Establish a good foundation for your left-hand technique by remembering these basic points:
– Keep your fingertips perpendicular to the guitar strings: Put your fingers on the strings, near the frets, but not near enough to muffle the sound. There should be no buzzing sound coming from the frets. Place your fingers down on the string, at right angles to the flat surface of the fingerboard. Let your thumb balance the pressure from your fingertips.
– Keep your thumb straight, still, opposite your fingers, touching the neck as close as you can to an imaginary line down the middle of the guitar’s neck. As you move from the sixth to the first string, move your thumb around the neck from the middle toward the side of the fingerboard farthest from you. Do not bend your thumb, nor stick it out to the left. Remember, do not support your guitar with your left hand.
-As you change strings, flex your fingers. Because your thumb will move just enough to keep the tips of the fingers perpendicular to the fretboard, bend your fingers more in their middle joints as you move from the sixth to the first string.
-Make sure that your knuckles remain parallel to the guitar strings, their line parallel to the edge of the fingerboard. Imagine that you are trying to keep the palm of your hand at the base of your little finger nearer to the edge of the fingerboard than that part of your palm which lies at the base of your first finger. Visualizing this ideal will help you to overcome a pesky habit: allowing your fingers come down at an angle to the strings rather than squarely across from them. Consequently, your third and fourth fingers will have to travel further to stop the strings, and you will not be able to develop the strength, speed or accuracy to use them effectively. Learning this correctly at the outset will prevent this common error.
– Relax your wrist. Whatever fret positions you play on your guitar, you need to keep your hand’s posture in relation to the fingerboard the same. Look at the illustrations in the book. These photos will demonstrate left-hand chord positions, called ‘shapes.’ They also illustrate the ideal posture for your hand and fingers.
– Allow only one finger per fret: If you make sure that your knuckles remain parallel to the edge of the fingerboard, each finger will occupy a different fret space. In this exercise, bring down each finger in turn without moving the rest of your hand.
– Keep unnecessary movements of your fingers to a minimum. Excess movements will hinder your ease of movement and speed, waste energy, and look sloppy. Keep your fingertips close to the fingerboard, so that they do not need to move far in order to stop the strings.
-Check your indentations. Each fingertip should land consistently on the strings at the same point. That point will soon develop a callus, with an indentation at the point at which it touches the string. Compare these indentations with the angles made by the strings with the fingers. The indentation on your middle finger should be approximately parallel to the fingerboard.
