Very interesting, thanks for sharing! I think a TL;DR summary could be helpful…in just a few sentences, anything stand out as particularly interesting results you think folks here might want to know about?
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My quick contribution is: always one fret short of what I truly want
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On a 25.5" scale guitar, I have enough reach to play the stretchy part of VH’s “Ice Cream Man” solo slowly, but not enough reach to play it at speed. I mean, I could probably transpose it a few steps higher, but the frets start to get more cramped too, plus it’s just the principle of the thing, lol.
Do you place the guitar vertically like EVH does? I think it’s kind of necessary for these things*
*=unless you are Paul Gilbert, in which case you can do it with the thumb showing over the neck
5-10 comfortable
5-11 uncomfortable but probably workable
5-12 hospital visit
For that phrase, I do. Even then, while my pinky can reach the furthest fret, the fretting with the pinky gets unreliable during string switches at speed because the pinky isn’t quite long enough to comfortably retain a slight curl for making contact consistently with the fingertip rather than the pad. Sometimes it comes out OK despite the flattening of the pinky, but it isn’t reliable. At slower speeds, I can force the pinky curl while stretched out, but I can feel my hand straining back near the index finger to get the little bit of extra width to make it work.
I can imagine if I really hunkered down on gradually increasing my metacarpal spread, I could probably get there, but that seems medically irresponsible. Tuning down and using a capo seems like a safer way to go, lol.
Edit: Just experimented a little and one solution for me might be to point the fingers slightly toward the headstock for this lick. It forces me to have a non-curled index finger to make the stretch, but allows me to curl the pinky more easily. Haven’t put a lot of work in yet, but it seems promising.
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I get 5-11 uncomfortably, 5-10 on any string down to the 7th if I’m holding the guitar high. I can’t spend a lot of time doing stretches like that though, since it tends to bring back old RSIs.
@Brendan: Thanks for the kind comments.
There’s a lot of very geeky technical info in these articles, but the most readable part, and hopefully the part of interest to folks on this forum, is the “Additional Information” / “Appendix A” document which accompanies the Prosthetics and Orthotics article, as this discusses the relationship between Django’s hand size, injuries, equipment, and playing technique.
Key points:
-
Django’s hands were unusually large: in the top 5% of the population.
This meant he had a big span between fingers: he could effortlessly stretch >12 cm between the tips of his index and middle fingers. -
His joints were unusually flexible.
-
He had great strength in his fingers - his guitar had a very high action, and it would have required a lot of strength to play his licks at the speed (and unamplified volume) heard on the recordings, and to play his trademark wide vibrato.
Together, the above assets allowed him to perform some unusual moves eg.:
- A barre across the full width of the fretboard at the ninth fret using just the last two parts (phalanges) of his index finger
- A half- barre at the fifth fret with just the last part of his middle finger
- The first instrument that Django learned to play was the violin. Perhaps because of this, it seems likely that Django oriented the wrist and fingers of his fretting hand almost parallel to the fretboard like a violinist; rather perpendicular to the fretboard as is taught in classical guitar technique. This allowed him to “walk” his two most mobile (index and middle) fingers up and down the fretboard in two notes per string patterns.
None of the above physical features detracts from his genius and skill:
Even if he had not had these natural assets, he was an amazing innovator and would have doubtless have found alternative techniques to express the beautiful and original phrases and harmonies that he could hear in his head.
There’s lots more info in the articles - some of it very detailed and using technical jargon. If you need further clarifcation or explanation, please drop me a message any time.
Best wishes
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5-9 )
but my pinky is deformed, and it became shorter after surgey, so I guess I would have 5-10 stretch otherwise
though it depends on chord type I’m playing. Sometimes I have enormous (for me) stretch… or should I say ‘techique’, since I use different tricks to get to frets I need that are not pure stretching with force
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