Guitar Technique: Watch Your Fingers?

How do your fingers move when playing the guitar? Does anything else in your hand or arm move? What about your spine? It's worth taking a look at your guitar technique because optimal movement around the fretboard will prevent fatigue and avoid injury, as well as improve your sound.

Have you ever noticed how the greatest players seem to make minimal movements with their fingers? I did, and I incorrectly interpreted how they were doing that. I only noticed what was happening at the finger level and never looked at the rest of the arm. Because of this, I was doing the minimal movement of the fingers but was doing it all without the help of any other part of my body. Essentially, I was locked in a controlled, stiff position. The elbow and wrist play a huge role in helping the fingers get to where they need to go on the guitar.

Try this: play this common chromatic exercise (Fig. 1), using using your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers, but don’t let the the elbow or wrist move; play each note only using the fingers. How’s that feel? That’s how I used to play, and it led to injury. We need play guitar with our whole bodies, not just our fingers. By isolating muscles, we’re making them function contrary to the way the body wants.

Now, do the same thing, but go to the other extreme and imagine that your fingers are all glued together. How are you going to get to the notes? You'll have to enlist the other parts of your body; engage your forearm and wrist, and maybe more subtly, but equally important, the spine. This is what you want to feel when playing normally.

Try the exercise again and integrate the fingers and the arm together. This will use less finger muscle because the arm will be helping out, but it will also get that minimal finger motion we all strive for. Check it out in a mirror.

As guitarists, it can be very tempting to watch the fingers of our favorite player, almost as if they aren't there, as if they are a disembodied set of hands playing a guitar. Next time you watch a video, try watching what’s going on with the arms and body of the player, it might be illuminating!

If you are looking for the right instructor to help you take your playing to the next level, I'd love to help. Contact me by clicking here. Let's see if guitar lessons for the advancing student are what you need to become the greatest guitar player you can be.