How to Hold Your Guitar the Right Way

Holding your electric guitar properly is just as important as learning chords, melodies, and rhythms. It can affect the sound of your guitar-playing, whether or not your wrist hurts after a session, etc. We’ve put a video together containing 5 tricks that will help you improve your posture and get rid of unwanted noises while playing the guitar; it will cover sitting, standing, fretting hand, picking hand, and holding a pick. Once you’ve mastered how to hold your guitar, you’ll notice improved sound and feeling in your wrist!

How To Hold Your Guitar

The first secret to holding a guitar properly is your sitting posture. Sitting while playing might seem like an easy task, but there’s more to it: wearing a strap, sitting without your legs crossed, using a footrest... There are multiple ways of improving your guitar-playing while sitting down, all of which are covered in the video. What about playing while standing? Though playing in this position is more difficult than doing so while sitting, making an adjustment to your strap length so that the guitar is at the correct hanging height will help tremendously.

When it comes to your fretting hand, you might’ve noticed that there is some string noise while playing or that your hand is getting tired rather quickly. By using a damping technique, you can reduce this noise to a minimum. Straightening your wrist while damping can also ease tension, save energy when fretting, and increase your playing endurance! Your picking hand can also experience tension while playing, so we reveal how to reposition your hand so that there’s not only less tension but more control.

Lastly, we’ll talk about the right way to hold a pick while playing the guitar. When following some of these instructions—however subtle they might seem—you’ll eventually feel more comfortable while playing.

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