Left hand motion

daniel108

Hi everyone. I've only been learning GJ for two months and it's great to have found this forum! So I wanted to pose a technical issue about motion which stems from a conflict with classical guitar.

In classical guitar there is this idea of 1 finger for each fret wherein each of the fingers should remain spread and the motion for playing should come from the fingers as opposed to the movement of the wrist or the arm itself. I think that this lends for a very clean and smooth movement and helps improve speed later on as there is an economy of motion. So now in GJ style, I principally use my my first 3 fingers fingers with the occaisonal 4th, and I find that the fingers that aren't playing tend to crunch down, perhaps making the motion less clean or economical.

Any advice is much appreciated!

Buco

You have players like Stochelo who rarely uses his pinky

and Angelo who does quite a lot.

Angelo's hand position behind the neck looks a lot of the times like a classical guitarist would.
I don't know how much of a classical training you can transfer to this style, I guess some definitely can be. But once you start doing thrills, bends, vibrato and traditional ornaments then you have to change your wrist position accordingly.
Maybe watch Angelo's videos to see what he does.

Jazzaferri

I play fingerstyle, classically trained and use my pinky a lot but only on electric now. I hold the guitar quite differently if playing acoustic guitar in GJ so not sure about wrist position. IMO Fingers (and wrist) are best relaxed and over fretboard, not curling up, but whatever works in a relaxed way will be right for you.

NylonDave

Watch 1.04.20





That is what good thumb/LH versatility looks like. David Russell would have the same variety (with the exception of thumb over the neck).

There is a general rule which pretty much every one with a reliable left hand for single lines follows ( whether they know it or not). Any three finger combination in the left hand is good except for (beyond around 140 bpm in semiquavers) 234 and it's variations.

D.

daniel108

Thanks for all the responses. I'm totally into going to the Samois festival after seeing that video! Perhaps it's better just to treat them as two completely different instruments and not worry about classical technique. I just hope it won't influence my fingerings on classical guitar.

Jazzaferri

It cant help but influence....but likely in a good way