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RE: Left hand strength?
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Filip
Posts: 403
Joined: Apr. 23 2006
From: Paris
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 RE: Left hand strength? (in reply to XXX)
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Thanks a lot for the great replies guys, I really appreciate all of it.
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The first looks like a recipe for carpal tunnel, the second for early arthritis, and the third for people that are testing their ability after being paralyzed and regaining control of feeling.
My God it's that bad LOL
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Likely you think you need strength and what you are doing is gripping way too hard with the left.
This is definitely something I was doing in the past and could feel it clearly after making myself paying attention while playing barres. I don't have that feeling since a few years at least, but that does not mean you are not right Ricardo.
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For barre chords, you should practice playing muted where you don’t hear notes….play EXTREMELY LOUD rasgueado with the right hand, and very gradually apply gentle left hand pressure until you hear actual notes sounding, buzzing at first, getting more clear. At the very moment you hear all the notes STOP SQUEEZING. That is ALL the pressure you should EVER apply to anything with the left hand. All the rest you do should be WAY WAY lighter in terms of squeeze “strength”.
I run on something like this a few years ago (perhaps you've wrote it in some other thread), I remember I tried it and I kinda thought that the pressure I was applying when trying this exercise and when playing regularly was the same, and then moved on. Now that you say all of this and that I think about it I had to reevaluate myself, and after a minute with my guitar it is now obvious to me that the pressure/squeeze is greater when I play regularly and I can still relax it while the notes keep sounding clearly. I remember also picking up an idea from a classical guitar player that part of the pressure comes from the arm, by pulling the neck backwards while slightly preventing it going that way with the right elbow), which did not work for me very well (or I just did not know how to properly do it).
I've just tried the beginning Palenque arpeggio (barre on the trebles on the 8th fret with middle and ring at the 10th of the second and third string, and index stretching to the 12th fret on the third string) and it's too much for me, my left hurts from too much pressure I guess. Another impossible barre for me is minera tremolo beginning (barre at the 2nd fret with middle and ring at the 4th fret of the second and fourth string, and index stretching to the 5th fret of the second string), that one has always been difficult and when I would reach to the second run my left would be too tired to properly pull of that beginning again. I think that playing something like this without getting left hand blocked and tired would be a good evaluation criteria for me.
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If you feel some burn when running fast scales, it is the SAME DEAL. You press too hard…try playing fast scales very muted with no clear note pressure. What happens is as the right hand applies loud dynamics the left instinctively squeezes down Unnecessarily hard. You need to work on having the left hand loose light and limber, while the right applies “stiffness” if you need volume or power. Again, the right hand does not need to over do it either.
Left was never the problem for picados, but I see what you mean in general about left being always light while right doing the magic.
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This might be in the ‘long shot’ or ‘out of the box’ category, but have you experimented with using a guitar with a thicker neck? The salient characteristic being the thickness, rather than width. Guitars necks can vary in thickness by a couple of millimetres, which doesn’t sound like much, but can have a huge impact on how ‘beefy’ the neck feels, mainly because the change in volume (profile area) is based on the square of the radius of the profile.
A lot of players seem to favour a thinner, faster feeling neck when trying out a guitar, but this type of profile can be more tiring to use over a long playing session. I don’t know the mechanics of it but it seems like it requires more clamping effort for barres. A thicker neck can reduce some of the feeling, it just seems to clamp easier (at least in my case, it does).
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Summary: it might be worth trying out some guitars with beefier feeling necks, especially if you have had the tendency to quickly reject a guitar with this type of neck profile in the past. It’s possible you’ve never given one enough play time to notice the benefits.
This is a very interesting idea Rob, and you are spot on for the last cited paragraph. I used to play classical Yamaha which has a thick neck, and then I got Ramirez blanca which has a much thinner neck (well as you say it's only a couple of millimetres probably but it's noticeable) and I got used to it. When I was building my guitar with Stephen Hill I wanted the same neck thickness as my blanca, he was against it. I kept insisting and at the end got it perhaps a bit thicker than my blanca, but still noticeably less than my original Yamaha. I remember some 9-10 years ago in Madrid I tried a Conde which I really liked, except that the neck was too thick for me (and it is also that experience that made me not wanting to listen to Stephen). The point is, I don't think I've made a mistake there, but you might be right and neck thickness might play a role after all. Next time I visit my parents' I should play that Yamaha instead of Ramirez and see how it feels, it's worth a try.
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I would suggest practicing with the left thumb off the neck of the guitar. That way it is very difficult to excessively press down on the fret board. Do it also when playing barre, you just need to use the bicep for pressure. Hope that helps.
Thanks Auda, it sounds as something similar I talked about above, will give it another try as well.
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Very good advice here. I am grateful we have the foro. Also try lighter strings, the La Bella 427 for example make my left hand "fly" compared to harder string sets.
Would never thought of that, thanks Andres. I think I never tried light tension, only medium and hard.
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 21 2023 20:32:44
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RobF
Posts: 1611
Joined: Aug. 24 2017
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RE: Left hand strength? (in reply to devilhand)
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ORIGINAL: devilhand
A great post. RobF. Which of these neck profiles can be considered ergonomic for a long playing session? My guitar neck profile looks like a flatter version of D shape in this picture. Never tried other 52mm neck profiles though.
…
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Guitars necks can vary in thickness by a couple of millimetres, which doesn’t sound like much, but can have a huge impact on how ‘beefy’ the neck feels, mainly because the change in volume (profile area) is based on the square of the radius of the profile.
Not sure if I understood the last sentence. What do you mean by profile area and the square of the radius of the profile?
Thanks.
I probably should have spent more time on the explanation, I was just using the area of a circle pi(r^2) as an rough guide to demonstrate how an increase in depth of a seemingly innocuously small amount can translate into an easily detectable increase volume or area. For example, an increase in neck depth of 1mm might translate to an actual increase in detectable profile area of, to take a wild guess, say, 40 square millimetres or something like that. The eye and hands are such highly accurate measuring instruments these differences are easily felt and can make or break whether someone is comfortable with a neck or not.
Your neck profile pictures are excellent examples to use to demonstrate this. While I think each player will have their own preferences in profile, it can easily be seen that the ‘C’ shape has less wood under the hand than the ‘D’ or ‘U’ shapes when the neck widths and depths remain equal. Even more interesting, the hard ‘V’ appears able to provide the greatest depth when widths and areas remain the same. It would be a cool visual exercise to take the different profiles and keep the widths and areas equal and then look at how the profiles visually compare to each other. Or keep the widths and depths the same and compare the differences in area.
Obviously, comfort will also depend on the size and shape of the user’s hand, so there’s not going to be a generic ‘best fit’ profile, but it’s an interesting exercise to examine the differences. For instance, the ‘C’ profile is almost universally accepted as being very comfortable, but is it the most effective shape to use for something like ease of clamping? Would a soft ‘V’ work better? I don’t know the answer to this, maybe there can be none that is definitive, as it ultimately comes down to the individual.
But, for sure, I found my tastes and needs changed over the years. When I was young I had originally decided I preferred using small ‘C’ profiled necks for steel stringed acoustic guitars (as found on the Gibsons of the era) and that’s what I stuck with for the longest time. It was almost an epiphanal moment when I tried a Martin with a soft ‘V’ profile and wider nut and realized that, even though it initially felt less comfortable to hold, it was substantially easier and less tiring to play for any extended period. At least, for me. And also, at that point in time. And I had absolutely hated that profile when I was younger, I had no interest in playing guitars with necks like that, they just felt wrong.
Maybe the takeaway is it’s worth not being too set in one’s ways when it comes to these matters and be willing to experiment and re-evaluate one’s needs as time and ability progress. What worked best for someone at one point in their lives might not be optimal ten or twenty years down the line.
All just food for thought. I’m a little distracted tonight so I’m just banging this out with a lot of stuff going on in the background. I might come back and rewrite it later when I have more time to gather my thoughts.
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Date Feb. 22 2023 0:49:39
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Indeed it's pinky in both cases (won't edit it for the sake of comedy).