Pick Left Right Hand Knuckles - Part 1

Pick Left Right Hand Knuckles - Part 1 www.yourguitarsage.com Guitar lessons and resources Hey there gang Your Guitar Sage here with the lesson today on some real basic guitar stuff. Real basic guitar knowledge but very important none the less, I have one of my subscribers recently ask me to do a video on posture. Proper way to hold the pick, proper way to hold your hands the whole 9 yards okay so let’s go over that, if you’ve been playing for more than a few months this video is probably not for you. Just got a guitar and you’re looking to learn the proper way to hold your guitar and all that good stuff then keep watching. Okay so let’s talk about a few things. The way I’m holding my guitar right now is kind of a traditional way that somebody would hold their guitar. We got our leg here arm and chest that’s holding the guitar in place but for the most part it’s still a little bit flimsy I kind of have to hug the guitar here to keep in place. Now what happens a lot of times is especially with new players, new students is they don’t know and they’re leaning on the guitar doing this sort of thing and what happens is the guitar ends up doing this. Okay so what happens when you grab the neck of course if you start compensating you start pulling it towards you. You start grabbing it like this your thumb starts coming around the top of the neck and all that stuff kind of degrades your playing that way so you’ll see other people hold their guitar like this, okay. It looks a little goofy. This is the actual, classical way to hold your guitar then classical school this is the way you have to hold your guitar and it would be thought off as being a low class to hold your guitar like this which is what we all do so sometimes I’ll hold my guitar like this in the studio when I’m playing when I’m lying down an acoustic part I always pull my guitar like this. I let some part that doesn’t have to be as I don’t know something that maybe doesn’t take quite the execution that I might need in the studio maybe I don’t know I’m rambling but when I’m in the studio and I’m playing acoustic guitar I’m always like this and in fact sometimes I will use this, this is called a foot stool and it’s made specifically for propping your left leg up your threading hand leg so I will put this other my left foot and then it would allow me to prop my leg up and the guitar is kind of about this diagonal level here okay. So what this allows me to do is it allows me I’ve got the guitar here, it’s not going anywhere, it’s not going to go anywhere so in that case I can really grab the chorus the way that I want to grab them. Now for most people at first it’s a little uncomfortable. If I’m not using the stand then it’s going to be down here a little bit so that’s going to help out a lot but let’s say that way is not comfortable for your kind of a traditional posture here. If you’re doing that what I want you to be mindful off is that the next is not getting away from you it’s not doing this sort of thing, you know when you’re playing that’s the only thing and one way to do that is make sure you’re sitting straight up you know you got the small of your back straight and then this way you’re not kind of slouching over your guitar and pushing it out, okay. I’ve seen that a lot especially with younger players like anywhere from like 5 to 7 around that age because kids are small they’re slouching and that sort of thing so you don’t want to do that. Alright so as far as posture just sit up straight and let’s talk about hand positioning for a minute or let’s talk about pick for a minute. You’ll see the people hold the pick like this between the thumb and first finger you’ll see somebody will hold the pick like this between the middle finger and thumb and you’ll see some people hold it like that. They’re all useful and I almost always hold my pick like this between my first finger and my thumb. You’ll see some people even hold there pick like this, personally I don’t think this is good because it doesn’t give you finesse when you need it. It’s just your in chop through the strings like I said it’s going to be kind of obnoxious. When I’m playing like this I can do loud if I want or I can use soft and I’m not really doing anything different with my right hand for strumming but I’m lightening up on the pit here so what happens is if you really grip the pick hard you’re going to get a louder strum and if you go lighter holding it flimsier you’re going to get a lighter strum. Now of course the problem with holding that pick lightly is it wills lip out your hands sometimes, okay. So I would suggest this is a Jim Dunlop, okay. I’m planning ways to make some good picks as well but get a nylon pick so the picks are great but they’re not nylon and they split so I love the way they feel but they split real easy so get yourself a nylon pick I think it’s made by Jim Dunlop it makes them and ways and get a thinner type pick if you’re going to be playing acoustic guitar so you can get some nice tones out of the guitar. Okay, so that’s as far as for your picking hand that’s what I want you to do there. Your left hand you’ll see me wrap my hand around the guitar like this a lot. I’m a season player you know I’ve been playing it for about 25 years so it’s like I can do this basically breaking some rules but if you learn when you can break the rules and when you can’t it changes everything so as a new guitar player I would encourage you to not bring your thumb up here unless you’re purposely muting that strum unless you purposely have a need to come up here and do that don’t rest your thumb up here. Now the caviat to that is the exception is if it’s not impeding the chord, okay so if it’s not impeding the chord that you have your thumb-up there then go for it, okay. Otherwise here’s the key, this really is the secret to playing your open chords correctly. Okay here’s the secret some people will tell you dropping your shoulder bringing your hand out front you know tucking your elbow in and that’s going to put you in a position you need to, to play your chords correctly. Remember when we play chords we don’t want the pads of our fingers to start layingit over on the strings because then if we’re going to play a C chord we’re going to get…you know we got notes that aren’t sounding good along with it but we’ve got two or three notes there that aren’t sounding because the path of my fingers are touching the chords or touching the strings so here’s the deal what you want to do is get as much curl to this last knuckle as possible. Okay, I mean you want to exaggerate it, okay so when I’m playing if I got curl to this last knuckle here I’m rocking okay. I’m not going to be touching any of the strings but as soon as I start doing this I start laying these fingers down even just a little bit I’ve got mute, I have got major mutation going on there. Alright so keep this curl, keep these ends curl like that bam. It’s going to make all your chords sound a lot clearer, okay. If you got through this part of the video already you definitely a new player which is good. Let me encourage you. Every great guitar player has had to go through the same gauntlet playing chords and playing scales and the whole 9 yards sorry I’m checking on my time here. I got to wrap things up. I’ll have more, check out Your Guitar Sage.com I’m going to do a part two on this since this is finish it up, alright so catch part 2 now.