Tips for better playing

[Chronikus]

Hey all,

 

I recently picked up the guitar and have been trying to learn by watching and playing tabs found online, it's a slow progress but I feel I'm getting somewhere at least.

The main area of problem is timing and discomfort in the fretting arm/hand, I mainly try to play Ritchie Blackmore songs and given I'm a complete newcomer to the field I figure I could use some help.

 

Below is a short video of two different ways I play man on the silver mountain, watching it makes me realize that my fretting is doing a lot of motions. It doesnt feel that way when playing but it definately doesn't look as smooth as when others play, also I can only play for a shorter duration of 20 minutes or so before my hand start aching.

 

I reckon it ain't easy but if anyone has any tips for me, I'd appreciate it.

 

 

 

[Musical Mystery Tour]

People play in all sorts of different ways and in all kinds of different poses which might, or might not, suit them. But the first thing to note is that when you are doing something new with your body, in this case your hands, it can take some time to develop a bit of muscle strength and to get used to moving your hands and fingers in a new way, and this will certainly be part of it, but beyond that, there are some position and technique alterations you can make which will probably help you, so here goes...

 

Position of the guitar: When you see classical guitar players doing a recital, you will note that they often have a foot stool and they hold the guitar like this. There is a good reason for that, and it is that with the neck raised up, your wrist does not have to stretch around the neck so much, so it stops your wrist hurting and your fingers can more easily reach around to fret stuff. Try this little experiment: put your hands in your current playing position as though you were gonna play 'air guitar', now move your fretting hand up to that classical guitar pose and see how much less your wrist has to bend around when it is up there. Now of course everyone who plays rock guitar wants to look cool and have their guitar slung down low in that classic punk style, but doing that makes this problem even worse; you don't have to go mental and have your rock guitar all the way up in that classical pose (because it looks twattish for one thing), but just moving the neck up a little bit will help and even though you are seated, it would help to have a strap a bit shorter in order to support the guitar in that position rather than having to hold it there, so, in short, shorten your strap a bit so it supports the neck up a little bit.

 

Position of fretting hand: Again borrowing from the world of classical guitar, when being taught that, you would be told to place your thumb in the back of the centre of the neck. The reason for that is sort of similar to the first point about the position of the guitar and the ease with which it allows fretting; with your thumb in the back of the centre of the neck, your fingers are further round the neck and come down on the fretboard perpendicular to the strings, which aids in clean fretting and with your thumb behind the neck, when you fret, you have your thumb bracing the neck, so the fretting fingers have something to push against, which means less pressure is required and that stops your fingers from aching. Now of course you see rock guitarists with their thumb over the top of the neck to do lazy G chords and such, and that's okay, but they do that when their hand has developed some strength and they know what they can get away with, and even when players do do that, they still tend to brace the neck against their fingers by cradling it with the base of their thumb, so there is nothing wrong with having your thumb over the neck from time to time, just be aware that it makes it more of a stretch for your fingers when you do that.

 

Economy of movement: A bad habit many guitar players have, is to fret a note with for example their first finger, pluck that note, then lift that finger off as they fret the next note they want with their third finger, then lift that off and fret the note they had before with their first finger by placing that down again, and so on. So their fingers are going up and down all the time and making completely unnecessary extra movements when they could have just kept their first finger down all the time instead of moving their fingers up and down like they were playing a trumpet. This, and playing across the fretboard rather than up and down it, is what helps to develop faster, easier and smoother playing. It also means that some notes could be hammered on or pulled off rather than plucked, which can also make things faster or easier to play.

 

Plucking the strings economically: Another thing people do which slows them down and makes life harder than it needs to be, is playing all downstrokes when picking a riff out, instead of going up and down with the pick alternately. Alternating between up and down movements to pick out notes requires far less movement and so it enables you to play faster as well as requiring far less movement. It will feel awkward at first if you've been doing all downstrokes, but it is worth sticking at it to get used to it, especially if you have a desire to do any of that bloody awful 'shredding' which people seem to want to do, as you need to be able to pluck strings fast to do that. Personally, I think all that shredding stuff is shite and has little musical merit, but if it's something you'd like to end up being able to do, then alternating up and down strokes is going to be essential for it and even for more artistically meritorious playing, it definitely helps.

 

Right hand position and movement: It looks to me like you are already doing that bit right, but just in case you are not, what makes life easier with that, is to rest the fleshy part of your hand (the bit on the opposite side to where your thumb is), on the bridge. this does a few things, it gives your hand some support, it lets you just move your thumb and forefinger in order to play, but can also allow you to pivot your hand too if you like, and it lets you roll your hand forward to mute the strings for chugging rhythm playing, which in combination with fretting hand muting, gets you all the rock music tones you want.

 

The action of the guitar: Kind of hard to tell, and it might be the lighting on your video, but based on the shadow of your strings, it looked like the action of your guitar was a bit on the high side, and that makes fretting need more effort and can contribute to making your hand ache, especially when learning. High actions also cause tuning and intonation issues. There are a ton of videos on places like youtube about how to sort that out. Some of it will require a few specialist tools, but most of it doesn't require anything particularly special. So you might want to look into that as well.

 

All of this is intended to help you rather than to pick holes in your playing, which is actually pretty good, so keep it up and if you find any of the above helpful, it will only improve stuff. And since you were playing some Blackmore stuff, here's an interesting thing he said about learning guitar which you might or might not have heard, he said: 'When I was learning lead guitar, I listened to a lot of saxophone solos, because they were all single notes and so I could do them on a guitar and it helped a lot.'

Edited March 17 by Musical Mystery Tour

[ezbass]

2 hours ago, Chronikus said:

discomfort in the fretting arm/hand

Possibly squeezing too hard, relax a little and don't overdo it. Little and often is better than big sessions. I see that you're using your thumb for the E string in the video and this may be a contributing factor to your discomfort. Whilst there is a place for using your thumb for big stretches and wide chord voicing, it's not normally a good habit to start with. I'd use my index finger for that note, in this instance.

 

2 hours ago, Chronikus said:

problem is timing

That'll come with practise, try slowing things down to start with.

[Chronikus]

 

Quote

Position of the guitar: When you see classical guitar players doing a recital, you will note that they often have a foot stool and they hold the guitar like this

Even though it looks and feel a bit whacked, that posture sure made it a lot easier to fret the frets, though I found it very hard to accurately fret. Probably just practice, but I'll throw that one in for a change.

 

Quote

Position of fretting hand: Again borrowing from the world of classical guitar, when being taught that, you would be told to place your thumb in the back of the centre of the neck.

 

Aah, also made it a lot easier to fret. I'm doing it that way for this particular song since that's what he's doing and it was the only way for me to play the E string together with the other notes. I'm not sure how he does it on the recording and everytime I see him live he seem to be playing differently. I think it's supposed to be a muted tone too but that's far over my league at the moment. But with practice comes experience, so It seems I need to practice a lot more and for the hand easier riffs to build up the core strength. That tip was especially useful when playing Poison since that far stretch in the intro was a whole lot easier doing with the thumb in the center back!

 

Quote

Economy of movement: A bad habit many guitar players have, is to fret a note with for example their first finger, pluck that note, then lift that finger off as they fret the next note they want with their third finger, then lift that off and fret the note they had before with their first finger by placing that down again, and so on.

 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, you mean while playing the same string(s) on different frets? That's something I've been practicing but wow, it's pretty hard. Though that along with the tips from Plucking the strings economically sounds like something I should embrace and practice more. I can up pick one single string, like when playing temple of the king. But if it's two or more, I have to use a very thin pick to even somewhat succeed and I find them hard to get a good sound out of. I'm not a fan of shedding or fast play myself, I like it clean. Ritchie tends to keep it so with good rythms, like the pre-intro when he plays man on the silver mountain live in munich, I like that kinda play.

 

Quote

Right hand position and movement: It looks to me like you are already doing that bit right, but just in case you are not, what makes life easier with that, is to rest the fleshy part of your hand (the bit on the opposite side to where your thumb is), on the bridge.

 

I found out, by accident that for me, resting the palm on the bridge is the easiest way for me to play good sounding muted notes as I can't do that with the fretting hand yet. Though it feels as if the hand is so far back there that it's hard to pick the strings accurately, so I haven't really practiced plucking them there. Usually when something hard we tend to go easiest route and not really bother. But you make me realize that it's all just practice and it'll get better over time.

 

Quote

The action of the guitar: Kind of hard to tell, and it might be the lighting on your video, but based on the shadow of your strings, it looked like the action of your guitar was a bit on the high side, and that makes fretting need more effort and can contribute to making your hand ache, especially when learning. High actions also cause tuning and intonation issues.

 

I think you're absolutely right! A very good observation!! I just measured the lowest part of the low E down to the 12th fret and it measures 3mm, I think that could be chopped down a good 1mm. Maybe even more, I'll have to bring it to the shop.

 

 

 

 

Quote

Possibly squeezing too hard, relax a little and don't overdo it.

 

I think you have a very very good point here, might be due to the high action. But I'll keep that one in mind when playing!

 

Also, I just played and I slowed it down quite a bit. I noticed I had a lot more control over my fretting hand, the fingers wasn't moving anywhere near as much as in the video nor as far away from the neck. Interesting, maybe I should take it a bit slower, though a hard thing to do when the mind and body never wants the same heh. But to be realistic, I don't think I have the accuracy to play well yet, I think it's all just muscle memory from my side, my hand knows where to move. Which is not the way to go, so slower it is.

 

 

Thank you very much guys, very exhaustive and detailed answers!

Edited March 18 by Chronikus

[James Davies 1155]

Sheesh, I wish I could play a quarter of how you play!

[Dad3353]

On 17/03/2024 at 12:21, Chronikus said:

...I reckon it ain't easy but if anyone has any tips for me, I'd appreciate it.

 

I've just watched this clip (I must have missed it when originally posted...), and would agree with the comments that follow. I would like to add a detail; I see that you're not using the guitar strap. Practicing this way may be OK, but it will all fall apart when you try to play standing up. It's important, whether sitting or standing, to have the guitar maintained by something other than your arms (ie : the strap...), which should be adjusted so as to have the guitar at the right height and balance, with no 'neck dive'. Try it and see the difference between sitting and standing..? Hope this helps...