Instrument vs. Anatomy

Subject: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Scoville
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 12:42 PM

Friends and I were joking a bit about this after going out to a club over the weekend and observing that the guitarist, like a lot of the really good guitarists I've seen lately, appeared to have fingers about four feet long. He was playing a hollow-body electric that would have been the equivalent of me hanging a cello around my neck--it was huge. He was also playing four frets side-by-side (horizontally) at a time--I'd have to separate the bones in my hand to do that, and even if I could reach I would be at the wrong angle to have any grip strength.

Now, obviously there's no substitute for practice and hard work, but we got to wondering to what extent anyone thought anatomy had affected their ability to play a given instrument (my fellow musical ladies have already lamented the unfortunate meeting of guitar with underwire brassiere. Not good). I've had a Hell of a time learning to play the guitar and I thought I just had crappy reflexes until somebody recently pointed out to me that I never had a problem with piano or Appalachian dulcimer. I've got stubby, crooked, fingers but long thumbs, which are very helpful on piano and dulcimer but sort of irrelevent on guitar.

I also cannot play the guitar sitting down. I can't get it into the right position unless I'm standing with it on a strap. The F-30, which is smaller, is definitely easier to hold than the full-size Alvarez, but I'm a bit surprised that I even think it's an issue. I'm 5'7"--I'm not small.

I suppose some of it might be style-dependent, too. My normal playing style is pick-and-strum (pick melody, strum in between; a bit of Carter scratch but with a flat-pick instead of a thumb). I'm not fast but I'm accurate as long as the reach isn't too far. Most of the women I know do chords or do that early Ani frantic-strumming thing, but I know there are plenty of women whose guitar styles are more sophisticated.

It doesn't really matter since I'm going to keep trying to play the thing even if I suck at it for the rest of my life. Thoughts?

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 01:54 PM

My fingers could never be described as long and slender but I can and do cover 4 frets.

It may upset classical guitar teachers, but the thumb is far from irrelevant when used on the 6th string. It avoids all those awkward bar chords and leaves the first finger free for picking out the melody. I've even seen someone who managed to use his thumb on both the 5th and 6th strings.

I can play sitting down if I am slouched in a chair, in some very unorthodox position, but if I am sitting straight up then I prefer to use a strap, so it is much the same as playing standing up.

DC

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Scoville
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 01:58 PM

If you can get the bass string with your thumb, you're ahead of me. I can almost get it but not reliably (even though it's not a classical guitar--I'm HOPELESS on a classical guitar).

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Bert
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 02:00 PM

Try a tenor guitar.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Scoville
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 02:06 PM

What?? And give up my bass notes?? Never!

I'm not complaining, I'm just asking. I'm actually going to try putting lighter strings on the Guild to make it easier to play, since it already has a smaller body and shorter neck, but still sounds like a normal guitar.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Bernard
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 02:23 PM

I've not got particularly long fingers - they're best described as short and stubby! But I have no difficulty covering five frets, even at the 'wide fret' end of the neck. My main guitar is a Yamaha FG160, circa 1970, and I use medium gauge strings.

A stretching excercise I use with pupils is to start around the 9th fret, put the index finger of the fretting hand on the 6th string (9th fret), second finger on the fifth at the 10th, third on the fourth at the 11th and fourth on the third at the 12th.

Once you can make all the four strings sound 'clean' - no buzzes - move down (pitch - away from the instrument's body... 1-6-8, 2-5-9, 3-4-10, 4-3-11), and keep going until you can't hold all the notes without a buzz.

The next step, once you can get all the way to the first fret, is to only move one finger at a time - that's a killer!

The sequence is:

1-6-9, 2-5-10, 3-4-11, 4-3-12 all held simultaneously,
1-6-8, 2-5-10, 3-4-11, 4-3-12
1-6-8, 2-5-9, 3-4-11, 4-3-12
1-6-8, 2-5-9, 3-4-10, 4-3-12
1-6-8, 2-5-9, 3-4-10, 4-3-11
1-6-7, 2-5-9, 3-4-10, 4-3-11 and so on!

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Wesley S
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 02:40 PM

Don't forget that most electric guitars have a lighter gauge string that what you probably play on a regular basis.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 03:12 PM

The first guitar I ever touched with serious intent was an 1898 George Washburn parlor guitar that my girlfriend's grandmother had given her. It was strung with light-gauge steel strings and the fingerboard was about 1-7/8"at the nut. She showed me a few chords (G, C, D7, and a few others). My hands are fairly big and other than the usual beginner's fumbling around, I didn't have any problem with it. I bought a cheap, plywood guitar and the fingerboard width was about the same. But a few years later I got a Martin 00-18 (steel-string, mid-size body) and the fingerboard width, about 1-11/16", seemed kind of cramped to me. But I made do. After all, it was a Martin!

A few years later, I started taking classic guitar lessons and traded the 00-18 in on a Martin 00-28-G nylon-string classic with a full 2" fingerboard. At first it was like playing rubber bands strung along a wide plank, but after a few days it felt good. Roomy, comfortable, reaches were easy enough, and I no longer had to worry about dampening strings that I didn't want to dampen because the strings were so close together. I've played classics ever since.

As a teacher (classic and folk), I had one student, a woman, who was very small, maybe 4'10", and her hands were so small that she actually had dimples in her knuckles like a baby's. And she walked in lugging a full-size classic guitar. The amazing thing was that she was able to make all the reaches on that 2" neck. I figured that she's never be able to play the fingering for the first position G chord that I usually use:   3rd finger on the low G, 2nd finger on the B (5th string, 2nd fret) and pinky on the high G (1st string, 3rd fret), so I showed her an alternate fingering, using the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd fingers. But she spotted the fingering that I generally use in the technique book we were using, and damned if she didn't learn it! It was a stretch for her, but she got to where she could use it, no problem. So when someone whose hands are larger than hers were tells me that a classic fingerboard is too wide and they can't make the reaches, I tend to snort a bit.

On the other hand (pun fully intended), I have a student right now, a fairly tall woman with normal size hands. She had a cheap steel-string guitar with a fairly narrow fingerboard, and she had real difficulty avoiding dampening adjacent strings. She got a classic on my recommendation, and this alleviated the dampening problem, but a G7 seems to be an uncomfortable stretch for her. And even C is not real easy for her. There doesn't seem to be anything unusual about her hands that I can see, and her general hand position on the guitar is good, so. . . .

Most mysterious. . . .

Clarification of stock misconception about left-hand classic guitar technique:   There is no prohibition about using the left thumb to reach around to play bass notes. Classic guitar music simply does not call for it. If someone were to compose a piece of music where it is necessary, then classic guitarists would do it.

In classic technique, as a general rule, the thumb should be kept behind the neck, at about midline, and more-or-less opposite the second finger. This facilitates the freedom of the fingers and makes reaches easier. It should be opposite the second finger especially when doing bar chords, so you can get a "shear" effect, rolling the first (barring) finger slightly on its side. Nobody likes bar chords very much, but they're easier on a nylon-string classic guitar than on a steel-string guitar because even light-gauge steel strings exert more than twice as much tension as nylon strings.

As far as song accompaniments are concerned, like most singers of folk songs, I work out my own. Depending on the song, I do just about everything from simple "Burl Ives Basic" to classic or lute-style accompaniments on some older songs and ballads, with a bit of alternating-bass picking thrown in. I've never encountered a situation where it was necessary to use my left thumb in order to get the kind of bass lines I want, and I don't think anyone could complain that there is anything especially lacking in my accompaniments. But I've seen Mississippi John Hurt and Lightnin' Hopkins up close at Berkeley Folk Festivals in the 60s, where I also attended a workshop conducted by Doc Watson, and they do use there left thumbs quite freely whenever necessary.

If the music calls for it, go ahead and do it. There is nothing in classic guitar technique that says, "Thou shalt not!"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 03:13 PM

The third and fourth fingers on Django Reinhardt's fretting hand were so badly damaged in a fire that he had to reinvent how he played guitar. He didn't do too badly.

On a lesser scale, each of us works with physical limitations. Some of us have real anatomical issues, but just about everyone has issues caused by the dreaded not-enough-practice disease. Yes, I know that an F major chord played at the 5th fret is supposed to be fretted 587565, and I can make the shape okay, but it still takes me too long to get all those fingers arranged than the rhythm of most tunes allows, so the "cheater" version (XX7565) usually has to do.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 03:41 PM

". . . the dreaded not-enough-practice disease."

Yeah, BWL, exactly so. Among folkies in particular, there seems to be some kind of prejudice against practicing. It's all supposed to happen spontaneously—somehow! But during that workshop with Doc Watson that I mention above, someone asked Doc how he gets that kind of smooth facility that he has when he's flatpicking single-line fiddle tunes. He answered, "Well, I practice scales for half an hour every day."

You could hear gasps of horror all over the room. "Practice!?? Scales!??"

As my drinking uncle used to say, "Whatever you do, don't waste your time trying to learn the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade!"

That fifth position F fingering is a killer. I think one of the reasons that a lot of classic guitarists seem to be able to do some things that folk musicians find extremely difficult, is not necessary because they're inherently better guitarists, but because a folk guitarist will try to grab a chord like that 5th position F and hold it for a full measure or more, whereas when it occurs in a classic guitar piece, you're on it for maybe one beat and you're off to something else. You sort of hit it "in transit" if you see what I mean. I've seen Sharon Isbin pop into that fingering like it was nothing. But she was doing a scale run. Her fingers were in motion when she landed on the position for one beat, and then she was off to something else.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 03:54 PM

I am a big guy. Not quite 6' with wide shoulders and pretty big hands.   
I have had fingers reattached on my left hand and my right wrist crushed in a separate construction injury. My instrument of choice is a Guild F-30 from the early 1960's. Unlike the new GAD F-30 this guitar has a narrow neck and a short scale. I like the smaller body, it is easier to hold and the short scale helps with my mangled fingers.

I practice scales daily more for for PT and warm ups than for musical awareness of where the notes are.

Playing guitar helps keep my fingers able to play the guitar. A not so vicious cycle.

Don

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 03:58 PM

You could try a guitar with a shorter scale length.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: The Vulgar Boatman
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 04:06 PM

Don Firth - amen to all that. Anyone in doubt, take a look at photos of Andres Segovia's hands: robust to say the least.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Scoville
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 04:13 PM

Ha ha! My mother's is a 1971 Guild F-30 (she no longer plays, though, so I have sole custody of it)! I don't know if that would be the same as Don's or not (I know nothing about the new F-30's). I haven't played it in awhile because my cheap-o Alvarez is my I-won't-cry-if-it-gets-stolen/crushed guitar, but I've been thinking I need to get used to the Guild again. I started on it and it was a better size, but didn't want to risk it when I was in college or knocking around at jams.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Bernard
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 04:24 PM

My 'I-won't-cry-if-it-gets-stolen/crushed guitar' is a Yamaha F300.

I used to find it annoying, to say the least, to have someone at a club ask if they could use my guitar, only to handle it as if it were firewood - banging it against a table or chair, etc.

Yet if you refuse, it's you that is wrong, not them for leaving their good instrument at home...

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: freightdawg
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 04:25 PM

A hearty heigh-ho to everything Don said...those posts are worth the price of a 1/2 hour lesson right there.

One huge frustration I have in trying to "get the right sound" from someone I admire is that I don't have the hands that other person has. John Denver, for example, is said to have had huge hands, and he frequently used his thumb for some 6th string bass notes. He could also make 5 fret stretches. No way my thumb is going to make the 6th string ring clearly, and I can hit a 5 fret stretch only if it is WAY up the fretboard. BUT, and this is something I have learned to put up with, I can make certain runs, chords and passages sound okay by altering a fingering slightly, or omitting certain strings. It is not the "original" sound, but it sure is "original" by me!

Another thing I learned...(stole the idea actually, can't remember from whom) is that stretching the webbing between your fingers REALLY helps. You can stick your fist in between each of your fingers on your fretting hand for a few seconds before you play, or use a tennis ball, or some other suitable tool that gets your fingers to spread out. It really helps. This must be done before each practice session, but I can tell a difference between when I do it and when I don't.

I actually have more grief on my 12 string than my classical, because the pressure needed to get both strings down is different - fat string and skinny string so close together. But when I switch from my 12 string back to my six string it is SO easy.

Freightdawg

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: s&r
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 04:27 PM

If you want to extend your reach, develop the right muscles, with your hand square to the neck - ie with each finger at right angles to the strings. Put all fingers on a string, then reach for a higher note with the pinkie, and a lower note with the first finger. This develops the muscles down the side of the hand, and will give you at least an extra fret.

Stu

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: frogprince
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 06:39 PM

Scoville, have you no spiritual discernment? If God had wanted you to play guitar, She would have given you the fingers for it! Try a penny whistle!
(Wish I could play anything! Not so much a hand problem with me, as something about the anatomy of my brain.)
Bet a cookie that you can play more than well enough that I'd enjoy the heck out of heaing you.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 06:50 PM

My firstmandolin was a round backed Martin. In those days it suited my anatomy a little better than it would today. A round backed mando and a round bellied musician don't work. I'm 6'1" , 230 lb and I can make my wife's 12 fret O-18 look like a ukulele.
A friend of my son, Manitoba Hal, is a great slide and blues musician who also likes to play the ukulele. The uke is a small instrument to begin with, but Hal is a very big man. Another case where musician and instrument look odd together.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 06:58 PM

Very important. Many guitarists, I might go so far as to say most, use far too much brute power with their left hands in mashing down the strings. Much too much tension. This can really inhibit the left hand and slow you down.

You might be somewhat amazed at how little pressure it actually takes to fret a string, even with steel strings. Try fretting a string this way:   touch the string just behind the fret as usual, but don't press it down. Play the string with the right hand. You should get a sort of dead "thubb" sound. Keep plucking the string, and gradually increase the pressure until the string lightly contacts the fret, and continuing plucking the string and increasing the pressure with your left hand finger until the tone becomes clear. Once it's clear, don't increase the pressure any more. That's it. That's all you need. Much less than you might think. Probably very much less that you've been using up 'til now.

Try to feel the tension drain out of your fingers. Keep them relaxed almost to the point of being floppy. Then use only as much pressure as is absolutely necessary to get a clear sound out of the string. And when you lift a finger to move it somewhere else, let the tension drain out of it until you actually need to apply pressure again.

It will take a bit of practice (Oh, horrors! That word again!) to get the feel of this, but it will really be worth it to not work so hard. This is the key to being "light-fingered" and fast on a guitar fingerboard.

Don Firth

P. S. Just for your amusement and amazement. Be sure to scroll down past the picture of Richard Yates clowning it up and take a look at the photo of Ida Presti doing the stretch for real. I met her once when she and her husband, Alexandre Lagoya, were in Seattle on a concert tour. She was a fairly small woman, about five foot three or so, and her hands were not all that big. Twang!

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 07:44 PM

What you can do with your fingers isn't just about size and speed. Hand anatomies are *not* all the same - the ligaments divide in different places for different people, which makes for intrinsically different degrees of strength or independence of movement. This can be a real problem in classical piano music where the composer had hands with different capabilities from the pianist who's just trying to play the thing.

There is quite a bit on this at Richard Beauchamp's site, musicandhealth.co.uk. It was Richard who told me this stuff - he's a classical pianist and piano teacher who has made a special study of hand anatomy. He once had to use his expertise the hard way after getting his hand smashed to a a pulp in an accident; it works fine now, but mainly because he got it fixed up by an expert surgeon who was prepared to listen to what Richard had to say about what he wanted done.

My thing is mouth anatomy. I have a cleft lip and palate, and have had surgery that took a piece of lower lip out, rotated it 180 degrees, and implanted it in my upper lip, so I have scars on both (not very visible, see the photos on my website and I doubt you'll spot them). But I've managed to play the flute, clarinet and saxophone despite that. The higher pressures needed for reeds require me to bung up an internal leak in my palate with a postage-stamp-sized piece of denture fixative sheet, something I only realized existed a few years ago.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 08:48 PM

Great website! Thanks for posting than, Jack. Lots of information there that applies to many instruments besides the piano. Clicky #1.

And your home page is most interesting as well. Clicky #2.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Grab
Date: 30 Nov 06 - 06:59 AM

Don, you're right - it's surprising how you get better as you practise. :-) Technique is a large part. But also there is a large element of "sport-specific muscles".

You were saying about holding barre chords. If I hold my hands next to each other, the muscle at the base of my left thumb is noticeably over-developed. I wasn't born like that, and I wasn't naturally gifted - it's simply the result of *lots* of playing of barre chords. The more you do, the stronger you get. Initially holding it at all was an achievement, then holding it for a couple of seconds (long enough for the F chord in "House of the rising sun") was an achievement. Then try "Hotel California" and you find you've got a barre chord down for a bit over half the song, and that's *hard*. Technique will help for that, but ultimately there really is no alternative to building up strength/endurance. And *everyone* can build up that strength/endurance over time, simply by keeping on doing it.

It's not like running a marathon - it's more like a 10K run. Some people can do it better than others. But unless you have some genuine disability, absolutely anyone can do it if they put in the training time. I'd be prepared to bet that if you checked the hands of those frail-looking Chinese women classical guitarists, they'd have muscles in their hands that you really wouldn't expect.

Don't neglect technique though. Pure strength won't help you much if your hands are in a mechanically weak position - you might get away with it for a bit, but you won't be able to keep it up for long. But technique without the strength to implement it simply isn't going to work, and there's no magic spell to get that strength apart from simply keeping on practising.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Scrump
Date: 30 Nov 06 - 08:54 AM

Not sure if anyone mentioned it, as I only had time to skim the posts so far, but the thickness of the guitar neck is an important factor. The narrower it is, the easier it is to use your thumb on the 6th string, and the easier it is to reach further apart with your fingers. I recently got a guitar that had a slightly thicker neck (from front to back) and it makes a bigger difference than I thought it would, to these aspects of ease of fingering.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: GUEST,Johnmc
Date: 30 Nov 06 - 09:37 AM

I had a teacher who was a great player and he once demonstrated how "loose' his hand was - there was no muscle tension inhibiting movement. This was the result
of years of playing. He also had great independence of finger movement.
   I would also say that breadth of hand may be as much a factor as finger length.
   Unless you are a soloist, who notices a missing bass note etc?
In fact, less is often more is my philosophy.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Scoville
Date: 30 Nov 06 - 10:23 AM

Sorry, Mudcat jammed up on me yesterday.

Why is it always the biggest guy in the band who plays the mandolin? I know at least three local bands with teeny women on bass and 6+ footers with hands like gorillas' playing mandolin.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Mark Ross
Date: 30 Nov 06 - 10:27 AM

Both Rev. Gary Davis and Merle Travis would make a C7 position chord(anywhere on the neck from the first fret up) with the thumb covering the 5th AND the 6th string. This freed up the pinky to cover the 1st string on the same fret as the thumb. It took me a long bit of work to be able to do it but enables me to play a closed position C7 anywhere on the neck.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 30 Nov 06 - 01:47 PM

Hey Scoville, have you ever seen Trout Fishing In America? Ezra, who plays a parlour sized Gurian guitar is about 6'7", while Keith, the double bass player is about 5'6". A weird visual efect.

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Chip2447
Date: 30 Nov 06 - 02:08 PM

I always used to think that if I had an exra finger per hand and an extra knuckle joint per finger I would be a supherb guitar players. Then I realized it would take more than that to overcome my general suckiness.


Chip

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Nov 06 - 02:20 PM

One of the Fernando Sor studies, No. 19 in the folio that Segovia put together or on page 132 of "Mel Bay presents the Complete Sor Studies," is a beautiful piece of music. A fairly complex flowing arpeggio pattern that moves up and down the fingerboard, with a distinct melody line. But—it's in Bb. Bar chords almost all the way. Extremely difficult; in fact, it's considered to be one of the most difficult pieces in the guitar repertoire. As many classic guitarists that I've heard, either in concert or on records, I've only heard it recorded twice:   by Segovia, and by Vincente Gomez. Only once have I heard it played live, and that was by one of my guitar teachers, Bud (Edward) Hern.

Bud was a brilliant guitarist, but he was a very quiet, introverted person. He suffered horribly from stage fright. He even got a bit nervous playing pieces in front of me (a pupil) during lessons. He finally managed to screw up his courage and play a few times before the Seattle Classic Guitar Society (and they practically worshipped him). Had he not had this stage fright monster on his back, he might very well have had a fine concert career. He was that good and then some.

I tried tackling the study in Bb, and I could only get maybe a dozen measures into it before my left hand gave out. But that was over fifty years ago and I've played a lot of bar chords since then. I think I'll pull it out and see if I can get, maybe, fourteen or fifteen measures into it.

Bud was very fast and light-fingered, but he had a left hand he could crush walnuts with.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Instrument vs. Anatomy
From: Adrianel
Date: 30 Nov 06 - 06:51 PM

Slightly peripheral to this, Anna Sophie Mutter wears low-cut gowns for her performances "because the violin sounds so much better against bare skin". As a friend said, what a pity she did not take up the cello.