The Thumb

Oct 8, 2009 technique
Posted by seth

I have been playing guitar in general for thirteen years of my 29 year life, which, is a considerable portion.  Much of that time playing any style of guitar I have used my thumb in one singular way: to squeeze the neck.  What I am realizing now after playing classical guitar for five years now, the thumb should be less involved in the playing than I or most of us think.  Instead of using my thumb to apply pressure I am beginning to use it to balance my hand and control my fingers overall instead of using it to get notes.  What I mean is the thumb should be able to be removed at almost any point in the playing of a phrase and the notes should still be able to come out, for the most part, which I will explain later.

Something to try.

There are two things to try one coming before the other.  The first of these two things is to work on shifting in a specific way, which, I got from Dr. Stanley Yates.  The way to practice is this, if your first finger is down on the third string(at any place it doesn’t matter) your thumb should be with it, then play the note.  After that note has been played place the next finger, I suggest starting with the second finger, when you place the next finger down the thumb comes off the back of the neck and when you shift up to the next note landing with your first finger again that is when you place your thumb back on the neck.  After working on this way of shifting you begin to realize how light your touch can be in general, its eye opening.

Now the second part that I have been working on specifically is when I am working on a phrase and want to quickly become confident in it.  I started the other night by first working out a phrase, fingerings for both hands etc.  Once I had that, I worked it out slowly so I had a small chunk of it memorized.  Once in the memory I practiced it extremely slowly without my thumb on the neck at all, working on getting the shifts perfectly and landing where I need.  To do this you have to do so very slowly, some of the notes will even buzz, but this matters not because its the sensation of playing lightly and once you have this in your hand after four or five tries you add the thumb back in and magically its extraordinarily accurate and easy to play!

This is by no means the fix all for everything but like anything guitarists do, the more ways in which we can do something, the better we become at it.  Technique is less about virtuosity and more about makings things easy.  This is one way that has begun to work for me and allowed me to play lighter, which, lets me play longer!  Cheers!