I’ve been keeping my thumb horizontal the whole course; about halfway up the back of the neck.
Throughout the videos I noticed Justin’s thumb is frequently almost vertical (i.e., pointing two-o’clock).
I had a tutor come by last week and tell me to keep thumb more vertical; I tried it and it feels like I have more grip on power chords with my thumb vertical (I know I haven’t reached power chords yet but I couldn’t wait).
I could have sworn Justin mentioned in the earlier videos to keep thumb horizontal, but now I’m wondering if I imagined it.
With horizontal thumb; some of my chord changes, like anything with D, are sloppy.
With vertical thumb; my chord changes are even slower right now, but I am assuming this is because I’m not used to it.
My questions:
Should I keep thumb more vertical than horizontal? I checked out some YouTube videos and it seems most guitarists have their thumb almost vertical.
Do I need to start over? My chord changes are now much slower now with vertical thumb.
Should the palm touch the neck? I notice that sometimes Justin has his thumb hooked around the neck; I don’t think that’s possible to do without having your palm touch the neck.
I do use the term ‘sloppy’ in that response as I couldn’t think of a better term (and still can’t!), but have a read of my first reply, and the rest of the replies from there.
Even though Justin himself has his thumb high up (I can see his thumb; it’s not hidden at all).
So assuming he wants us to play it with thumb hidden for A-chord, does that mean your thumb is constantly changing elevation on the neck? Because it’s not hidden in the D-chord video neither.
A lot of Justins early lessons are good techniques for beginners but not the only way to crath the guitar egg
That’s what I’m worried about; if I google the issue I’m worried I will find a tip that’s meant for more advanced users. In other words: I’m looking for help in the context of JustinGuitar.
Yes, beginners generally wont have th hand strength,speed or flexibility to do a lot of what justin does later, I assume he should have not been positioning his thumb like hat whilst talking about having the thumb centrally.
Wait till you find out you can play an A chord with only 1 finger…
Depending on your hand size/finger length, your fingers might need to be touching the strings from a slightly different angle, which means they need to be positioned on the strings slightly differently to avoid buzzing/muting.
I’m currently sat noodling on my PRS SE with quite a slim neck, so even doing something like F#/D chord the fingers fretting the D chord don’t move that much when reaching over for the F#.
But on my Tele with a noticeably fatter neck, playing the same chord the fingers fretting the D have to lean over a bit so my thumb can reach over and fret the F#.
Specifically in the context of Justin and where you’re at - I think you’ve interpreted “in the middle of the neck” wrong. Your thumb should be vertical, not horizontal. Justin asks for it to be in the middle of the guitar neck (and vertical) when you start as it’s a strong position and starts to build thumb strength for barre chords later.
Don’t worry about wrapping your thumb around or alternate positions yet, you’re too early for that stuff. It comes later.
Dan, holding your thumb horizontal is really bad form. Please break that habit asap.
Justin says many times in many lessons for early beginners to keep it behind the neck but he never says horizontal. I am not 100% sure he says vertical to be frank without rewatching multiple video lessons. But that is the way.
A small angle away from pure vertical is fine but not pointing towards the nut and tuners.
Like JK said above, start with your thumb vertical roughly at the centreline of the neck.
Then adjust the position of your thumb behind the neck so that the chord you play sounds as it is supposed to. Sometimes mine has to be a little lower so that my fingers can reach the low strings, other times a bit more tilted to bring my palm closer to the neck.
Eventually, as you learn your guitar better (I mean how the neck feels for you), as you learn chords and songs, you’ll stop thinking about it and it will be finding its place on it own.
I had the same problem, my thumb would be horizontal on the neck. I started focusing on making it more vertical and I noticed what you did, my barre chords were stronger. It took some time to adjust and get my chord changes back to where they were. Overall I think it’s a positive change.
Why is it bad for the thumb to run parallel along the back of the guitar neck? From my understanding from Guitar Thumb Position - Justin Guitar - Guitar Lesson [QA-001] - YouTube Justin was saying it was fine to have the thumb parallel. Doing so is one of the habits I have from past playing so I often subconsciously do it regardless of whether I’m playing on the bottom strings, top strings, or playing chords.
If anything, it reinforces the point.
Justin is talking explicitly about playing a scale up and down and when he reaches the thin string his thumb has rotated and is away from vertical, pointing more towards the headstock. At no point does his thumb reach horizontal. At most it reaches about a 45 degree diagonal from horizontal. And he then shows how it goes to more vertical when actually playing music with scales, soling etc. And in the same video he talks about keeping the thumb upright.
A horizontal tumb makes for awkward finger positions on some chords, fails to properly develop the muscles needed for certain chords and is not optimal - even it is possible.
For me, personally, it also does not make sense to have the thumb parallel to the neck.
When I hold something in my left hand, making a fist, the thumb goes over the other four fingers, not at the side of the index finger.
In my mind, that’s the analogy of having the guitar’s neck in my hand.
It’s just unnatural, for me, to have the thumb in another orientation other that vertical to the neck.
Having said that, I have noticed my thumb getting at an angle, but not running parallel, to the neck. That’s happened when practising a quite fast lick ascending from the 5th string 7-9-10 frets to the 2nd string 10-12-13 frets.
I haven’t debugged the reasons why the thumb got down but I believe it’s because this is a fast lick for me so perhaps it’s some sort of compensation…
Thank you for explaining. I don’t know why me default ended up being a horizontal thumb position, but since some days ago when I saw your post saying not to, I’ve been experimenting with it more diagonal (the 45 degree one in the video that you mention) or vertical and noticed it makes some chords less awkward (more range of motion and easier to pivot the hand when changing chords). I don’t know what percentage of the time I have my thumb horizontal vs. diagonal or vertical, but I’ll keep trying to be aware of when it’s going into unideal positions and why so I can work on fixing it. I’m working on retraining multiple bad habits from the past that I didn’t know were bad habits when I learned them.
I’ll add my two cents. Recently I played more with the vertical thumb because it’s the only way to play barre chords and it’s a good position for scale-like melodies across few strings. But still I lean more towards ‘blues’ hand position with the thumb over the neck. It’s much more stable, I feel the neck and frets much better and for me it’s almost the only way to play open chords because of the thumb muting. But, of course, everyone is different so it’s important to find what’s comfortable for you and what gives you an ability to play the best.
It’s still very early days for me; I’m not quite 6 months into this adventure. So I know there’s a lot of opportunity for learning to make my hands do new things in new ways.
For me, at the moment, I find it especially difficult to keep my thumb pointed perpendicular to the neck at about the lowest 3 frets. Everywhere else, it’s usually quite natural. I’m mindful of it turning sideways at that end and I try to rotate it, but it’s both uncomfortable and often ineffective. With my thumb horizontal, the joints at the base of my fingers are all parallel to the neck; if I point my thumb upward, it causes my hand to rotate so that my pinky’s base is now a centimeter or more farther away from the neck than the index finger’s. That, in turn makes it much more difficult to fret a string beyond say the fourth. The only way I’ve found to compensate is to bend my wrist in a way that I know will not work long-term. I also find that, when my thumb is vertical, my hand tends to sort of “cup” as opposed to laying flat, which crowds the fingers together and makes it more difficult to span several frets.
It’s clear that part of the issue is that those lowest frets are the farthest away, so my arm is angled more to my left there (versus straight in front of me) than it is at higher frets. That angle more or less matches the angle of my knuckles relative to the neck. Another factor may be that I fractured my left wrist when I was a teen, and it’s likely not exactly as it was before then.
A bit of good news is that hand strength for barre chords is not a problem even when the thumb is horizontal. But I do understand that it’s “bad form” and I should work to eliminate it. I’m certain, though, that I can’t sacrifice my wrist to make up the difference.
