Please help. When I anchor my hand for fingerstyle, I pull my guitar body in & the neck pushes out making hand position for some chords difficult

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Hi All,

Mods, feel free to move if you feel this doesn’t belong here but as it’s related to Fingerstyle it was my best effort :grin:

Part of my ongoing warmup/practice has included some basic TIMRIM for quite some time. Originally I used to float my hand and through the teachings on this site I learnt to anchor the heel of my hand on the Bridge. I also tried the Pinky anchor, but find that this just doesn’t work for me, I am quite happy with the other two though.

Since this Vintage Club (thank you Richard) I have began exploring and using the patterns demonstrated during the club which has really been great if not a challenge at times to get the correct finger to do it’s thing :joy:

So… Here’s the thing (at last I hear you say)

I have become aware, during this process that the resting of my strumming/picking arm on the body is to some extent pulling the bottom of the guitar back into/around my body and thus the Neck away from my body. This in turn seems to make me hold the neck back with my Fretting hand :roll_eyes: This means that my Fretting hand is not relaxed during chord changes as in part it’s holding on to the Neck. (hope that makes sense). It also makes it necessary to make quite a positional change to move to say a F Barre chord because it’s hard to make that chord with the Neck angling away from your body.

This has become more obvious to me during the Fingerpicking exercises. Further to this, If my hand floats, I tend to float it over the upper part of the Sound Hole nearer the bottom of the Fretboard, the sound here is lovely and mellow, this creates less pull on the guitar as my arm is resting further up the body. If I am anchoring the heel on the Bridge, then I am picking more over the body itself/very bottom of the Sound Hold, here, of course, the sound is more metallic (sorry best description I could come up with) but also my arm/hand is much further back towards the bottom of the guitar and as such puts more pull on it creating more rotation around my body.

Sorry this is getting really long :roll_eyes:

So the question: (finally, I know).
Is a certain amount of this action normal for most of you and you manage it as best you can by minimising the weight on the bottom end of the guitar ?
Or
Is there something very wrong with my technique ?

I would appreciate some words of wisdom here and hope that the very long winded explanation gets across the big picture here. :+1:

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A couple of thoughts Craig. First, Mark Twain once wrote in a letter to a colleague, “I apologize for the length of this letter. Had I more time, I would have made it shorter.” The power of editing.

Question: Are you using a guitar strap? I have found that if you let the strap support the neck rather than use your fretting hand the guitar body sort of wedges itself in the right place. Also, when I have noticied a similar tension, I find that twisting my abdoment (waste) to make sure I am facing straight forward helps reduce the pulling away of the neck. Mostly it is little adjustments that you’ll incorporate over time.

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eat enough fruit and vegetables…and as far as the guitar is concerned, yes I have had that problem too and sometimes if I slump a bit too much it still happens and if the neck moves too much forward or away from me, some chord changes are worse than desired… then I quickly adjust that again because it is undesirable…the first times I noticed this it took a few weeks to properly address it…
find the point where it just doesn’t happen and practice that way again and again .

I actually have no idea whether this will help you, but at least you will have enough vitamins :roll_eyes:

Greetings

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Photos very often replace a plethora of words and generally speaking make more sense!
@CD02
With Classical Guitar you don’t use an anchor finger, I play both and learned Classical Guitar before I seriously started finger picking so haven’t changed that. As a Classical Guitar is quite deep it’s very easy to do what you’re describing hence the go to technique of no anchor. I can’t comfortably play any Acoustic guitar bigger than the size of a Classical Guitar, they just feel too big for me. Could it be that your Guitar is big enough to be difficult to play? If not as has been suggested get a strap on it regardless of whether you play sitting or standing.

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Excellent points Darrell. I thought maybe his guitar was too large also. I started learning on a dreadnought and it always felt like wrestling an alligator. After a year I bought an Alvarez concert size folk model and it made a big difference in my comfort and playing. I am still experimenting with anchoring the pinky, the palm or not at all when playing fingerstyle.

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Justin Johnson does a great tutorial on Finger style on using an anchor - he favours it, but he’s got b-i-g hands :rofl:

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Thanks. I like his videos and will check it out. I’m on the team with smallish hands and a stubby pinky.

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I recommend avoiding any anchoring of your hand. Such an anchor is a hindrance to movement, and it also adds tension to the hand, which is the last thing you want, in my opinion. It also lessens the free vibration of the soundboard, to one degree or another; that’s another thing you don’t want. Anchoring is a common practice, but I think it’s a poor and unnecessary one. Also, note that the vast majority of classical guitar instruction (which is pretty much ALL fingerstyle) teaches that it’s a practice that should be avoided; there are good reasons for that.

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Michael @mfrancillon
Look like my hands but without a scale it is impossible to be sure.
Michael

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Hi Mike,
Thanks for comments (and the Literature lesson :rofl:). That’s a good point, in fact I have straps on my guitars however never use them when I’m sitting :thinking: Seated my guitar rests on my raised knee and I tend to ‘hunch’ forward over it so as to ‘hug’ the guitar body. I do remind myself at times to sit upright however gravitate towards hunching over it when I’m comfortable.

Thanks Darrell, I do have a Dreadnought but specifically in this instance I am referring to my Grand Auditorium that is quite comfortable. I will look into this over the coming days, and trial the strap sitting.

:rofl: Thanks Rogier, and my Doctor thanks you you too :joy: All input is helpful mate, so thanks for taking the time to reply.

Thanks Jason, luckily I am mostly pretty comfortable floating my hand and actually I far prefer the sound this way otherwise my fingers are to far down the Bridge end and it just doesn’t sound as good.

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Hey guys, @CD02 , @J.W.C

Allow me to make the counter argument…

First of all, there is a real benefit to making contact with the guitar with the picking hand. It gives you a point of reference and makes finding the correct strings with the correct fingers easier (a lot easier for me).

I play fingerstyle at times with the “anchor” pinky. The key point is that the pinky should barely make contact with the soundboard, in fact it’s not “anchored” at all, but just gently resting on the guitar, with zero force applied. If you do it this way, it solves some of the problems mentioned above: hindrance to movement, adding tension to the hand and even soundboard vibration (I can’t hear any difference in the sound when I play with or without the pinky down. Except that I play better with the pinky, so it sounds better :wink:) Watch how lightly Justin Johnson rests his pinky on the guitar here:

Regarding where the strings are plucked, I play mostly acoustic blues and folk, so I tend to pluck the strings behind the soundhole, towards the bridge. But, I think you can place the pinky such that you are playing more towards the neck. In that same video, Johnson plays a resonator with pinky down, plucking up near the neck.

The one drawback to the pinky down, for me, is that it does restrict somewhat the use of my ring finger (my ring finger and pinky are not completely independent). So, for songs where I use my ring finger, I don’t put the pinky down, but get oriented by resting my hand on the bridge. I am almost always applying palm muting to the bass strings, so my hand is basically already in that position. Of course, with the hand in this position, you can’t pluck the strings up near the neck.

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An interesting issue you raise Craig. I moved it out of the Vintage Club #23 topic as it deserves to stand on its own - as the number and type of responses shows.

Anchor does carry a suggestion of heavy and fixed with pressure being applied. In which case it can be misleading. The contact point is merely a means of allowing yourself a reference, navigation. It is not meant to be immovable and it is definitely not meant to be applied with muscles and sinews being used to press the anchor into the guitar - causing the issue you mention. The whole hand and arm stay relaxed, it is a feather light touch.

The anchor (especially little finger) may not be the method used by classical musicians but it is by Chet Atkins, Tommy Emmanuel, Gabriella Quevedo, Lindsey Buckingham, Joe Robinson, Mike Dawes, Paul Simon, Mark Knopfler etc etc.

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To anchor or not to anchor - listen to Tommy Emmanuel (vid should start at 1m18s in):

I also want to be on the team Chet Atkins is on. I anchor my pinky with fingerstyle (and anchor my heel when picking anything complex). I find I am significantly more accurate. But - plenty of people don’t anchor too, clearly!

Onto the title question, about pulling the guitar in. If there’s a lot of tension in your right arm, well, get rid of the tension and see what happens.

But if it’s relaxed - are you sure it’s not pulling the guitar into a more natural, ergonomic position, and perhaps your regular style is not? I find that the guitar points out from my body at around 45 degrees, but it’s quite a relaxed position, and my fretting hand is not pulling the guitar towards me at all. That would create quite a problem moving around the fretboard.

Maybe a video or picture with a top down angle would help.

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Lots of input here, so firstly thanks for the lively discussion and pro’s and con’s for anchoring :+1:

Before I go on, some clarifications:

  1. This came about due to increased work on Fingerpicking recently but is not necessarily confined to Fingerpicking style, it just seems more noticeable to me whilst Fingerpicking.

  2. When I use the term “Anchor” during descriptions or in the following video I am using this in the way most do to indicate lightly resting or anchoring it’s position but not pressing down hard.

  3. In the following video, I have exaggerated the resting of the arm to clearly demonstrate the resulting pivoting of the guitar. I would not generally pull the guitar into me just allow it to take the weight of my arm.

Hi John,
Yes, exactly my issue with using the pinky to anchor.

Hi Richard,
Yes, thanks for that, I wasn’t sure at the time. And thanks for the very descriptive title :rofl: :+1: Thanks for your input, I have clarified my use of the term “Anchor” above just to add additional clarity to the discussion.

Hi JK,
Hope you’ve been well, haven’t seen a AVOYP from you for a while :thinking:
Interesting points, I haven’t been aware of any tension but good point and something I’ll look into.
The second point is actually what I am trying to avoid :scream: Recently I have felt like I should have the guitar sitting more across my body than your description of around 45deg. Obviously, you have no problems with Barre chords in this position.

Following is a video for demonstration purposes, I’m not sure it will offer any more than already discussed, but as a discussion forum I posted it up anyway.

Thanks for the video links guys, there’s some interesting stuff in there. :+1:

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Pictures and videos are so helpful - thanks for sharing Craig.
I don’t see all that much that is ‘wrong’ or ‘worrisome’.
A couple of minor suggestions for little tweaks to see if anything feels better for you.
Move the guitar a little further across your torso to your left so it is not so deeply buried under your right armpit.
Angle the guitar neck a little upwards, more away from horizontal.
The actual neck facing away from you is where most people have it and it does give your fretting arm room in which to operate.

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Hi Richard
Thanks for checking it out. When you say left, thats left as I am holding it so moving the headstock further from me?

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Yes - I accidentally wrote left armpit too - now corrected.
Move to your left.

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You called me out so here’s a video - haven’t recorded anything in ages, so this is just on my phone, not with my recording setup. No idea how you rigged that birds eye view cam.

Sitting with the guitar flat across my body would feel weird for me, it would be very hard to play.

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:rofl: thanks JK, yes I had a chuckle when I setup my Birds Eye :eye: view, and even considered doing it outside with my drone :joy: over the top I know.

Lovely sounding picking mate especially on that lovely Maton :+1: and good to see that it’s still shorts weather over there :rofl:

On a more serious note, wow, I maybe over analysing here, having seen the angle of your guitar when you hold it. Appreciate the video mate, thanks.

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During the day it’s tank tops and boardies weather here! That’s the sunny coast for you though.

And yep - you might be overanalysing, as long as it’s comfortable and you can move around the fretboard I reckon it’s fine.

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