neck pain

a

pretty sure that my posture is correct. i keep getting a pain in my neck and upper back...trying to get a view of the fretboard. tilting the fretboard helps a little, but my neck still hurts. anyone have a similar problem? any solutions? i practice a lot...does that have anything to do with it?

Scotsman

GO and see a Chiropractor, your back and neck are probably out of adjustment.

Bachelorno2

hello! My little brother suffers from the same thing after getting a new guitar. I know this is going to sound weird but perhaps you could film yourself and then watch back at yourself playing to see how your posture is. With my bro, the pain went away after a while after time, it just took him a while to get use to his new guitar. Hope you'll get better, good luck!

RKatz

You need to make sure that you are not straining yourself when you play. A common bad habit with alot of people trying to play gypsy jazz is that they don't rest their strumming arm on the guitar which causes tension in the neck and sholder. You should make sure your arm is resting on the guitar. This also makes your wrist arch back naturaly to play just between the sound hole and the bridge, where you will get a more assertive tone and the tension of the strings are firmer so the gypsy picking technique is easier. Play in front of a mirror and see if your postur, the shape of your arm and hand look like Stockelo or Angelo. You will lost all tension and you will start to sound better. However you may have a trapped nerve, most likely due to playing all tensed up for a while. so an osteopath may be a good idea aswell.

a

my arm position is fine. it's just that the back of my neck feels tense from looking down at the fretboard.

MichaelHorowitz

I'd have to see you play to get any real insight into the problem. In general, these things are usually pretty simple: you're probably straining yourself somehow. Awkward body position and or excessive muscle tension is probably the culprit. As Robin mentioned, video of yourself playing will probably reveal a lot.

When I play I don't look at the top of the fret board at all. Only the side of it, so that prevents me from stretching my neck to far. A lot of the time I just don't look at it at all....there's often more interesting things to look at out in the audience any way!

Some stretching every day is always good....I'm sure some yoga would do you a lot of good.

good luck!

'm

a

yeah...it seems like yoga is the answer to many problems. you ever see a movie called "time of the gypsies?" it's great.