My hand just goes crazy!

[duo8675309]

Whenever i play my left fingers tend to get into really weird positions and just raise up instead of staying low on the fret board. is there any way around this?

[seventhson]

check out guitarprinciples.com.

[jasper383]

+1 to the guitarprinciples.com

Are you new to the instrument? If so, you are asking your hand to do things it has never had to do before. It needs to be trained.

Take some time every day to practice slowly, very very slowly, watching your hands and making sure they aren't flying around. If they start to move around a lot, you need to go slower. Your muscles will learn over time to make these movements without all that extra muscle noise.

Slow down.

[TheSuzie]

seventhson,

Your suggestion of that site a couple of days ago has already had a positive impact on my playing. I can see that it will take time for me to unlearn some bad habits and override certain automatic reactions but I now believe it is possible.

I have been on the verge of giving up playing because it seemed to me that I had hit a wall and was not able to improve much. Adding to my musical knowledge was not helping because I could not progress in my basic technique. I had come to the conclusion that I was just too uncoordinated to play music. Now I don't know what my potential is but I know that I can improve and that there are methods available to help me progress.

Thanks,
S

[seventhson]

thesuzie, that's great! i'm glad it helped!

the funny thing is you see people in various sports endeavors do the recommended thing: break the movement down and practice it slowly until it becomes 2nd nature to the muscles. but musicians always want to tackle the problem at tempo. i'm guessing because of the auditory feedback vs. none in sports.

another illuminating exercise (imo) is trying to wiggle your pinky toe independent of your other toes. initially you strain a lot of large muscle groups in an attempt to move that small appendage because your brain is not used to controlling those muscles. But once you awaken whatever synaptic paths in your brain control your pinky toe, you can do it effortlessly.

finally, the acid test of whether you've really learned a musical passage correctly is whether you're tightening your sphincter muscles...lol.

[cliffburtonfan]

some chromatic scale exercises might help, they improve your hands dexterity and finger independance

[morf]

NEVER quit playing. You can ALWAYS fix what you think is wrong, always. Keep playing, force yourself to play it the way you want, go slower if you need to, and little by little you'll get better