Hi again,
please check on my hand position and how I am holding the guitar. When I play the chords like this I feel comfortable. However, when I play the Peter Gunn Theme Riff in order to reach the low e string with my fourth finger I have to bend my wrist a bit higher (which is normal, I guess?) It feels very uncomfortable to me though. Any advice?
Blessings and thanks in advance! 
This is one of those questions where I needed to reach for my guitar to remember how I play it!
The obvious difference between your position and mine, is that your elbow is into your side throughout, so there’s nowhere to go once your hand needs to move. When I play (and I’m no expert so others might disagree) there’s plenty of daylight between my elbow and the side of my body. There’s almost no adjustment needed of my wrist when I move between chords or along the low E string.
What are you sat on? It doesn’t look like it’s a sofa so this might not be relevant but I use an upright wooden chair without arms that improved my position from when I started.
I would agree that you need to free up your elbow a little. I don’t like to have to move my shoulder much when playing, but it needs to be loose, have some room and be relaxed.
What I see is that you have the guitar over the left leg and pretty straight across your body, so the neck is too close to you.
If you want to play in that position, the guitar needs to be positioned so the head of the guitar, the tuners, is farther out. Not quite over the right knee.
If you want to have the neck close (like I do) then a classical position works (that is a nice classical guitar you have!). Then you need to support the guitar so the body is further right (not the waist over the left thigh) and the neck is angled up more so the top of the head is almost at eye level.
It helped me to google pictures of guitar players from above, so you could see the front to back placement.
If you go classical position, which is better for me and I think better for wide nut guitars like you have (improves ability to fret the wider spaced strings) you can google any number of “how to hold your guitar videos.
This is a good one:
yeah, I have a bit of space between my elbow and my torso, also. I play with a smaller-bodied guitar (Taylor GS Mini) in the “classical position” more or less like this.
Sometimes I use a footstool as shown above, but I often just rest the lower bout of the guitar in my lap sorta like this, but with my legs not spread so much (and without the guitar support on my thigh)
I don’t think I have the neck pointing nearly as upright, though. Yours looks (and sounds) like a classical guitar, correct? I think (someone else will correct me if I’m wrong), the fretboards on those tends to be on the wider side? I can see that making for an extra reach to get your fingers all the way up to the low E, especially if your fingers are on the shorter side.
Maybe consider the classical position? It might help with your wrist angle and helping to position your arm.
In addition to what he folks said above, see some improvement on the picking hand as well.
If you watch when you shift from the chords to the riff, you raise your picking hand elbow up. Your picking looks a bit more uncertain and uncontrolled. I normally keep my elbow pretty close to top of the guitar. Strumming movement is mostly at the elbow, with a small amount in the wrist to aid in pick angle - your strumming moves mostly at the elbow, but something looks off in the height of the elbow.
I tend to maintain my hand position so the heel is just over the bridge. Later you will learn about string muting and you’ll need to be there. This will mean dropping that shoulder and elbow down so a normal position will be with the heel of the hand over the bridge. It will ease tension on your shoulder and you won’t get neck/shoulder pains when practicing a long time. You will also find you are able to strum across the strings at a more consistent distance from the bridge.
Why is distance from the bridge interesting? experiment and see 
you will notice that you get a lot more high-pitch sounds from strings the closer you get to the bridge. The converse is true until you hit the half-way point (12th fret) where it sounds more like a harp due to less of the higher pitch elements.
Last thing I notice is the delicate pick grip. That pick is likely to spin in your grip and will probably want to use a bit more thumb and more of the side of the finger to hold it. See the lesson and chat for the pick grip here: How To Hold A Guitar Pick
The flexibility of the pick can help early on and you can plan to outgrow your beginner preference. Some discussion about picks here: Pick trouble
hi, you’ve received several interesting and specific tips on holding the guitar. Let me make just a general observation: using your pinky in a riff like this will generally feel uncomfortable. You probably never use your pinky for precise movements, so you have to learn how to do it.
To be honest, your position looks pretty normal to me. I’m no teacher, but it seems to me that you just need lots of practice and repetition playing the riff. Eventually, it will feel more natural. (Btw, a little bit of wrist bend is normal when reaching for the 6th string with your pinky, I didn’t think yours was excessive).
One last comment, and I hope I’m not being mean by saying this: I’m sure you mean well, but it would be better not to include words like “Blessings” in your posts. Religious references make some people uncomfortable in this community and indeed they are not allowed. Again, no offense.
I’m not a teacher at all but I don’t see anything drastically wrong. Just a case of being a bit awkward because you’re brand new to it. Re the classical guitar position others have mentioned is great for playing notes but not ideal for strumming chords. Depends what type of music you intend to play.
Not an expert on position, I hope that what the nice people above said will help you!
I don’t know how determined or how much fun it is even though you have a few problems… Just wanted to add that we all were struggling in the beginning and in case you didn’t see Justin’s Nitsuj series, take a look in case you should ever feel like you should do better. (Most of us had these moments) I liked to see our teacher, and such a great guitar player struggling
Hi Betti @Betti777, I’ve been thinking about your questions regarding how to hold your guitar. I’m in Grade 3, so still a beginner, but my struggles are fresh in my mind. What I recall in your video is that you held your guitar quite far to your right left side. I did this as well at first. I’m assuming you are not changing to classical position. I you are, please ignore what I write! I’ve been taking lessons from one of Justin’s approved teachers, and he taught me to hold the guitar more in the front of my body. Think of centering the sound hole in the front of your body. It does mean you have to reach farther with your right hand (I think you play left-handed, correct?), but that also gets your elbow away from your body. It also means you’ll have to reach over the guitar body more with your left arm. It feels a bit awkward at first, but in my experience it’s much more comfortable once you become accustomed to this position. Let me know if you have more questions!
Thanks Michael. I had a nagging suspicion that might be the case…I’ve corrected my post.
