Left Hand Techniques on Classical Guitar

Video Transcript

Okay, now I’m going to talk just a little bit about proper left-hand technique. And these are techniques that really you can use in all styles of guitar and all types of music. It just really helps you avoid bad habits that can lead to maybe slower playing in the future; maybe injuries in the future to your left hand. And very generally speaking you always want to keep your wrist nice and straight. You want to have your thumb and the very center of the back of the neck or towards the top and when you’re shifting always keep it right there. It follows the hand, it never has to move anywhere else just stays right in the back. You don’t have to squeeze it too much as most of the pressure will be coming from the top four fingers. As far as the top four fingers go you’ll note that each finger is right behind it’s fret. That helps with the tone and keeping from playing bad notes. You’ve got a nice spacing between each finger; none of them are bunched up like this or like this or nothing is crammed in too much like that. When I play and when I shift for different sections of a piece notice the whole arm moves from the elbow and I’m not moving everything like this. Nothing with my shoulder, everything is going to move nicely and cleanly from the elbow. Very little movement from the shoulder at all. And note that my thumb always stays in the right place. A lot of people will have the thumb move or stay where it is sorry, while the rest of the fingers are moving and that can lead to really awkward positions. The main reason for this is if you get consistent with it at first it will make everything a lot easier when you are doing fast passages or things like that. It also helps avoid injury like I mentioned before. Bad wrist angles like this end up reflecting upon the whole arm and when you are practicing a lot it can really add up and cause some serious failure in the future. Also, one last thing to note is on my left hand keep the nails very short. You don’t want them to get in the way of the strings or end up making any type of noises you just don’t want to have. So just keep them nice and short.

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