General Playing Advice & Technique

Let’s look at some general playing tips to help with your playing.

Posture

Your body should maintain a natural state with no tension.

• Neck and shoulers should remain upright and relaxed (avoid hunching)

Holding Your guitar

Playing with a Strap

The best thing you can do to achieve correct posture is to play with a guitar strap (even when seated). This will automatically adjust your guitar to sit in a way that feels natural and will also prvent you from leaning over to look at the fretboard.

• To avoid any unwanted swaying movements from your guitar while playing, your guitar should be pressed against your body using your strumming arm.
• Slightly angle the neck of your guitar forward (away from your body).
• Angle your guitar neck up not down. Using a guitar strap or footstool can help achieve this.

Strumming

• Your pick should be held with minimum pressure as a result strums should be lightly performed (without digging into the strings).
• The strumming and picking technique mainly comes from the wrist movement.
• The wrist should always remain loose and relaxed with no tension ideally achieving a floppy hand. Although there is flopiness, a balance of control is required when peforming up and down strokes:
• Down strums fall naturally due to gravity’s pull
• Up strums require you to lift your hand.
• Your strumming arm should be making contact with the guitar creating an anchor point

Fretting Hand

• Your wrist should always remain as straight as possible.
• Always use finger tips when pressing down a note.
• Press as close to behind the fret as possible without being on top of it.
• Your finger tips should remain parrallel to the strings. To achieve this the pinky side of your palm should maintain as close to the neck as possible.
• Find the optimal pressure balance when fretting a note. If you press too hard your guitar will sound out of tune, although if you press too light you will get a muted sound.
• Your fretting hand’s elbow should be free to move alongside the counter axis of your fretting hand’s movements.