Why no focus on the fretting hand?

Playing Technique
#61

I take your point, but consider this. My situation is that I’m a successful professional country\folk performing songwriter. I’ve made 14 records, 3 of them gold, tour the world with my band etc. My singing and writing are at a professional calibre, and my rhythm playing is passable at a professional level. But my guitar playing could use a ton of improvement, especially lead stuff. And I know for sure I’ll never be Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods playing lead guitar, ie a gifted natural talent. But within my career overall, I could benefit a ton from improving my lead technique to the extent that I’m able given my (possibly quite limited) natural ability. So in my case, the struggle to achieve even a decent level of lead playing is very worthwhile alongside my other basket of performance skills, while at the same time knowing full well I’ll never achieve the level my lead guitar player in my band has achieved. Not saying any of this to argue, but im here asking some basic level questions from a perspective of still having a successful career in music. And all this is said with goodwill. Just sticking up for some of us who find this stuff much more difficult than many people who (annoyingly…lol) seem to pick it up very easily and naturally. Cheers!

EDIT…I reread this and it sounds a little like I’m being boastful about my career in music. It wasn’t intended that way. I was just trying to point out that there are people at all levels of music career-wise that may run into trouble with some guitar stuff that other people find really basic! Really getting a lot from this forum and the materials on this site. Thanks to Troy and everyone participating in this community. Wish I’d had these resources when I was a kid!! Cheers…

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#63

Songwriting and composition ability involves a certain X factor that could be chalked up to differing life experiences, differing perspectives, etc. Meaning that even if you know the rules on a logistical and compositional level, some people, for whatever reason, are seen as producing “higher quality” art than others. This could ostensibly be chalked up to what is known as talent.

However, there’s nothing stopping you from becoming as proficient as your band’s lead guitar player in at least a few things.I guarantee you if you took the lessons espoused on this forum for practice and applied them you could see mindblowing results within a year. I went from not even being able to play 100 BPM 16th notes to easily pushing 200-240 BPM 16th notes across a variety of musical passages within far less than a year.

The problem is that many teachers are clueless and no one tells you how to get there, but there is a TON of stuff on here, moreso than anywhere else on the Internet, that will help you build speed in a systematic and predictable matter. There’s an additional problem in that many players choose to jump from one challenge to the next and do not stick to practicing the same core challenge using as many motor mechanical inputs as possible. Moving a pick across strings requires zero talent, but it requires dedication and practice, so I see no reason why you couldn’t do something as simple as moving a piece of plastic accurately when you’ve managed to conquer the heights of the recording industry and earned yourself a gold record as a byline. If it’s a matter of time or a lack of passion, then that too can hamstring your efforts of becoming a better lead guitar player, but I can assure you given your track record as a musician it has nothing to do with talent, intelligence, etc. For most players in general these aren’t valid excuses, and are too often coping mechanisms to preemptively protect against failure.

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#64

Thanks for responding and for the positive encouragement! I’ll keep at it! :grin:

#65

Not to get too far off topic, but I would really not worry too much about “talent”. It’s a super vague term. I honestly haven’t found any of the techniques we’ve investigated to require any particular kind of special abilities that most people don’t already possess. What the “naturals” do that the rest of us don’t is figure out techniques without anyone teaching them, often without even knowing they’re doing anything special. That’s their secret superpower. And it is a superpower! But most of the time, the rest of can learn the same techniques, often just as well, simply by knowing how.

If you’ve got the ability to do all the things you’ve outlined in your post, you have more than enough ability to do almost any kind of lead playing you could want.

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#66

I’ll give you something that many players struggle with as far as the left hand. Vibrato.

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#67

Not enough folks play the blues!

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#68

I’m going to bump this because I do think there is at least potential for one short chapter to Crack The Code of the left hand.

The underlying problem that would get you interested is not how to fret, or how to get faster, but the actual hand/wrist position and mechanics. The only way to solve this is to look at what great players do. And you might already have the footage to do it!

Here’s my view of the problem. The classical approach to left hand position (fingers parallel to the fretboard, don’t show the thumb) has “polluted” the electric/rock guitar teaching methods. What works for a nylon stringed guitar held between the legs at an angle doesn’t work for a steel stringed guitar hanging from a strap and almost parallel to the floor.

If you follow the classical advice you’ll end up with an almost 90 degree bend on the wrist, which is uncomfortable and possibly dangerous. Then you need to change position to do string bending, which requires the thumb as a pivot point. Then there’s the issue of “one finger per fret”, including the pinky, which seems to be mandatory but it shouldn’t be. Then there are the massive stretches - why stretch the fingers so much and not move the hand? Or switch to a different position and string?

Let me sum up the information I would love to have:

-I want to see the left hand wrist angle of top players.
-I want to see their thumb position.
-What’s their finger angle, do they play “violin grip” style?
-Do they palm the guitar neck entirely? Do they grip it where the index finger meets the palm? Do they clear it totally and only contact with thumb and the fretting fingers?
-Do they fret with tip or pad?
-I want to see when they stay in one position and try to reach the notes with all four fingers (plus thumb maybe!) and stretch them as far as they can, and when they opt to simply move the hand to reach the next note, or switch positions.

In my case, I was doing things with my left hand I have only reconsidered thanks to the “Cracking The Code” approach. As an easy example: I would play the intro to “Layla” with fingers parallel, wrist bent, thumb in the middle of the neck, and hitting those hammers/pulls with the pinky. I thought that would be the “correct” way to play it, no matter how uncomfortable or difficult, and I simply needed more practice.

I now play it with the wrist in “handshake” position, for lack of a better explanation, a slight “violin grip”, my thumb sticking out (ready for the bend) and using three fingers (no pinky) so the hammer/pull is easier to play and bigger sounding. DUH! (I know!)

I hope I’m making sense here… :slight_smile:

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#69

Great observations!

The highly flexed wrist thing we’ve talked about before and I think it’s worth everyone knowing. I get that this is probably more obvious to some people than others, and could use some clarification. The arguments about thumb over the top of the neck have always been dumb, and have always missed the point. It’s the wrist flex that matters. Whatever gets it straightest is good. That will be different for different phrases, different chords, or different strap lengths, and you position the thumb as necessary, sometimes above, sometimes lower.

I think this may be what people are asking us for. Or, at least, this may be what they think they want from us. To the extent that the trouble boils down to ergonomics type issues of the kind you’re pointing out, and not really speed issues per se, fantastic. Maybe people who have fretting trouble just don’t know why they’re having trouble or how to explain what the trouble even is. And maybe they think it’s speed but it really isn’t.

To what extent do you think people who ask this question are really asking about the issues you’re bringing up, rather than the “I can’t fret super fast” problem? Have you run into anyone couldn’t fret left hand stuff at common fast musical tempos, like in the high hundreds sixteenth notes? Or is it more like, well, I can do that but certain hand positions don’t feel right, or I don’t know where to put my thumb, etc.

#70

I see another analogy with your work on the right hand. I couldn’t pick fast. So my question would be “how can I get faster?” and the answer was usually “practice more” (start slowly, etc.) I would have never thought “there must be something wrong with my right hand mechanics that is actually preventing me from picking faster.”

Let’s move that problem to the left hand. “I can’t fret fast”. Or “I can’t play some stuff that I should be able to play”. And I’d add “but my left hand position is good because I’m doing everything the classical teachers are saying, even though it’s very uncomfortable”. This is where I’m missing some fact-based teaching that sums up the above issues (thumb, wrist flex, and so on), illustrates them with actual footage of great guitar players, and essentially gives an overview of the “correct” basic mechanics of the left hand. Then, all that’s left (pun!!!) is a matter of coordination and -finally- practice.

In the world of rock and folk-rock players that I’m familiar with, I know many people who simply think they can’t and will never be able to play fast. Sure, the problem might be 90% right hand and 10% left hand, but the left hand problem does exist. And I think the current instruction is as outdated as the right hand models were before Cracking The Code.

I know this can all boil down to essentially this: the correct way to play is whatever gets you the notes you want to play with the less physical effort, a natural wrist position and no discomfort. Self-evident, right? Well, I’ve been playing guitar for 30 years and I’ve only just realized this!!!

I have taken a quick look at the Cracking The Code compilations on YouTube (jazz, bluegrass, etc.) I can clearly see that almost all top players play with no left hand wrist flex, thumb showing on top of the neck, except for certain passages where there’s no other way to do it. Yet I’m sure if you asked them what’s the “good” left hand position, they would recite the old stuff, even if they actually don’t play like that! :smiley:

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#71

I had a teacher in my 20s who was a virtuoso on classical, flamenco, and electric guitars. When I was his student, I had been playing for less than 10 years. The first thing he had me do was change my hand position, along with retraining the movements I was making with my elbow and shoulder. The goal was to have my wrist be as neutral as possible and only for it to get in an overly flexed position when absolutely necessary. This was in the very early '00s. There are players and teachers who are aware of this.

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#72

I’m totally on board with the wrist stuff, and I think it’s a perfectly good idea to describe some common scenarios that demonstrate how wrist straightness is a guiding principle that doesn’t get mentioned as often as it should.

I’m not sure this will scratch the itch of the “fretting speed” / “can’t fret fast” crowd, or if there really is such a crowd. We have seen instances on the forum here of players saying they’re not able to “keep up” with their picking hand, but these might just be instances of hand synchronization issues rather than physically not being able to move fingers fast enough to play common “fast” tempos.

Totally, and I watched a classical tutorial on YouTube not that long ago talking about this. But that was classical. It could just be a case of spotty dissemination of relatively settled ideas rather than the ideas themselves being absent. And electric players who do a combination of standing and sitting probably have a wider range of postures to deal with than a classical player who only works sitting down.

And maybe electric players need to know that, for example, when Eddie plays the “Ice Cream Man” lick, there’s a reason he does it with the neck straight up in the air and the thumb behind the neck, and that reason goes beyond just showmanship:

…i.e. because that’s a comfortable way for a person standing up to get that big stretch without killing their wrist.

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#73

My 2 cents:
If fretting was a much of a problem as picking, then we would very few good guitar players.

There are so many legato videos out there from elite players that cover the whole thing not to mention countless hours of left hand footage of famous players through time , I’m not sure what there is to gain by going CTC on its ass. I suppose what we need is a guinea pig - is there anyone on this forum that fit into any of the below scenarios?
1 - can barely fret a note
2 - can play well with their fretting hand to the point where they could easily cope with mainstrean songs you might hear at a gig, but cannot fast legato

My hunch is that this forum could at a minimum improve their playing or solve their issue with existing understandings about how fretting hand stuff should go.

#74

I read an interview with Al DiMeola once, and he can be kind of brusk, but it was all about how to get faster and all the usual nonsense that magazine writers ask him. After this whole thing about the right hand, the tapping of the foot thing, the Latin syncopation stuff he’s known for, etc., etc., the interviewer goes, “and what about the left hand?” Al’s response was, “come on man.”

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#75

Lol, not the most helpful answer!

#76

That’s very Al. What did he mean by that? Like, it needs no discussion? I’m always trying to be as aware as I can of my own blindness to things I already do / didn’t think needed addressing. Picking motion, ironically, would have been a blind spot like five years ago, even after we had already begun making public features about the pickslanting discoveries.

#77

Yep, exactly. It was either explicitly stated by DiMeola or strongly implied that the right hand ran the show; to him, the left hand came along for the ride. Which is really intriguing because some of the left hand muting things he does, for example when he partially mutes portions of chords between the bass and treble register is very sophisticated and requires very, very precise hand and finger placement.

#78

What about when you are forced to reuse the same two fingers in two note per string scenarios? Is anyone struggling with that?
I can hardly get the
D) -----5-7-----5-7
A) 5-7 ----5-7
up to 140bpm.
Not even with legato or just a trill between two notes. Am I lacking the proper technique or could my natural speed limit just be very low?

#79

My personal favorite is “you gotta do what works for you; everybody’s different.“

I asked about these things on another website for guitar and the teacher just got frustrated. Three lessons in a row, he told me something to the effect of “just stop.“

The very best advice I got on my LH problems was from some guy named Jimmy at Lennon studios. Jimmy had me move the upper strap button behind the horn. And then for the lower strap button, I figured out that putting it on the front of the body, up, helped balance things out a lot better.

We’re not all built the same. Yet factory production guitars have little variance for ergonomic adaptations for the large variety of body types.

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#80

I wouldn’t say that your natural speed limit is low, unless there is a physical issue such as injury or permanant degenerative issue. If you tap your fingers on a table (like someone that is waiting bored and impatiently) your hands are probably fast enough. I would hazard a guess at having too much tension, note releasing the finger that is playing on the 5th fret quick enough to get to the next string or an insanely high action on the guitar. This lick doesn’t require pull-offs which does make it easier (I find that most people with poor fretting hands are not pulling off the string enough - instead they are just lifting the finger off which result in poor note quality. This is all assuming that you are not going for the Allan Holdsworth approach of “hammer ons only” :wink:

There was a good video by Guthrie Govan on legato, I’ll try and find it when I get a chance…

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#81

I agree with @Troy- there is no bottleneck in the sense with the fretting hand as there is with the picking hand (though ironically you do find the pure speed of the left hand being the bottleneck when you achieve a lot of speed with the right), but it’s that’s not related to form/mechanics, so I don’t think it merits the same level of attention in this CTC context.

However, beyond that context, left hand command is extremely important and the single most obvious sign of musical maturity and command over the instrument. It is predominantly responsible for tone, intonation, inflection, and how expressive you can make yourself. It’s really the strength and “voice” of your guitar.

Both need to be worked at obviously but if for some odd and extremely unrealistic reason a person theoretically had to choose one, then I’m prioritizing the left hand.

I didn’t mean to make it sound so black and white because I think it’s a false dichotomy (because it’s the synchronization that counts), but I think the left hand is analogous to a singer’s tone of voice while the right hand is like one’s range (pitch) of that voice.

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