When we talk about how to hold your guitar we are actually talking about two things.
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How do you sit down with a guitar?
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Where do you put your thumb on the back of the neck?
When you sit down with your guitar, then again you have two options in terms of the positioning of your guitar.
Casual Position: put, assuming you are right handed, the guitar on your right leg. Sit on a comfortable chair, preferably without arms, and put both of your feet flat on the ground. Pull the neck of your guitar a little towards you so you can easily access the fretboard of your guitar.
The Casual Position is seen the most in everyday life.
Off course we can also put our guitar on our left leg. That’s called the Classical Position.
Classical Position: put the guitar on your left leg. Sit on a comfortable chair, again without arms, and put your left foot on a guitar footstool. Pull the neck a little towards you. Now you may have already noticed that this position allows easier access to the fretboard. You will also notice that your left forearm will strain a lot less, because your wrist isn’t twisted in an awkward position anymore.
Where you should position your thumb on the neck of your guitar has been open to debate for years. Should it, or should it not, peek over the neck of your guitar?
The answer for me = no.
When your thumb curves over the neck, most of the strength out of your fingers is lost and they cannot stretch as far as they could do when your thumb would be behind the neck. That is needed for certain chords, scales, wide stretching of the fingers and, this seems to be really important these days, your speed will also suffer if you keep your thumb over the neck.
So then how should we put the thumb against the neck? Simple! We hold the neck as if we were holding a hamburger! A hamburger? Yes! A good ol’ hamburger! If you hold your hand so that the burger doesn’t fall out of the bread then you’re doing it right!
Let me explain that a little bit more in depth.
Put your thumb flat/straight against the middle of the neck. Without a kink in it! Now put your fingers parallel to the frets. This way your fingers have the most room to stretch and thus they can reach wherever you want. This way your fingers will have no power loss associated with the muscles needed to get your thumb curved up over the neck. This will give you more than all the power you will ever need to fret those notes!
Words of Wisdom
~Your fingers are as humble servants
They will do whatever you want them to do
but they cannot think for themselves
That’s where you come in~
If you’d like you can also watch this video about the topic!
