Video Transcript:
Hello everyone, this is Dan Vuksanovich at WhyISuckAtGuitar.com and today’s lesson is part one in a series entitled “I Suck At Guitar Because My Fretting Hand is a Tense, Inaccurate Mess.”
The Basics of tension:
Tension is a requirement of any physical activity. Without tension we couldn’t stand, sit, walk, run, or do anything besides lie in a crumpled heap on the floor. What we want to do is get rid of the wrong kind of tension: the tension that creates “the claw.” Why does “the claw” happen? The root cause of “the claw” is uncoordinated use of the muscles in the arm and hand.
At this point I’d like to define two different muscle groups: flexors and extensors. We have flexors and extensors all over our body but the ones that we’re concerned with are in our hand and forearm. Flexors are on the inside of our hand and the underside of our forearm. These are the muscles that help us turn our hand into a fist. Extensors are on the opposite side, the outside of the hand and the top of the forearm. These are the muscles that allow us to open our hand up and flatten it out. “The claw” happens when these two muscle groups fight against each other.
So how do we fix it?
We fix it through thorough examination of how we’re using our muscles… a deeper dive into the root cause. What movements, specifically, are causing the problem? What fingers, specifically, are causing the problem? We also need to have a slow, rational approach to retraining our muscles. This is where challenging assumptions comes in. If you’ve been playing with tons of tension for years, this is going to feel different, and that’s a good thing. Granted, “different” doesn’t mean it should hurt. This lesson is not about getting your fingers to do things with brute force. This is about using less force and more coordination. Ultimately, fretting notes should feel easy.
So for a deeper dive into the root cause, what I thought I would do is give you a rundown of some of my own problem areas and how I’ve addressed them. I had three main problem areas that I had to address before I even got into the motion of my fingers.
- The first one was thumb placement. This is pretty much the most relaxed state that our thumb can be in. Notice that the thumb is outside the fingers. For years, however, I kept my thumb underneath my fingers and about halfway across my hand. If you try this yourself you’ll notice that as soon as you move your thumb across your hand, your fingers start to do some crazy things and get tense.
- Second, I had some side pull issues, especially with my index finger and my pinky. Basically I wasn’t keeping my fingers “in their lanes” so to speak. Our fingers are happiest when we can keep them flexing and extending straight, and basically parallel with each other.
- Third, I had improper forearm rotation. My pinky is extremely short relative to the rest of my fingers and I had my forearm rotated all the way in with the idea that I would give my pinky some help by bringing it closer to the strings, but what I was really doing was putting my other three fingers and my thumb in some really unnatural positions.
The solution to all this was rotating my forearm outward a little bit. That solved my “fingers in their lanes”problem because now that I have my forearm rotated outward a little bit I can very easily flex and extend my fingers in a straight line, parallel to each other. My thumb is now naturally outside my fingers as well.
So the next thing I did was come up with some tests, and these are basically motion tests, so that I could make sure that certain parts of my body weren’t rigid while I was playing.
The first test had to do with my wrist. As I fretted a note with each finger I would make sure that I could move my wrist. I wasn’t playing scales. I wasn’t even playing two notes in a row. I was just fretting a note with each finger and making sure that I could keep my wrist flexible. I did the same thing with my thumb. Can I fret a note with each finger and move my thumb. The idea here is that our thumb should be resting against the back of the neck, not jammed into the back of the neck.
I came up with three tests for my fingers:
- The first was the vibrato test. I would fret a note with each finger and using these two joints right here I would apply just a little bit of vibrato to the string… and this isn’t vibrato for sound. Sometimes I wouldn’t even pick the note. The idea is that we want to make sure that our fingers can move while we’re fretting the note, because if they can move it means they’re not rigid
- The second test is the non-fretting finger motion test. When I fret a note with one finger, can I move the fingers that aren’t fretting the note? Once again, if I can move those fingers, it means they’re not rigid.
- Third is the releasing a fretted note test, and this is a really important one because I think that too often we focus exclusively on fretting notes, but releasing notes is the other part of the motion, and if we don’t let go with our flexors before we release a note, then we get into a situation where our flexors and extensors are fighting against each other. Our extensors are trying to release but our flexors haven’t let go of the fretted note.
There’s also the picking hand test. This is really more of just an awareness test. Is my picking hand rigid while I’m playing? If that’s the case I’m going to get sympathetic tension in my fretting hand.
Then there’s the rest of my body. There are any number of places in the rest of your body that could lock up and get rigid while you’re playing and that will adversely affect your hands. In my case my problems were that my jaw would clench while I was playing, and my breathing, which isn’t really a muscle… but if you stop breathing it’s kind of a problem.
So there you go. There are some tests that you can apply to help figure out where you specific problem areas are.
So what about accuracy? The title of this lesson included the words “tension” and “accuracy.” Reducing unnecessary tension will automatically increase accuracy. We’ll talk specifically about accuracy later on in this series of lessons, but understand for now that increasing rigidity in your muscles reduces accuracy, so then reducing rigidity in your muscles will increase accuracy.
Your homework is to examine your muscles as you fret various individual notes. Are your wrist, fingers and thumb rigid or can you move them easily? Apply some of the motion tests. Are you flexible or rigid? What are the specific joints and motions that you need to focus on the most as a result of these tests? Study how you release notes. Remember that fretting notes is only half of the required motion. Releasing them is the other half. If you don’t get good at releasing notes, you will build up unnecessary tension. Finally, incorporate a focus on reducing unnecessary tension into your practice routine. This is not something you can do for fifteen minutes one day and then forget about it. If you want to undo the bad habits you’ve built up over time you need to focus on this over an extended period of time.
In conclusion, remember that “fast is slow, and slow is fast.” The more you try to rush, the more you will slow yourself down. Enjoy gaining control over your muscles and building coordination. The feeling you’ll get when you see results and playing gets easier is well worth it.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time at WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.
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