Left hand guitar technique is affecting my violin technique

February 18, 2012 at 05:25 AM · Hi!

I teach both violin and classical guitar, and I can't see how your problem is related to your guitarplaying. :)

Anyway, tension can be caused of many things.

One common cause is that your right and left hand are not independent enough from eachother. It can be seen in fast passages and in forte where your left thumb start to ache.

There are many ways to fix that.

One is to play forte in your fight hand and press the string so far down so you make a solid tone (not a harmonics), but without the string touching the fingerboard.

Practice it in halfnotes scales at a slow pace.

An other way is to practice with the scrool against a wall and no thumb alltogether.

You should be able to lift the violin with your arm and use the fingers to puch down the strings. The thumb really has little to do in this.

An other (less likely) problem is your setup. But since you have a teacher (s)he would have seen that.

February 18, 2012 at 06:12 AM · You already asked the same question in the other thread and recieved good answers. And one does not clamp on the guitar either.

February 18, 2012 at 10:15 AM · I see this a lot when I teach guitar players the violin. I call it "guitar thumb", and I relate it to playing guitar chords with excessive thumb pressure instead of using the arm,.It is also from playing the guitar with baseball grip- 1st finger's middle knuckle below the fretboard when playing the E string. Practice playing guitar chords with the thumb not touching the neck, switch from chord to chord. If your arm is really sore after a few chords, than you are using too much thumb pressure. When playing the E string , the 1 st fingers middle bone should be parallel with the fretboard.

Practice "dead note" playing. This is where you are placing the finger on the string, but not on the fingerboard, but more pressure than a harmonic. Play scales and pieces this way to correct excessive pressure. We also should be shifting with the dead note.

February 18, 2012 at 10:48 AM · In Guitar playing circles that's called the 'death grip'. . . . and for good reason!

February 18, 2012 at 08:18 PM · Hi David, my guitar playing is limited to strumming chords, but I would guess that left hand function is quite different from the violin. For the guitar, left hand function is closer to how we usually use the fingers: all the joints flex together, and each finger opposes the thumb as the finger presses. We're very accustomed to using the extrinsic muscles of the hand to grab things; the main flexor muscle of the fingers is the flexor digitorum which acts on the joints of the fingers and is located in the forearm. If you gently hold your forearm at it's thickest part and make a fist, you'll feel it bulge as you flex. Next try grabbing a chord on the guitar and you'll feel the same muscles flexing.

On the violin, you want various parts of the finger to do different things at different times. The main muscles you need to develop for dropping the fingers are the lumbricals, instrinsic muscles located between the metacarpals of the hand (the finger bones within the hand.) The lumbricals flex your fingers at their base joint without curling the finger. The flexors also flex the base joints, but they engage the finger joints and the wrist at the same time, causing rigidity in the fingers and wrist. The lumbricals also spread the fingers sideways, and while this action may be important for guitar fingering it can overtax the lumbricals on the violin. To get 'spread' between fingertips on the violin the lower finger curls (flexed by the flexors in the forearm) and/or the higher finger extends (extended by the lumbricals.) If you repeat the above 'holding the forearm' exercise you'll find that there's less rigidity when using the lumbricals.

Although it's possible to systematically decrease the thumbs involvement in finger placement motions with careful practice (see below,) disengaging the grasping of the thumb is easier when the flexors work less and the lumbricals are the main finger-throwing muscle. Although for certain passages opposition of the thumb is benefical, even necessary (e.g. awkward chords, 10ths) for general speed work it's useful to pivot the thumb with each finger strike, rather than oppose the motion of the finger, as when turning a deadbolt. Slowly place each finger and allow the thumb to almost twist the neck with the finger; without sliding, the thumb points slightly toward the scroll and rolls so you can see its pad. Some people also flex the wrist slightly to get a little extra leverage.

To change a habit I recommend an exercise of "stop and go." Play 4 notes (a measure, a line, whatever 'chunk' is appropriate); stop-notice-change; go for another 4 notes; stop-notice-change, etc. To build new habits you have to first interupt the old ones, notice what to do differently, then make the change -- over and over. As tempting as it is to fix everything at once, pay attention only to the habit you want to interrupt and change. This may mean letting some things slide for the duration of the exercise. To release the thumb it helps to simply slide it slowly and smoothly along the neck, back and forth, at each stop. Such exercises also help with note grouping, where you play a pattern of notes with one impulse; so if you're working on 4 notes at a time, you think the pattern and play the whole pattern at once (kind of like reading a word rather than sounding out each syllable; later reading a sentence, rather than sounding out each word.) In this way, you can reduce the thumbs involvement to each group of 4 notes, rather to every note. Once you start grouping notes according to the harmony and phrasing, rather than arbitrarily, you can build in natural release points to the passage.

Hope that helps,

JK