Playing guitar without looking

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That’s an interesting idea. Changing the chair as described above has helped a lot but I have made a significant change to my gear. Simple really, I bought a strap. It lifts the weight of the guitar off my legs and stabilizes everything really well. The best bit is that when I start to slouch, the guitar gently lands on my leg ad reminds me to “sit up straight, young man!” just like those old dragon teachers used to. :rofl:

The postural chances have also improved my breathing, making me more relaxed and vastly improving my singing. Out of the pain came unexpected growth. :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

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I saw the doc for a check up yesterday and told hom about the probable guitar connection. He concurred and examined my abdomen just in case. No problems with my guts at all, it’s all muscular he says.

I’ve been retired nine years so it’s no wonder that my core muscles are a bit on the soft side. When I learned the F chord, odd little muscles all over me (even my back!) protested at first.

I took ten days off and after seven of them the side pains had gone away. I restarted carefully, avoiding twisting by using a mirror to look at my fretting hand - then discovered that I hardly ever use it. The inconvenience of the mirror image made me more or less stop looking while still giving me the feeling that I can if I wish.

Changing the chair, adding a strap, adjusting posture and not looking has made my playing a bit ropey but not as much as expected and my brain is quickly making the required changes. So, all in all, things are looking good. Thanks Lady and also @jvlynch and @mattswain for your advices.

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What you say about twisting reminds me of an issue I had in the past, not related to guitar, but amounts to the same thing.

At work I got myself a second monitor and put them side by side, and sat in the middle of them. Two screens are obviously better than one, right? What that actually meant was I spent most of my day slightly twisted in one direction or the other and it started to cause me pain. We’re not talking about a big twist but it shows over time how poor posture can affect us. Nowadays I use 1 external screen with my laptop screen directly under it so everything is in line and the problem is gone. I’ve got slightly less screen space this way but at least my body is happy

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DonUK61, sounds like you’re on the path to a full recovery, both physically and with the guitar. Thanks for taking the time to write back and say raising your feet/lowering the chair helped. Glad it’s working for you.

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Great work finding a more ergonomic way to ply guitar and avoid pain and injury! It often does take thinking about it.

In my neurology practice, I see headaches, neck pain and arm, wrist pain frequently. The common culprit is quit often poor ergonomics at a computer work station, but can include couch slouching, guitar playing and any other sustained posture that isn’t well aligned.

A google search on ergonomics and a reasonable effort to apply those principles to a given situation is well worth it. It is best done before injuring yourself, if you remember to think of it.

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Yes! Feeling well=playing well too.

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I have yet to be able to correlate to two, myself…:man_facepalming:t3:

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For the last ten days or so I’ve made playing without looking my Prime Directive. It’s quite a challenge for me but I’m already seeing very important benefits.

I decided to reinstall my one minute changes app to wipe the scores and start again at zero. I’m doing Perfect Fast UNSEEN changes for all of the chords I thought I ‘knew’. At first it slowed me down dreadfully. I think my mental processing capacity was taken up with a screaming internal argument that went something like this,

Grown up me: ‘Fret an F chord’
Underconfident Child me; ‘I have to look!’
‘No you don’t, just take your time.’
‘I can’t play like that. I gotta look!’
‘No you don’t - Oh you did. (sigh). Start over. Fret a G’
‘I have to look.’ and so on, and on, and on.

While that crisis of confidence was happening in my head there wasn’t much space left for learning. I made it a rule that I’d not look unless the chord sounded wrong and I couldn’t fix it any other way. You can imagine how slow my changes became! Even the really simple ones dropped from 60 per minute to around six. The first time I tried F to Dm I scored TWO.

Eventually though, I began to convince that scared part of my personality that he could do it. I noted that at least half of the time I was fretting the chords correctly and that improved quite rapidly the more I practiced. After a week or so I was back on the app playing songs without looking and was delighted to realise that in some cases it was easier than before. I stuck to songs that I already knew quite well and forgave myself the bum notes as long as I was having fun. I think that forgiveness helped me relax and enjoy it all?

This morning, I woke up to the realisation that a week of sitting up straight, eyes front, and making daily measurable progress has caused a subtle but very significant change in my attitude. When I sat hunched over, twisted to the left, trying to see what my fingers were doing, muttering and cursing, tense and frustrated, looking like a little boy with a man’s guitar, I was TRYING to learn to play it. Trying and trying and trying and never actually succeeding. Maybe I was thinking “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose as long as you keep trying”? That’s a lie that I heard a lot as a child

Anyway, sitting up, alert and relaxed like a grown up I wasn’t TRYING anymore - I was actually DOING it. When I chat to people and they ask me what I did yesterday (in the heatwave when we all pretty much stayed at home) I no longer say “Oh, I’m, er, trying to learn the guitar.” I say “I’m learning the guitar”. And I AM learning, and learning effectively and efficiently. Those mysterious pains have all gone away too.

For me, playing without looking has helped my grow up in a small and very satisfying way.

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Congratulations, Don. You did it/are doing it. Yes, the posture is an added benefit. It helps improve your playing because it makes you feel better when your posture is great. I still record myself and review it doing chord changes without looking. It helps too.

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This is a great idea! I will spend some time with this as well as “no look scales” and other practice. My neck is almost better, so my external disincentive to look is less pronounced. Better work on it purposely.

I like your epiphany on learning guitar. A big move from dabbler to player. Feeling good about what you are accomplishing and not physically hurting to do it helps a lot, I bet.

I still have a little way to go in that concept. I still find myself slouching, and tend to be a little timid in playing. Especially (in spades) when trying to sing.

An old mentor, before I was a physician (or guitar player of course) back when I was in school to be a massage therapist, wrote on the black board: “Act as if”. A lesson that has resonated throughout my life and career. If we present to a task as if we can do it, we engage in that task more fully. If you act as if you are in control of a situation, the more likely you will be. If people see you as confident and assured, they are more likely to be as well. Sometimes as a physician, I don’t know what is going on with a patient, but I present myself as confident and in control of the situation and it helps them feel safe and me to find a way forward. It has been a good lesson.

I played really well yesterday in practice by being more present and forward with my playing, louder and confident. As if I really knew how to play. To the degree I have learned, turns out I actually can!

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Success! I love it!!

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One last comment from me on this thread. I’ve recently started practicing/playing standing up standing up. I can’t see the fretboard in the old way anymore so I hardly look. It’s as simple as that. Of course I can glance down at the side of the neck to see why my G sounds so strange - wrong frets! But the old habit just gave up in the new circumstances.

Also, I don’t slouch. In fact I lean back a little to balance the 3.4kg guitar so I’m naturally looking straight ahead (like a stadium gig, reaching out to the back row?).

Nor do I over practice at the moment because I get tired. I walk around a lot, look out of the window, feel a lot more relaxed. I expect to get some muscle pain in the coming weeks from all this but ‘growing pains’ are acceptable.

Finally, with the guitar hanging from my shoulder, and high up on my torso like B B King, the neck swings to point upwards at 45 degrees and forward at 45 degrees and that’s so much more comfortable for my left hand. Every chord is easier. Paradoxically that means that I can see the fretboard but as I said, the new position has seemingly broken the bad ‘staring’ habit that was causing me so much hassle.

There’s a lesson on standing up HERE which also mentions playing seated with the guitar on the ‘other’ leg like the Classical guitarists do. Those folks may know a thing or two so I tried it but it doesn’t fit me. Instead I let the strap support the guitar a couple of inches above my legs and I get that 45/45 degree angle sitting down too, together with most of the advantages above, including the not looking.