How should we position and move our left hand when playing guitar? Are there best practices and ways to avoid injury? What should we look for to troubleshoot left-hand technique?
Here are a few pointers that will help your left hand fingers play guitar smoothly and comfortably. Master these, and you’re on your way.
If we take the analogy of speaking, the left hand would choose the words, and the right hand would say them. The left hand answers the question of “which note?” And the right hand makes the sound.
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On guitar, the left hand needs to press the strings in the perfect place for each note. It needs to avoid muting the other strings. And it needs to stay in a safe and healthy position to avoid injury.
Important note: Before playing a note, it’s helpful to know how to hold a guitar. Get in a good sitting position, and you’ll make playing easier.
To play a note on guitar, a left-hand finger presses a string behind a fret (the metal bars across the neck of the guitar).
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For this we use the fingertip. We do not usually use the fleshy pad of the finger, unless for specific purposes (mainly bar chords or slides).
The perfect place to press the string is just behind the fret. If we press directly on the fret, the sound is muffled. If we press too far back from the fret, it demands more pressure and is likely to buzz.
The ideal position for the left hand is a “C” shape. Each joint is in the midrange of its possible movement. This means that we can further flex or extend each finger at will. This is one of the “basics of playing classical guitar.”
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Ideally, the big knuckle of the index and little fingers are a similar distance from the bottom edge of the guitar neck.
Once we have the “C” left-hand position, we can move this hand position up and down the neck. This is called “shifting.”
Using the “C” shape, we keep our left hand thumb behind the fingers. This allows the fingers to stretch away from each other more easily. More on the thumb below.
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The middle finger and ring finger do not separate from each other as much as the other finger-pairs. This is normal and a characteristic of our anatomy.
We can learn to optimize the distance between the middle finger and ring finger of the left hand. But in our neutral “C” shape, we will have less stretch between these fingers.
We can also work to develop our left hand technique with finger independence Exercises. For more advanced players, extended slurs are also an excellent way of increasing the stretch of the left hand fingers.
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We just do our best and make it work. Below are some more tips for maintaining a healthy left-hand position and increasing stretch.
The left hand thumb, staying behind the fingers, is free to move across the back of the neck. It does not need to stay planted in any one position. It can go all the way to either edge.
On the neck, the thumb should not flex at the tip joint (AKA first joint). The thumb should stay extended and long, not bent. When we grip the left thumb, it increases tension in the palm and fingers.
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If the thumb extends out from the first finger, we are less able to stretch the fingers apart. So it should stay behind the fingers.
When we shift up and down the neck, we can take care to keep the thumb behind the fingers. When it slides out beyond the first finger, we lose our ideal form and positioning.
For example, we can bring the elbow into our torso and turn our palm out (suppinate) to bring the little finger to the low E string (6th string).
The Beginner's Guide To Playing Left Handed Guitar
And when we have more than one finger on the same fret, we can bring the elbow out. We turn the hand towards the right. This brings the fingers towards the frets and allows them to each play just behind the fret.
When we have more than one note on a given fret, the pointer finger is highest in space. The little finger is lowest in space. The middle and ring finger follow this positioning. This maintains the natural “C” shape, ensuring a healthy left hand position.
We avoid crossing the fingers. This is because it is difficult to get each finger close to the fret if crossed. It also limits the range of movement available for next notes. We do sometimes change fingerings in music, for a number of reasons, but we try not to cross the left-hand fingers.
Lesson: Left Hand Technique For Classical Guitar
Other than this, the fingers each align over 4 consecutive frets. This makes a “position” on the guitar a 4-fret span, with one finger over each fret.
Most people struggle to find a healthy left-hand position when they first start to play classical guitar. It can be difficult to prioritize this at first.
In the long run, taking time to establish a healthy left-hand position will do a lot more than you might expect. Incorrect positioning very often leads to wrist pain or worse.
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Following these steps to avoid injury will allow you to play guitar with ease, and ensure that you can play pain-free in the long run. It’s highly recommended that as a general rule of thumb (no pun intended): if it hurts, stop.
I started as a folk guitarist, then fell in love with classical guitar in my 20’s. Despite a lot of practice and schooling, I still couldn’t get my music to flow well. I struggled with excess tension. My music sounded forced. And my hands and body were often sore. I got frustrated, and couldn’t see the way forward. Then, over the next decade, I studied with two other stellar teachers – one focused on the technical movements, and one on the musical (he was a concert pianist). In time, I came to discover a new set of formulas and movements. These brought new life and vitality to my practice. Now I help guitarists find more comfort and flow in their music, so they play more beautifully.
Allen, your website and teaching methods are excellent. You have an easy going yet encouraging way of inspiring people to learn and practice their art. And you are always accessible to your students to personally answer questions. I appreciate ... that personal touch. The course on reading rhythm and playing higher up the neck I found particularly helpful. God bless you and many thanks. ~ Joe Bazan -Joe Bazan
Yamaha Fg820l Left Handed Acoustic Guitar
These warm-up and stretching exercises are helping me a lot! Because I’m a software developer I have to stay 8 hours typing on a computer keyboard, so I use my hands a lot during the day. At night, when I have some time to practice the guitar my hands and arms are usually in pain because they have been working a lot during the day, but I’ve found that doing the warm-up/stretching exercises in The Woodshed releases me from this pain and I’m then able to practice after doing them. You are building a very interesting and working guitar course, because for what I’ve seen so far it really works! ~ Ulysses Alexandre Alves -Ulysses Alexandre AlvesGuitars come in right-handed and left-handed varieties. If you’re left handed, you should think carefully about which guitar is right for you to learn. Unfortunately, most people who pick up a guitar don’t immediately show a strong tendency for either right-handed or left-handed playing. That’s because playing the guitar is complex, and it is not clear which hand plays the dominant role until you’ve spent some time practicing.
Most people who are interested in learning guitar simply go out and buy one—the right-handed variety—without necessarily even knowing that there is another kind.
But it’s a good idea to think about this decision carefully. After all, you can’t go back on this decision 10 years from now.
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If you are right-hand dominant, it’s probably safe to assume that the right-handed guitar is suitable for you. It’s learners who are left-handed or ambidextrous that need to think about it a bit.
Beginners spend quite a lot of time struggling to put together chords, to learn scales and sequences of notes, and to perform other techniques like bends and hammer-ons. These are all performed with the fretting hand, which is the left hand on a right-hand guitar. So it can be hard for the beginner to see why the other hand—the plucking hand— is normally considered the dominant hand in guitar playing. And playing the guitar is fairly complex. It demands a lot of both hands and for many people “handedness” may not be as important when playing guitar as it is in other activities. But there’s a reason why the picking or strumming hand is considered the dominant hand. Let’s compare the duties of each hand for a right-handed guitar player:
Another way to think of it is that the fret hand is dominant in the beginning. In the beginning, you’ll tend to learn chords and simple melodies, which may require more attention on the
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