Practicing Fingerstyle Guitar

What’s the worst thing you can do when practicing fingerstyle guitar. Knowing the difference between a good or bad can make a huge difference in your daily or weekly practice schedule. After years of teaching, I came up with the “Worst Thing to avoid when you practice Guitar.” These are the things you want to avoid 100%. Save time and improve faster! Keep making these mistakes, and you will be wasting time, lose confidence, and give up playing guitar.

How do you know you are practicing the right way? This is quite a difficult question to answer. When you practice at home, and your teacher isn’t around, you can easily practice songs, chords, scales, and techniques in the wrong way. Beginners and intermediate guitar players face the same problem all the time when practicing fingerstyle guitar. Most of the time, you practice for a week then realize the exercise isn’t right. In most cases, you can easily pick up the bad habit too. Let me show you what’s the worst thing to avoid when you practice or play guitar.

 

Posture

Why Bad Posture is Killing Your Playing!

Pianists, violinist, flutists, and drummers always have a nice, correct, and healthy posture. They look so relaxed and energetic.

On the other hand, guitar players always come up with new, interesting, and completely wrong ways to play guitar! Wrong posture, eh … too energetic, couch playing, and wrong size guitar.

The first thing you have to do if you want to improve faster and avoid bad habits is to practice using your hands’ right position. Sitting on a chair isn’t enough, though. You must follow three things if you want to as much benefit as possible from your daily practice.

Remember: Practicing the guitar is just like a workout routine. Try to lift iron using the wrong posture, and you will get injured.

Hand Position

 

There is a major rule you must follow when you are practicing fingerstyle guitar. Your hands must play and pluck correctly! It is quite easy to pick up bad habits such as wrong position, unusual plucking, and buzzing frets. I am going to give you all the info you need to use your hands correctly. Follow each rule and stick with the plan. You will improve faster!

Right Hand

When it comes to fingerstyle guitar, their right position looks like this one:

The thumb in front of the fingers, pluck downward (most of the time on the bass notes). The fingers pluck the strings smoothly. You can either use nails or just flesh. When plucking, the palm doesn’t move at all (or very little).

There is one major rule you want to follow when you pluck the string:

Make sure you use finger articulation only. No grabbing or pulling strings!

Fingerstyle mistake 1

The thumb is far too close to the index finger if you have this position; the thumb and index clash when plucking simultaneously.

Fingerstyle mistake 2

– Leaning the fingers on the body as support. This is a technique that Mark Knopfler uses. Although guitar players are using this approach, I highly recommend using the standard or “Classical” posture. With this technique, you are sacrificing the ring finger. Also, it doesn’t really help you playing a fast arpeggio.

 

Fingerstyle mistake 3

Grabbing and pulling strings. This is something kids do quite a lot. The sound is usually sloppy and buzzing. Make sure you pluck the string gently with flesh or nails.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Left Hand

The left hand is probably the most difficult thing to get right, especially if you are self-taught. The problem here is that it is quite simple to get it wrong. Thumb and fingers must work together in harmony. Misuse the thumb, and you will compromise the quality of your playing.

Mistake 1 – Left Hand Thumb

Most of the time, especially if you are self-taught, the thumb position guitar players use is completely wrong. The thumb should always be placed STRAIGHT BEHIND THE NECK. I have seen all kinds of weird approaches: horizontal thumb, the Hook thumb, and the Upside-down thumb. If you currently use one of these three weird approaches, you probably struggle with bar chords, stretch, intermediate chords, and fluidity. Chords change quite difficult and sloppy, and you are wondering why it sounds so bad.

By using the right position, you will gain more control and accuracy. You will be able to hold the chords down for longer. The bar chords will sound much better. The stretch will improve. Practicing fingerstyle guitar can be quite frustrating if you don’t follow these few rules.

Let me show you a quick exercise you can do every day to fix the thumb problem. It is an asymmetrical exercise up and down the fret-board that forces you to keep the thumb straight. Do this simple exercise every day for five minutes. I can guarantee you will improve the position of your thumb quickly and with no pain. But remember: You have to do it every day for at least a couple of months. Are you up for the challenge?

In “Fix the Thumb, you will be work on your thumb and finger positions. Follow these three rules if you want to gain more control and fix your fingers.

• Keep the thumb straight behind the neck. It should be placed between the 1st and 3rd fingers. Bring the thumb with you when sliding up and down the neck. Your thumb’s fingertip should be below the neck edge so, no thumb sitting on the top neck. This is the classical guitar posture! Get this position, and your playing will improve drastically.
• Hold the fingers down at all times. Notice that the left-hand finger pattern is always the same 1-3 repeated on different positions. Make sure that when you play with the 3rd finger, the 1st finger is still down. Check the pic down below.
• Always alternate index and middle finger with the right hand. Don’t double pluck with the same finger. By using alternating fingering, the exercise will sound smooth and fluent.

Work hard to improve your thumb position. It will change your playing!

Mistake 2 – Left Hand Fingers.

Fingers are another painful thing to fix. Most of the time, if you are lucky, you will naturally use the left-hand fingers correctly. It is quite straightforward. You press down the string with the fingertip. However, there are people you would struggle to figure out how to play the notes correctly and come up with something like that:

Now, this stuff is hard to fix. If you got used to playing that way, I could guarantee you that:

• You can’t stretch your fingers at all.
• When you play a melody, you can’t hold the note down for long.
• Speed is impossible.
• Hammer on and pull off just doesn’t work.
• Bar chords … forger about it.
• You probably also have sore fingers all the time.

How do you fix that?

The first thing you have to do when practicing fingerstyle guitar is to make an effort and commit every day (or every time you practice). The good news is, you know what to fix. I see many guitar players getting frustrated because they can’t play certain things yet; they don’t ask the “Why” and “How” questions.

“Why I can’t play it” and “How do I fix that.”

Fix the left hand’s fingers with this simple exercise. Make sure that:

• The thumb is straight behind the neck.
• Press the fret with the fingertip and not the phalanges.
• Stretch the fingers as much as you can.
• Place the fingertip close to the fret-wire.

Mistake 3 – The Left-Hand Position.

Another important thing you must get right is the left-hand position—the angle.

Notice how important it is to have the palm and wrist in line. The fingers are perfectly placed, and the thumb is straight behind the neck. This is the right position to use. I highly recommend you work hard to get the left-hand position right. You will gain:

• Stretch.
• Control.
• Speed.
• Accuracy.

The only thing you can do to have a perfect left-hand position is to make sure you follow the roles you have learned about thumb and fingers.

The worst left-hand position on the guitar.

Pic 1: The palm touches the bottom neck. This is a horrible way of playing guitar as it reduces the ability to stretch the fingers. Chords, even the basic ones, are difficult. Lower the thumb and always make sure you have space between neck and palm.

Pic 2: Weak fingers. In this position, your fingers “bend” downward. This position is quite annoying because it makes your playing flaky and weak. It would help if you always kept the fingers strong with the joints going upward.

If you struggle with your technique and you are willing to make an effort and improve it, make sure you work on one thing at a time. There is no point trying to fix everything in one go. It takes time to fix a bad habit. Don’t get frustrated. Try every single day. You will be surprised to see how you can improve your technique by working on it even just a few minutes a day.

Good luck!