Subject:          (fwd) Re: How to avoid injury, the positioning of my hands

Newsgroups: rec.music.classical.guitar
Subject: Re: How to avoid injury, the positioning of my hands Date: 
2 Jan 1998 21:02:08 GMT Lines: 17

I'm not a gentleman (women play too), but I'll respond as this is my specialty.
It is very difficult to tell you how wo hold your wrist without seeing your
hands/arms' shape and length, esp. in relation to your guitar. If your teacher
doesn't know, you should find another teacher, one who is trained in Classical
guitar.
   Sit in a chair and bend your left arm up. That is where the neck of the
guitar should be placed, so you must be sure the guitar is high enough when you
hold it. When you play, your elbow stays IN, close to your waist, and your arm
pivots back and forth as you go up and down the neck. Your hand/wrist angle
compensates as needed. The knuckles of the left hand stay close and yes,
parallel to the neck, so the fourth finger (pinky) has a better reach. 
  Right hand: Lay your arm on the guitar and let your forearm and hand simply
fall in a natural position over the strings. If your shoulder is relaxed and
your arm is just lying on the guitar, not pressing down with tension, the
natural position you just attained is how your right hand should be. 
   Look for book "The Natural Classical Guitar", I can't remember the author,
sorry. Hope this has been helpful.

Subject:          (fwd) Re: How to avoid injury, the positioning of my hands
=====

This is wrong.  The elbow should never be glued to the inside, but
allowed to move in and out as necessary to give free and easy
movement to the hand in all positions; nor should anyone try and
play *everything* with the knuckles parallel to the neck - some things,
yes, but not everything.  In many cases, allowing the hand to move
so the knuckles are not parallel to the strings is actually increases
the reach of the little finger.

But, don't take my word for it.  Try this out on a guitar and
you'll see what I mean.

=========
You couldn't be more correct, John. Another destructive technique is trying to
keep the fingers close as you can to the fingerboard.  Some bad ideas never go
away.
========
I think Guitarily was refering to a natural starting position.  Obviously we
compensate when we move around.  I am going through some work to correct my left
hand, where I had focused to much on getting up and over the fretboard (not
realizing how much I had done so by pushing the elbow out, sending my left hand
into quite a twist).  It was a stress injury waiting to happen.  Some of this was
to compensate for my guitar being too big.

I think her advice is an excellent starting point.  And I don't think "glued" was
mentioned anywhere.  The operable words are "pivots", and "compensates"...

If there is and easy right or "wrong" about this, we would all have perfect
technique, wouldn't we.  If it were simply a matter of "try it on the guitar" and
the appropriate body mechanics would just leap out at us, we wouldn't need
teachers.  So, bottom line, Guitarily's original advise to find someone who can
look knowledgably at YOU with YOUR GUITAR is best.