread I mentioned wasn’t very old at all -I found that in a span of a couple hours I was able to pretty quickly change how my wrist interacted with my fretting hand on position shifts. It was actually surprising how immediate it was.
One thing maybe worth trying initially, if it feels daunting - for me, this was an observation with picking position and not fretting, so there’s a chance it might not apply… but also one it might:
Try over-exaggerating the change you want to make. I found I had a hard time making subtle adjustments to my picking position, but it was a LOT easier to make big, exaggerated changes… and, as soon as I could feel the difference caused by that over-exaggerated change, it’s like I’d defined two endpoints on a spectrum of tactile feedback, and suddenly it was easier to move between those points.
This may be crazy, but what the hell, worth a shot, right?
I’m not familiar with these - I’ll make a point of watching some videos of their playing in the next few days and see what I can pick up. thanks!
@Tom_Gilroy I’d love to read any more information you have on any of this. It’s fascinating to me and I believe it could help me with an issue I have on ring + pinky interdependence, or at least how to work within and around my limitations.
@Drew Do you have a link for the post you were referring to? Also, the John Maclaughlin or Marshall Harrison trills you mentioned? Thanks!