You hold a guitar like you hold a bottle!

It has been almost year since I first touched my guitar! And yesterday I realise I have been holding the guitar very wrong!  Shock!! Many of friends hold it the way I do. All tutorials and materials I have read and people who have helped me learn, have always focussd on the front position of the fingers. Or the movement of the right hand. Not many speak of the left thumb position!

Believe it or not, the left thumb position as I realized yesterday is very critical to being comfortable and fast at transitions! So how not to hold a Guitar? Don’t hold it a position that requires wrist movement for transition between neighboring chords. For example if you have to switch between G and D and you have to turn your wrist, then you hold is definitely not correct! Afterall, it is this shift that was hurting and very slow especially between open chords and Barre that led me to reconsider my position.

So how do you hold the guitar in a way that allwos you to just move your fingers and still transition between chords. There are few guidelines that I have learned that should be useful

• Your left thumb must be just a little below the top of the Guitar. Above the curve
• It is desirable that the thumb is straight and aligned with ring finger
• You need to twist your wrist forward such that the fingers are perpendicular to the fret
• There must be space between the palm of the hand and the neck of the guitar. That is it is better as much possible that the palm of the palm doesn’t touch the guitar
• If you let go off the guitar, the left hand should look like you are holding an empty bottle
• The thumb should relax and let the rest of the fingers work
• Even for a open chord shift to a barre chord, the wrist movement has to be minimal

It may take a little practice, to unlearn and learn if you have been like me holding it differently.