Neil's responseFrom mark
Hi Neil,
I have the bad left hand position that you describe as the baseball grip.
I play a lot of chords using my thumb hanging over the neck.
How would you suggest that someone who has played a long time goes about correcting this problem?
At the moment I have been selecting a few songs and making sure that I use the correct position for these. It of course feels awkward to do this and as soon as I stop concentrating I revert to my normal hand position.
Changing a bad habit is one of the hardest things for us to do. As a guitar player who wants to progress, it is important to be willing to do exactly that. Unfortunately, most bad habits eventually lead to plateaus and prevent progressing.
One way to break a bad habit is to work on it in a new song, or many new songs, before you apply it to old songs. This can be an effective approach for some people. Others need the 'cold turkey' approach of consciously watching every move and really concentrating on changing the habit no matter what they are playing. This can be exhausting and hard to keep up for a very long time but can work as long as you spend some time every day working on it.
I will address this in other post in the near future and would appreciate comments from the rest of the community on the subject of changing bad habits.
Neil