Guitar How-To

Posts Tagged ‘How To Hold A Guitar’

Our furniture is designed for lounging in, not playing the guitar. The first step to playing the guitar is not twisting your body up when you pick up your instrument. There is an art and science to holding the guitar and it is just as important to learn these skills as it is to learn picking and strumming.

Giving in to gravity when the body’s center of gravity is too far back will cause a flattening of the lumbar spine (Norris 39). While this is acceptable for many activities -due to the fact that it will require less energy than sitting “up straight” in a poorly designed chair- it is not necessarily advantageous for playing the guitar. Playing the guitar for several hours a day in this position can put a dangerous strain on the back and can also limit one’s capacity to breathe. In the words of Richard Norris, M.D., director of the National Arts Medicine Center, “flattening of the lumbar curve results in flattening of the diaphragm, limiting its excursion and thereby decreasing the air flow” (39). A forward sloping chair will redirect the body’s line of gravity over the sit bones and will not only discourage flattening of the lumbar spine, but it will also allow for fuller breathing as well as decreasing the amount of work that the body must do in order to sit upright, thereby reducing the risk of pain and fatigue.
The Humane Guitarist on holding the acoustic guitar

Here is a video on playing the steel string acoustic when sitting down.

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