Left hand posture - baseball bat/classical?

The last posture vid I did was planned and filmed in about 10 minutes, hopefully this is a lot better explained! With annotations I can also link you the ideas in action really easily! :D

Category:

Music

Tags:

• freepower
• freepowerug
• guitar
• lesson
• left
• hand
• posture

[dachhh]

About moving the guitar neck up an away from your body to straighten your wrist... I recently switched to a Les Paul style guitar which is uncomfortable to hold unless I move the neck up and away, so I've been doing this a lot lately. but this is causing my fingers to come down onto the fretboard at an angle. This is creating tension when playing scales near the nut. I want to have my body a bit more behind my left hand so the fingers come down vertically onto the fretboard. Any thoughts?

[FreepowerUG]

@dachhh Honestly, the bottom of the neck is just a place where you have to make tradeoffs - as long as you understand the main principles and listen to your body's comfort then you should be absolutely fine just experimenting with things and seeing what works and what doesn't on which guitars. :)

[sadmachine]

great video. one thing about the baseball grip i picked up from shaun baxter's GT columns is how much cleaner it makes things. it puts your index finger in the perfect position to keep unplayed strings dampened. i find when i must resort to classical style my picking hand has to do almost all the work to keep things clean.

i think this is part of why gilbert always sounds so good. his hands are so big that stretches are an afterthought, so he can use the baseball grip almost all the time.

[FreepowerUG]

@sadmachine Erp, this is another thing I forgot - when in "classical" position you actually want to leave your index fairly flat at all times, although that's not correct classical technique. You can be perfectly clean in both positions if you adjust carefully. You're right about Gilbert and his damn monster hands though - always ready for a monster bend even in the middle of gnarly 3nps runs. XD

[Klinicable]

Very helpful video. I personally tend to use the tremolo on my strat or floyd rose to do vibrato rather then using my fingers while using the classical position. You can see that Gilmour does this too, although he retains the baseball bat grip.

Phenomenal effort in putting up so many informative videos. Thanks a lot.

[FreepowerUG]

@Klinicable Thanks very much! You're totally right about using trem vibrato in classical as well, I forgot to mention it but basically everyone who plays in classical uses the whammy for vibrato!

[dachhh]

@FreepowerUG Maybe I'll eventually develop a callus on my chest where the top of the Les Paul digs in between my ribs.. :)

[robertjelic]

Thank you for this video. Extremly usefull...

[schecterdoom]

you could add buckethead to seamless :)

[mrchairboy]

Can't tell you how much this clarified things for me. Really great to understand that it's not all or nothing–switching back and forth as needed makes SO much more sense than feeling like you should only work in one form. Thanks again!