Best Way To Play Guitar? Backwards!

Playing got much simpler once I approached the guitar backwards!

The Human Hand and the Guitar: A Mismatch?

The guitar was made for our hands, but it really doesn't seem like it! The thing is, it's made perfectly for the human hand, but not for the way that we normally use our hand. If you approach it backwards, everything is right at your fingertips.

The Struggles of a Beginner Performer

It looks simple, doesn't it. You put your fingers in the right places and the sound should come right out. But I remember when I first started playing gigs doing everything right and still not getting a good sound, or only getting the song right half of the time, or everything falling apart when I played up to speed, or it was just too damn hard.

I'd get a song down, memorized cold, but when I got on stage and sang, I couldn’t look at my hands while singing and I would screw up a chord or a riff and then it would all start to tumble. Those little mistakes would distract me, and I'd forget my lines or fall apart in some other way. Never feeling like I owned the stage.

Lots of other players could look out over the crowd while singing and playing, or taking a solo and make it look easy. I wanted to have that same ease so, I decided to really look into what was going on.

The Transformation: A New Way to Play

Paying close attention to my playing, I saw that I was always approaching the guitar neck like it was a tennis racket, like I was going to grab it. That approach was really limiting what I could do with my hands. My fingertips, the most important part of my hands, were the LAST thing I was thinking of!

I needed to do it backwards from how I had always played: fingertips first and then the hand, the wrist, the arm, shoulder, etc. I started with the angle my fingers needed. That did it!

The Result: Freedom and Connection

I've also noticed that it's a lot easier to bridge the divide between how I play in the studio and on stage. I can get in the zone on stage now, which was not an option before. Now that I'm not so preoccupied with avoiding mistakes on the guitar my whole mind and body are available to me to really connect with my audience.

So, give it a try! Start at the source, your fingertips and orient everything else around what they need. Everything is easy to reach, sounds much better and is so much simpler.

Drop a comment below with what you found!

Cheers!

Bryan