Index and middle finger - increasing stretch seems impossible

Playing Technique
#1

My teacher, back when I was having classes, told me I should use the fingers 1, 2 and 4 when fretting, when there’s a whole tone of distance between the frets, like on low E and A strings when you’re playing the major scale on 3 notes per string. When I started doing that I had hard time stretching fingers 1 and 2 apart, but it got easier, EXCEPT higher up the neck around the 12th fret, at lower strings despite having my thumb really low behind the neck.

Fret 5, big frets, easy to stretch

Fret 12, much smaller frets, but way harder to stretch?!

This makes doing legato and chords in these regions very difficult. It even hurts sometimes because of the amount of effort to keep my index still and not have it slowly slide up, closer to the others. Doing stretching exercises up there feels awkward, I don’t feel the good “burning” pain I usually get when doing stretches, so maybe it’s not even a stretching issue?

Should I just give up and use my ring finger instead? This is an easy solution but it still bothers me to have to give up like this, and I’d like to know first if this is normal and if there’s a better way to work on this.

Thanks!

1 Like
#2

If you mean use your ring finger as in, 1 3 4 fingerings for whole tones, that would definitely not be the norm (that I’ve seen). Any way you could post a video of you playing something with heavy use stretches to see what you might be doing?

Personally, I’ve started to be less fond of stretching and instead change fingerings to stay in the “one fret per finger” position.

#3

In my experience this is due to the angle of the hand. It changed as you go from low to high. You should do what feels easiest. You’re not giving up, you’re learning and adapting.

#4

When you play higher on the neck, you could try pointing the headstock more forward, like a machine gun, to keep the angle of your fretting wrist more consistent. That works pretty well for me.

#5

Easy answer:
do whatever feels right.
I use 124 on E and A string and 134 on all others. Not sure why, but I think it has something to do with the structure of the 3NPS-patterns.

You could even use 123 higher up the neck. Just try what feels good. Hoping for pain to go away is not a good option after all.

Tom