Hand Positioning (Chords)

Hi, I have recently started working on learning the Roll Like Water song from Fundamentals 1 and have been drilling the chord changes pretty fanatically for the past week. I am seeing slow progress which is fine but am worried I may be drilling with poor hand positioning and don't want to form a bad habit if I can help it.

My main concern for the moment is when I am making changes between Am to C and Am to G the upper part of my palm and the area between my thumb and index finger has quite a lot of contact with the bottom of the neck. Would this be considered poor form?

Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by: djlawrence1988

Hi, I have recently started working on learning the Roll Like Water song from Fundamentals 1 and have been drilling the chord changes pretty fanatically for the past week. I am seeing slow progress which is fine but am worried I may be drilling with poor hand positioning and don't want to form a bad habit if I can help it.

My main concern for the moment is when I am making changes between Am to C and Am to G the upper part of my palm and the area between my thumb and index finger has quite a lot of contact with the bottom of the neck. Would this be considered poor form?

Thanks in advance.

My wife is just starting out and experiencing similar things. Consider that physically learning to play guitar is a negotiation. The guitar dimensions are not going to chage and everyone's physcal build is different. So, between you and the guitar, it's a negotiation between what your body will allow you do do given the dimensions of the guitar...and so on.

Why mention that?

I was watching mywife over the weekend why she was practicing and she was like 'my (fretting) hand gets so tired'. So I had her move the guitar over a little bit towards the left and she thought it was s miracle. It was so much easier for her. Not perfect as she had already been set on how she was picking too.

Thus the negotiation. The guitar postion is kind of 'everything' with regard to playing confort. I always play with a strap (sitting down) and have for decades. It lets me get to the ultimate comfort spot.

Lesson here and elsewhere talk about general ergonomics and they area good guide but you want to learn where the 'spot' is best for you.

Your hands touching the neck can be one of many things but the first, and most likely culprit, will be how you're holding the guitar.

Thanks for the reply. I play standing with a strap, I'm holding it in a position that is most comfortable for me (after some experimentation) and doesn't look wrong when comparing to the standing positions of other guitarists I have seen. So I'm not really sure what I would change.

Still not sure if my hand position is correct or not. I have heard people saying that you are supposed to have a bit of a gap in between the part of the hand I marked in the image and the bottom of the neck. I have also found with a lot of the chord shapes, I can make them alot easier by having my thumb over the top of the neck. And yet again I have heard people saying that in the beginning its not a great idea for some reason.

Do I just keep doing it how I'm doing it aslong as the notes are ringing clear or am I setting myself up for bad habits in the future?

Thanks.