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Hello All

Firstly, thanks Neil for going into such depth in the webinar last saturday regarding my questions on body posture and the removal of the baseball bat grip.

I'm now working on the classical posture, the 4-point grip-which I'm finding very comfortable. I'm also working on removal of the baseball bat grip- thanks for explaining that and the thumb position also.

The questions I'd like to ask are regarding the correct hand position, and which part of your fingers hit the strings.

So with my thumb straight, correctly positioned, and not looped over the neck, the pads on my fingers are hitting the frets at an angle, rather than straight on, is this something I need to worry about? Is there such thing as correct form here? Also, in terms of thumb position, if I put my index finer on the 1st fret of E string and 2nd finger on 2nd etc etc, where should my thumb be in relation to these...or can it go anywhere, as long as its straight and correctly positioned?



Hope that all makes sense.

Thanks

Joe

Hi Joe

I don't see your video ( maybe me )

As for your thumb I would say behind your first/index finger as that is the natural position.

RicksPick
Also working on proper positioning

No vid yet Joe.

Thanks guys

Seems I'm having video problems at the moment, will have to leave it till later.
took ages to download, so suspect there may be a problem, will check it out and sort later.

Thanks

Joe

You should be playing with your finger tips, not the pads. As long as your thumb is correctly positioned on the back of then neck, then it should be able to slide as the hand moves. Look at your hand and then move your thumb naturally into your palm. That is about where it should be in relation to your hand on the back of the neck.

A past guitar teacher of mine explained this by holding an apple like they do in tv adverts between the thumb and fingertips. Picture that. Then he said the idea is to hold your hand like that without the apple of course, and then in turn touch each fingertip to the tip of your thumb. To do this you need to bend your fingers slightly, then you apply that to the neck of the guitar. He also said this works for your right hand as well for fingerpicking as long as you rotate your hand at the wrist slightly so the thumb goes parallel to the strings, he called tham apple hands or claw hands lol. BUt it seems to work.

Hi Guys

Sorry its taken me a while to add the video, illness and video issues have slowed me down recently.

Just a video of me and guitar, 2 chords, and showing my thumb position, just want to know if its correct, if it is, then I can work from there.



Thanks

Joe

What is your pinky doing tucked up under like that? Other than that, it looks good to me.

Joe-

Looks good, assuming you're just keeping your 4th finger out of the way for the camera, as Andy pointed out.

Neil

It looks fine other than your rogue pinky lol. Keep in mind though the thumb doesn't need to be static , the placement generally towards the middle of the neck and opposite index, but sometimes it can go down and opposite centre index and middle. Occasionally it can go higher and even sometimes be used to mute the 6th string although rare, Clapton does that a lot. The main thing is to keep the wrist low enough not to touch the neck and fingers poised above fretboard. If your hand is in what I call the apple position (imagine holding an apple in fingertip and thumb tips as if showing it off) pivot the wrist up and down the thumb automatically goes up and down too opposite to the fingers. Classical would virtually never raise the thumb above the nbeck though.