Attempting to play Blackbird - The Beatles (63 days guitar progress)

[Tbushell]

Very good playing for someone only 2 months in! But I’m not the least bit envious…no no no…not me!

As others pointed out in a previous post, your posture could become an issue.

Here’s my analysis:

1. In order to “pin” or “pinch” your guitar between your right leg and your right arm you are dropping the guitar neck too low.

2. To compensate for the low neck angle, you are dropping your left shoulder. This makes the fretting easier, but at the cost of twisting your spine.

It might be a simple fix - just raise the neck and straighten up your torso.

But if your guitar/body fit is similar to mine, this will destabilize the solid pin/pinch you are getting, and create a new problem - the guitar will not feel secure in your lap, and the neck will want to move around.

In that case, I’d suggest you either experiment with playing seated with a strap, or look into guitar lifts that rest on your leg (someone recently suggested rolling up a towel and putting it between the guitar and your right leg - maybe I can find and link)

EDIT: Found it… EDIT 2: towel or lift goes on LEFT leg, not right

How To Hold Your Guitar

@TGFNM14 I tried some guitar holds that essentially pinch the lower bout between the right thigh and upper right arm to hold it and doing that resulted in the flying neck syndrome you describe, in spite of my lack of a half beach ball. My guess is that you aren’t adjusting the strap to hold it well enough, but I dislike straps. What worked for me was to get a lift like for a classical guitar and play in the classical position with the guitar supported on the left leg by the lift. I did this b…