I heard a piece of advice somewhere early on in my playing: don’t lift your fingers off, just relax the squeeze and they will come off.
I have kept to that except for cases that need something special and it helps my hand to stay relaxed as well as not moving fingers too far away. Sometimes a little nudge away is needed for speed, but not much, and I am in place to use that finger again without needing to travel so far back to the string.
Hi, I am new to guitar and this site and I also got the app…but on the app there is no diagram for the riff, so hard to do on app. Just wanting to let you know
Welcome to community Michele
True, there is no tab in the app only the video. For me that was part of the adventure 
You can find the tab on the website… Right here:
That feeling when you are annoyed of the fret-buzz while doing the Peter Gunn practice and take the guitar to the store and the “local guitar hero” pics up the guitar, do a couple of strokes, lays the guitar on the bench, and says:
“Let me just loosen up this a bit for you…” 
Fre-buzz is now gone, and the practice can continue and for all of you who suffer from finger pain, they are telling us the truth, it does get better. 
usually when justin stresses that it’ll “seem impossible at first” i’m like yeah it’s real hard but i can see it being humanly possible but. man this seems impossible impossible. so far i can force myself to keep my fingers somewhat in the right range for about three seconds before it hurts too much
It takes several weeks for your body to adapt, so keep up with short practices. It took me a couple months to make a stretch I wanted to make. Hand ached a little oddly for about the first of half that time. I finally can make the stretch on a short scale, but stopped working to make it on the long scale. I have a new song in my immediate future that I need to start a similar routine…
It WILL happen, just need to keep working the stretch, not too much, and give it time.
same lol, I’ll have to look into doing some finger yoga
2 posts were split to a new topic: I get a noise when putting fingers on and taking them off - what is the problem here?
hey yall, i had a question about how you should hold your guitar when doing this exercise.
so I’m playing with an electric guitar and usually i can hold it fine when i got my forearm on the body and the thumb supporting the fingers on the frets. but when im doing this exercise there’s a part where you have no fingers on the fretboard. for me this kind of loosens my grip on the guitar and then it goes to something like a 45 degree angle from my body and gets a pretty hard to play the riff. I’ve found that if i rest my elbow on the body i can play with a better grip on the guitar but im assuming that’s probably a bad habit. idk. is there something im doing wrong here? please let me know. thanks yall :>
I lock the body in between my forearm, torso, and leg when sitting. You should not need your fretting hand to do any support, as you have found out, because you need it free to move around.
One thing I have not really been diligent with is using a strap even when sitting, It can help hold the neck in place and also get you more comfortable with standing. You can get away with not using one, but I wish I had practiced more with my strap earlier.
sorry when i said the thumb was supporting the fingers i meant like it’s not holding up the neck. it’s just pushing back on the fingers from behind the neck, if that makes sense? is that still wrong? should I not be putting any pressure on the thumb round the back of the neck?
and yeah i probably should get a strap soon since i’ve been having trouble keeping the guitar in place in general. and thanks for the quick response lol
edit: okay i think i got a comfortable position for playing the riff, the little extra angle isnt too bad actually. just had to mess with how my arm was resting for a bit
You need something to squeeze against - that is generally thumb for fretting with fingers. What I envisioned with your question was the neck scooting forward when you weren’t fretting anything. If I had that wrong, maybe I need a better description (or photo?).
When I play, my thumb is on the back, but it is only sliding around until I need it to be there to balance the fingers fretting - i.e. squeezing. The support of the guitar as a whole is coming from my picking arm holding it in place against my torso and leg.
The idea of the strap is to allow more freedom for your picking hand’s arm. You still need some support from your arm, but it is not as much.
Does that make sense?
edit on your edit. 
ok, good. it is important to feel good about experimenting to find a better position. you should do this, when something is not working out like you expect, to see if you can get comfortable. sometimes changes are very subtle.
You need something to squeeze against - that is generally thumb for fretting with fingers
yeah that was pretty much what i meant, sorry for the misunderstanding
and yeah i get what you’re saying with the thing on experimenting for a position, that’s happened multiple times already. thanks for your help!
First off - welcome to the community! If you’re feeling extra social, we’d love to learn a bit about your guitar journey over here 
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This happens to me quite a lot, and often after asking about an issue on this forum. There seems to be something about posing the question to others that helps change our own perspective when we revisit the issue. And that’s even without all the great feedback we get here!
Oh, regarding the strap: I resisted getting one for a long time. Now I feel funny without one.
My ears and fingers want to resolve tie last note on the G 
this is not very important, but my dad is called Justin…and we call him Nitsuj all the time! haha
Is it normal that I can’t reach the sixth string with all four fingers without having to bend my wrist a ton? I try to keep my hand and forearm as straight as possible, but I essentially have to bend my wrist 90 degres for the 6th fret—especially if I want to keep my fingers from touching the other strings.
hey @boumy , here’s my take:
You don’t need to avoid touching the other strings since you’re not playing them.
Best to avoid bending your wrist that much. See the video around 1:45 where Justin talks about spreading out the fingers. If you have a problem with that, it’s better to move your hand a bit (as Justin says) than to resort to an extreme bending of the wrist.
Hey Jeremy @boumy, Can you post a photo or two showing your fretting hand in this position? That will help folks better understand what might be causing your challenge. 
This was handy advice I just put a capo on and Im further down the fretboard, i can play it without looking just about, I still stretch a bit with my pinky but its near enough. I figure when I get the finger movements familiar I can move further up the fret board and stretch even more. Thanks