Sitting, holding, and the hand position we'll build everything on
Last time we talked about setup and action, because I wanted that out of the way first. High action will beat you before you've had a fair shot. But even with a guitar that's dialed in right, if you're sitting wrong and holding it wrong, you're fighting a second battle you don't need. So let's fix that one now, before we build anything else on top of it.
I feel like this lesson gets skipped a lot in beginner books. They jump straight to a chord, usually a G, and let you figure out the rest by accident. I don't want to do that to you. Everything in this course sits on top of how you hold the guitar and how your hand meets the neck, so we're spending real time here even though it's not flashy.
Sitting first
Get a chair without arms. A kitchen chair is fine. Couches are the enemy here, they let you slump, and slumping pulls your fretting shoulder down and twists your wrist into a bad angle before you've even played a note.
Sit toward the front edge of the chair, feet flat on the floor. If you're right-handed, the waist of the guitar rests on your right leg, and the neck angles up and out slightly, not flat and parallel to the floor. That upward angle matters more than people think. Flat neck, drooping wrist. Angled neck, wrist gets to relax.
Both feet on the floor, not one foot up on a stool like the classical players do. That's a fine method too, honestly, it's just not the one I teach, because most of you are learning to strum around a fire pit or in Rel Society, not perform a Segovia piece in a recital hall. I'd rather build the habit that matches what you'll actually do with this.
Holding it
The guitar should stay put more or less on its own, held between your body and your strumming arm, with maybe one hand's worth of help. If you have to clamp your fretting arm against the neck to keep the guitar from sliding off your leg, something's off in your posture, not your grip. Fix the sitting first. The holding usually settles itself.
The fretting hand — this is the one that matters
Thumb goes behind the neck, roughly opposite your first or second finger, low enough that your palm isn't touching the neck at all. There should be a gap you could slide a pencil through, between your palm and the wood. If your palm is pressed flat against the neck, your thumb's wrapped too far over the top, and your fingers can't come down straight on the strings. They come down at an angle instead, and you end up muting the string next to the one you're trying to play.
Fingers arch. Fingertips land close to, but just behind, the fret wire, not right on top of it and not in the middle of the gap between frets. Right behind the fret is where a string takes the least pressure to ring clean.
Here's the opinion I'll state plainly, because it's one of the ones I feel strongly about: get this hand shape right before you ever attempt a barre chord. People muscle through barre chords with a collapsed wrist and a flat thumb because that's how they've been holding the neck the whole time, and that bad shape just gets worse under the extra pressure a barre demands. Ten minutes of clean hand position now saves you a year of fighting an F chord later. I've watched it happen both ways enough times to trust that one.
A story, because this is a real problem
When I was first practicing barre chords at home, my hand position was bad enough, and my effort was loud enough, that Jared from next door heard me through the wall and knocked on my door to make sure I was okay. I was not okay. I was fighting an F chord with a collapsed wrist and a death grip, making faces and probably some noise, and none of it was working. I told him I was fine, which was only sort of true.
What I actually needed wasn't more strength. It was less thumb wrapped over the top and more of an arch in my fingers. Once I fixed the hand shape, the chord stopped being a fight. Same fingers, same guitar, completely different experience.
A couple of real cautions
Don't grip harder to compensate for a bad angle. Your wrist and thumb joints will complain first, sometimes days later, not right in the moment, and that's the kind of soreness that turns into a repetitive strain problem if you ignore it for months. If your wrist ever aches after practicing, that's information, not something to push through.
Also — if you wear rings, take them off before you practice. Learned that one from watching other folks in this class, not from personal injury, but I'd rather mention it than not.
Before next time
Just practice sitting down with the guitar and finding that hand shape — thumb low, palm off the wood, fingers arched — for a few minutes a day, no chords yet. Get comfortable with the shape itself before we ask it to do anything.