Hi, long time fan of Cracking the Code and forum lurker here. Something very strange happened to my technique recently, and I wanted to share my experiences in case anyone is suffering with something similar.
TL;DR My left hand developed entirely new muscle memory which overrode my previous technique and caused severe syncing issues. I’m interested to know if this is at all common, how I can rectify the issue, and whether this has any sort of relevance to the educational guitar space.
Story Time
Coming off a busy Christmas pit-band season in spring last year, I was in the best playing shape of my life. Naturally, as a DSX/DBX player, I had long been jealous of the forbidden fruits that are Eric Johnson and Gypsy jazz, but thanks in large part to the wonderful resources here at CTC, I finally had a solid USX technique down and could comfortably shred in both escapes. Then life got in the way, as it does, and I didn’t touch a guitar for 6 months.
Last November, determined to get back into the swing of things, I feverishly began practicing again only to find that my technique had suddenly vanished and it sounded like I’d lost years of playing experience. Fair enough I thought, I must be very rusty. Yet weeks of daily dedicated practice time rolled by and nothing improved; it felt like I was playing through treacle with an invisible force that was guiding my right hand away from my left. I couldn’t play dbx 16th notes much faster than 90bpm, and very sloppily too.
Being a left handed player who plays right handed guitar, I assumed the right hand was the problem and began to troubleshoot my technique, perhaps some dsx and usx wires got crossed? Historically, the right hand was the problem (as I’m sure many on this forum can attest). Crucially, however, I was achieving this by ‘thinking’ with my left hand (my fretting hand), that is to say keeping time and feeling the music with my left hand and matching my right hand to it. As a lefty, this process felt instinctual.
After a month or so of practice to no avail, I snapped and began to mindlessly shred over some tunes in the hope that some latent ability would magically return and, to my surprise, both hands were playing perfectly – out of sync with each other. When the initial relief of discovering that my right hand did indeed remember picking technique wore off, I was saddened that my playing had devolved into a sloppy mess.
Thus in order to correct the issue, I began to ‘think’ with my right hand, with my left hand following. This approach was even worse, it caused great pain in my left hand and it felt like with every pick stroke my fingers were lifting 10kg just to reach the fingerboard. It appeared as if I had unlearned the guitar. What was more frustrating is that in isolation, both hands felt comfortable and natural with technique comparable to before my 6 month playing break, they just wouldn’t sync up no matter what I tried, muscle memory wouldn’t allow it.
The Problem
In an attempt to understand what was going wrong, I tested my hands outside of a playing scenario. Sure enough, if I tried to waggle my fingers in each hand simultaneously, they were still completely out of sync: my right hand felt entirely normal, but my left was tense, disjointed and confused. My playing issues definitely stemmed from there. Then the weirdest part. I tried the same thing with my fingers completely outstretched (as opposed to a curled playing position) and all the tension immediately vanished and my left hand synced perfectly with my right. Applying this to the guitar, my left hand was still very confused/sloppy as it was impractical to play with entirely flat fingers, but the dormant muscle memory of my prior technique suddenly appeared and felt in time with my right!
Somehow, after a six month break, my left hand managed to develop an entirely separate muscle memory to my previous playing technique. The problem was that this new muscle memory was out of sync with my right hand. I believe this stemmed from the instinct to resort to ‘thinking’ with my left hand (as I am left handed) contrary to my prior playing technique which while fe eling entirely synchronised was actually being actuated by my right hand and my left hand reacted accordingly. This makes sense, right handed guitars are set up with the neck facing left because the picking hand is ultimately responsible for time feel and ‘playing’ the string (I believe my thought process here is in line with mainstream pedagogy). This is speculation but I assume I probably started out ‘thinking’ with my left hand many years ago but as my playing progressed I unconsciously switched to ‘thinking’ with my right.
In the time since I have been slowly trying relax my left hand and encourage the old muscle memory that frets at the same time as I pick. It’s a slow process as the neural pathways are all very interlinked and keep trying take over from one another. If anyone has any tips/tricks/experience/ideas of how to re-train the left hand in this scenario, please let me know!
Some Thoughts/Questions:
• Do players here predominantly ‘think’ (i.e. keep time and feel the music in your head) with their left hand or right hand when they play? I’m especially interested to hear fellow lefty perspectives whether playing a left handed or right handed instrument.
• Has anyone, cracking the code team, teachers or otherwise, encountered this phenomenon where new muscle memory overwrites old to the detriment of the player?
• Assuming my analysis of myself is correct, should the potential conflict between left hand and right hand muscle memory receive more focus in lessons and online instruction spaces such as this?
• Are some of the technique building struggles players have due to ‘thinking’ out of sync in each hand as opposed to the inability to develop the proper technique separately? Or is this an issue that is rarely encountered outside of an x handed player learning to play an opposite handed instrument?
Thanks for reading if you made it this far! Would love to know everyone’s thoughts.