Do You Make these Mistakes on Guitar?

If you asked me “what is the most important thing to focus on when learning the guitar?” This is what I would tell you, just this one thing… Well actually its 2 things but for the purpose of this page lets just keep it to 1 and I will let you imagination wonder when it comes to the other. Below, I will give you 3 things that you can apply to your guitar playing that will help make improvements in your technique

What is that one thing that I would say to focus on when learning guitar? Are you ready for it?.. It’s your technique!  I meet so many guitar players that pay no to little attention to this one aspect of their playing. The main reason most people have poor technique is that they never had a teacher or a coach to guide them and tell them how to do things correctly. Well, You are in luck today because I’m going to inform you on my famous 3 finger rules

What are the finger rules?

Rule 1 – Play on your finger tips

So the first thing I would tell you is that when you are playing guitar you want to play on the tips of your fingers. Im talking like near the finger nail finger tips. This is critical! If you have long finger nails then they have to go because what you will start doing is compensating for them. This is not good! I can only tell you this one more time. Play on the tips of your fingers near the actuall nail. Painful, yes, but it i only temporary as you will soon grow calluses

Rule 2 – Play with a claw

Your are probably wondering what is playing with a claw. Im a human not a Kuala… I always just say play with claw because it is easy to remember and student of mine in the past gave me that idea which I absolutely love. So the main jazz of playing with a claw is that you want to be able to curl your fingers. If you have ever lifted weights in the past or currently lift weights you may have trouble with the claw. I have some exercises that I can give you but will have to be in video form so check below for the 3 finger rules. At the end of the day just remember… Claw!

Rule 3 – Close to the frets

Last but not least is that when you are playing the guitar or in this case learning to play the guitar you want to play close to the frets. Now the technical term here is the fret wire. The fret wire is the then silver strip in between the frets. Yeah! That thing. The point is that you always want to play close to those fret wires and not on them, because if you do, your guitar explodes! No just kidding that doesn’t happen but your guitar will start to buzz and it does not sound good.

So what I tell people is to play about 3/4 of the way next to the fret. Because if you play on it, you get fret buzz and if you play in the middle or two far over on the other side you have to press down a lot harder on the guitar and makes things difficult. Especially if you are playing on the acoustic guitar or are trying to play really fast on electric. i.e Shredding

Well, there you have it! The 3 finger rules that if you follow will help make sure you have perfect technique. The best part is once you have these rules as habits you can start to break them! Which is my favorite part, however, remember first you must know the rules before you can break them.

p.s.

Thumb placement is also a very big one and its difficult for me to explain this to people with out seeing them in person but i will tell you this. Watch some live guitar players and see what they are doing with their thumbs. Or even better, seek out and instructor and ask them. And plus, the thumb technically is not a finger so does not apply to the finger rules, till next time.