Left Hand Freedom for Guitarists
Many times it is frustrating to keep hacking away at the guitar without taking a step back and asking what the underlying problems in our playing are restricting us from moving forward. There are countless exercises to asses problems in our hands, especially our left hand. But without an understanding of how and why your hands move is sometimes more imporant than the actual exercise you are working on. It is important to pinpoint the problems rather than run through an exercise trying to constantly improve while making movements that have no benefit in the long run. You can make your hands do anything, even bad movements, and they will remember and execute them just as they have programmed.
In other words, creating a solid, agile fretting hand begins with getting comfortable with the way that the muscles in your hand work:
• The muscles that close your fingers into a fist are called “flexors.”
• The muscles that straighten your fingers are called “extensors.”
• When you use the flexors and extensors at the same time, your muscles work against each other and unnecessary tension is the result.
• The goal is to make sure that in as many cases as possible (there are always exceptions to a rule) only your flexors are used when fretting a note, and only your extensors are used when releasing a note.
The most common problems that cause both the flexors and extensors to be used at the same time are:
• The old rule of holding unused fingers above the frets for your next movement in a very rigid fashion is not always useful. Drop this rule whenever it is causing excess tension and never look back. It will only cause you problems. Looking ahead to what notes you will be playing and adjusting your hand and fingers accordingly is one thing, but holding your fingers in place just to hold them there makes no sense.
• Not releasing with the flexors before using the extensors to lift a finger off the fretboard.
• Watch that thumb and avoid putting it in a position that causes tension in the rest of your hand. Your thumb will more than likely be comfortable “outside” your fretting hand (try this without a guitar and see what I mean). The more you move your thumb towards your pinkie finger, the more tension you will build.
• Not putting your hand in the most comfortable position for whichever finger happens to be fretting a note at the time. This can be over or under rotation at the elbow, tension in the wrist or shoulder, etc.
Now it is time to spend a bit of your practicing by focusing on your muscle movement. There is not need to actually play any music when you attempt to begin this type of practice. The whole point is to understand and begin to “feel” how your muscles were meant to move in order to use that movement to effectively and effortlessly play the guitar (not that it does not take effort but as effortlessly as possible). The more you focus on the movement rather than the actual music the more you will begin to discover that the music is actually in the movement itself. With this knowlege it is only a small step to improving that left hand technique over an extended period of time as you focus on the movement rather than the song itself.
