Further study of Wes's technique - Four on Six

[PMB]

Seems to be what I hearing here. Agreed re the amendment.

I think with Wes what you get is a lot to rhythm being played by the left hand.

What are your thoughts re the later chords? Wes appears to be fingering these as full shapes, but to me it sounded like they weren't being played fully. So I extended the logic to the other chords shapes that we can't see so well in the footage.

EDIT: yeah - I think he is playing bigger shapes there too. There's a wide shot. It might be possible to deduce what he's fretting a bit better. Tomorrow. Time for bed for me.

Bars 21-23? He's doing the Freddie Green thing where the lower notes are lightly fretted to mute the strings - LH thumb for the m9 chords and 2nd finger for the b5b9 chords. They're all 4-note chords with the exception of the 3-note Ebm9 and Ab7#11 at the end. Check the point of contact his RH thumb makes from the 4th string rather than the 6th.

[starjasmine]

YES! But then at 0:35 sounds more like G#-7 to A-7

Can't miss that one :-) Clearly, his approach to this tune evolved over time...

[dasein]

Something about Wes's left hand and wrist is that he is mostly pronated, also seen in Peter Bernstein's technique- another three finger player. Jimmy Raney, by comparison, has a more neutral left wrist. Compare to 4 finger players like me whose hands and wrists are often supinated- necessary when the little finger is reaching across to the bass strings.

Three finger pronated playing is the most intuitive way to play with a relaxed left hand. Your thumb ends up in its natural position, to the side of the fingers, instead of forcing it behind the middle finger at all times like so many guitarists are taught. It minimizes flex in the DIP joint -- too much causes hand issues. There are some people with really big hands and pinkies that are almost the same length as their ring finger who can comfortable play with four fingers in that pronated position, but that's a small minority of players.

You're correct that most people have to supinate the wrist to play with four fingers with a relaxed left hand. If anything, most people don't supinate enough. Your index finger ends up fretting the string more on the side than the tip. Between that and the pronated position, that covers the overwhelming majority of stuff you'd need to play. More players discover the pronated version; the supinated version looks "wrong" to many people.

There are still some things where a neutral wrist and fingers parallel to the fret is best, particularly in passages where getting each string to ring out clearly is paramount. A great example is an open C chord. Impossible to play pronated, and supinating your hand too much will mute the high E string. And there are certainly great players who play with a neutral wrist all or most of the time. But it's absolutely not required, and I think most players would be better suited to not make it their default left hand technique. The fact that its taught that way is because of Classical Guitar Technique Hegemony, where classical guitar (with thicker necks, music that emphasizes polyphony, exploits lots of open strings, and actively encourages sympathetic resonance instead of muting) is assumed to be the universal correct way to play any kind of guitar, in any genre. How many beginner students, in one of their first lessons, struggled to get all 5 notes in an open C chord to ring out, and have their teacher say, "See? This is why you need to play on the tips of your finger all the time, or notes won't ring out." One of the first things they learn, and they don't have the experience to know that's the exception, not the rule.

A lot of people's hands got needlessly ruined, because a lot of guitar teachers arrogantly thought they could declare that players like Wes and Benson were doing things "wrong" from a technical standpoint.

[Christian Miller]

I’m trying to teach myself how to play guitar proper with a pronated wrist and three flat fingers, but it’s hard to unpick decades of bad habits.


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[Christian Miller]

One thing I would say about classical position is it works for everyone (provided you are careful about the left hand wrist.) I don’t think the three fingered pronated position works for those with smaller hands. But I’m happy to be corrected.

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[Christian Miller]

Fixed some errors and updated chart as per conversation on the thread...

[dasein]

One thing I would say about classical position is it works for everyone (provided you are careful about the left hand wrist.) I don’t think the three fingered pronated position works for those with smaller hands. But I’m happy to be corrected.

I think it's helpful to define terms here, because "classical position" might mean different things to different people.

When I say classical position, I mean:

- fingers mostly parallel to the frets
- thumb approximately behind the middle finger

This is what I see prescribed to guitar players as "correct" left hand technique, regardless of what kind of music they play.

I don't disagree that larger tend to a little better with pronation (especially VERY large hands, your Vais and your Holdsworths). Realistically, there is only one type of hand posture that works for everyone: keeping it as close as possible to totally relaxed. When you let your hand hang from your arm by your side, with no tension at all, and bring it up to the neck purely with elbow flexion. Obviously, you have to use some tension to move and play; it's about as deviating from that as little as possible.

I think for most people, that kind of pronated position, predominantly using three fingers with your thumb hanging over the top of the neck, lends itself very well to playing vocabulary from jazz guitarists coming out of the Charlie Christian tradition (which would include Wes, Benson, Green, Pass, as well as more players like Bernstein and Okazaki). For most people, they're going to have an easier time keeping their hand relaxed. But I'm sure there are people where that's not the case. And for those people, they should not force themselves to use a pronated position. They should use whatever hand position their particular anatomy calls for.

That kind of pronated playing lends itself very well to certain kinds of left hand fingerings, and not so well to other ones. It's pretty clear that players like Wes and Benson configured all their vocabulary to work well with that kind of hand position. Watching videos of them play, it's truly remarkable how little strain they use, how easy they make it all look. Yes, a lot of that is practice and talent. But the way they combine content with form means they're never fighting the instrument.

If you want to play vocabulary that doesn't lend itself to pronation, you either add strain or you change your hand position for that idea. Right tool for the right job. Classical posture makes sense for classical guitar, although even there I'm not convinced it's optimal for all passages. If someone can maintain a relaxed hand while maintaining that position for everything, then go for it, but in my experience that's almost never the case. Just by itself, keeping the thumb behind the middle finger 100% of the time will add tension.

[Christian Miller]

I think it's helpful to define terms here, because "classical position" might mean different things to different people.

When I say classical position, I mean:

- fingers mostly parallel to the frets
- thumb approximately behind the middle finger

This is what I see prescribed to guitar players as "correct" left hand technique, regardless of what kind of music they play.

I don't disagree that larger tend to a little better with pronation (especially VERY large hands, your Vais and your Holdsworths). Realistically, there is only one type of hand posture that works for everyone: keeping it as close as possible to totally relaxed. When you let your hand hang from your arm by your side, with no tension at all, and bring it up to the neck purely with elbow flexion. Obviously, you have to use some tension to move and play; it's about as deviating from that as little as possible.

I think for most people, that kind of pronated position, predominantly using three fingers with your thumb hanging over the top of the neck, lends itself very well to playing vocabulary from jazz guitarists coming out of the Charlie Christian tradition (which would include Wes, Benson, Green, Pass, as well as more players like Bernstein and Okazaki). For most people, they're going to have an easier time keeping their hand relaxed. But I'm sure there are people where that's not the case. And for those people, they should not force themselves to use a pronated position. They should use whatever hand position their particular anatomy calls for.

That kind of pronated playing lends itself very well to certain kinds of left hand fingerings, and not so well to other ones. It's pretty clear that players like Wes and Benson configured all their vocabulary to work well with that kind of hand position. Watching videos of them play, it's truly remarkable how little strain they use, how easy they make it all look. Yes, a lot of that is practice and talent. But the way they combine content with form means they're never fighting the instrument.

If you want to play vocabulary that doesn't lend itself to pronation, you either add strain or you change your hand position for that idea. Right tool for the right job. Classical posture makes sense for classical guitar, although even there I'm not convinced it's optimal for all passages. If someone can maintain a relaxed hand while maintaining that position for everything, then go for it, but in my experience that's almost never the case. Just by itself, keeping the thumb behind the middle finger 100% of the time will add tension.

That’s also what I mean.

I agree re vocabulary and so on. I think people get very snotty at the idea of vocabulary and likes and so on, and feel they should have a technique that can execute anything they imagine in their heads. But this is at odds with my experience of how playing the music actually works.

OTOH there's a relationship between what you hear and the physical aspect of playing the instrument in improvisation. The challenge of course in learning to play other people's music is being able to make it natural. That's different at least in the short term.

(This also touches on right hand technique as well.)

Some classical guitarists pronate a bit of course

Agreed that thumb over is relaxed, but classical can be relaxed too. Seated posture is a determining factor for thumb position. You don’t want thumb in the middle unless you are using a classical seated posture with a raised instrument on the left knee - that will collapse the carpal tunnel. The ONLY healthy way to play a guitar in folk position is with the thumb higher than the centreline. I teach a thumb position a little higher my child students FWIW because I don't feel the need for classical position unless they are going to do classical exams. Thumb over is always healthy because it keeps wrist straight and carpal tunnel open.

A very good example of how not to set up your left hand technique is Hristo Vitchev. Amazing player, but that guy is going to get himself in trouble, poor left hand technique on a biomechanical level. A Dynarette knee rest would solve his problem.

So yeah, I think we can use both. Classical works great for polyphonic music and anything with complex chords. Pronated thumb over is great for melodies, left hand muting and rhythm guitar. And vibrato and bending and 'juice.' I've started playing a lot of Manouche jazz guitar again on a Maccaferri and playing with mostly three fingers makes a huge difference for making the guitar sing. Which is funny because Mario Maccaferri himself was a classical player.

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[voxo]

great stuff Christian could analyse this guy...

[starjasmine]

The terminology being used seems a bit at odds with medical definitions of pronation and supination. If you are pronating, your palm would be over the top of the neck at the 6th string. That is, piano players pronate.


All guitar players supinate, unless they're doing some sort of Paul Gilbert/Michael Angelo Batio showmanship.

So what exactly is "three finger pronation"? Some amount of supination that is less than 90 degrees?

What would you call the position that Pasquale Grasso uses in the recent FG Guitar Night vids? His LH fingers cross the neck diagonally. That seems to indicate some amount of pronation, but he def uses all four fingers.



Most of the time, Bruce Forman seems to use something closer to classical position, although he does hang his thumb over the top of the neck often. Notice how his fingers are almost parallel to the frets.

... people... feel they should have a technique that can execute anything they imagine in their heads. But this is at odds with my experience of how playing the music actually works.

Hmm... who is going to tell Bruce, Pasquale and Frank about that?

[Christian Miller]

The terminology being used seems a bit at odds with medical definitions of pronation and supination. If you are pronating, your palm would be over the top of the neck at the 6th string. That is, piano players pronate.


All guitar players supinate, unless they're doing some sort of Paul Gilbert/Michael Angelo Batio showmanship.

So what exactly is "three finger pronation"? Some amount of supination that is less than 90 degrees?

Look at the Wes Montgomery video in the OP. There is a very clear shot of his left hand technique near the beginning of the video. You can see his thumb is well over - something also encouraged by the angle of the guitar which is slightly away from the body.

If you can think of a better term for this hand position I am happy to adopt it. I'll call this position "pronated" in scare quotes for now so I don't flunk medical school.

What would you call the position that Pasquale Grasso uses in the recent FG Guitar Night vids? His LH fingers cross the neck diagonally. That seems to indicate some amount of pronation, but he def uses all four fingers.



Most of the time, Bruce Forman seems to use something closer to classical position, although he does hang his thumb over the top of the neck often. Notice how his fingers are almost parallel to the frets.

Yeah there's a spectrum of hand positions in between say, Wes Montgomery and Adam Rogers, say.

FWIW PG has a degree in classical guitar. He is playing Villa Lobos with a similar hand position:

Hmm... who is going to tell Bruce, Pasquale and Frank about that?

Tell them what?

What I wrote was intended to reference to people's misgivings about adopting Benson or Django (or Wes presumably) style technique as in some way limiting compared to 4 fingers/alt picking.

I was saying that I don't understand to be improvisation as being the musical brain in a jar sending orders to the instrument which must be able to execute instantly whatever the mind dreams up in the moment (apologies, this is probably an extreme characterisation). I see it all as something more holistic than that, and I haven't found this Cartesian divide in jazz improvisation. A repertoire of vocabulary is an important part of learning to play jazz is physical as well as aural, and nowhere is this more blindingly the case than with Wes. I certainly don't hear any of those players as a counterexample to this, least of all Pasquale.

We aren't aren't brains in jars, and I believe it is right and good that the physical aspects of playing impact our music making and the instrument takes a role in our creativity, rather than aspects that are to be dominated and surpressed by sufficiently advanced technique. My reason for tuning this is by observing and listening to what my favourite players seem to actually do.

Secondly, it is an objective truth that all techniques are limited to some extent. PG's Chuck Wayne rooted right hand cannot deliver the right hand dynamic range of someone schooled in the rest stroke tradition like Antoine Boyer, but Boyer's right hand is conversely less flexible in what it can execute. There is no solution single solution to picking that gives you everything, pace Chuck Wayne. All solutions necessitate compromise. I feel the same about fret hand technique. A classical style player would not have come up with Wes's octave technique, for an obvious example. But, obviously, Wes is not going to be playing Bach in that hand position.

In terms of learning other peoples music, especially non guitar music, that's a different problem, although creative solutions are always an element of playing such music.

Of course as a guitar teacher in the real world you are going to teach one thing clearly to beginners. But again even in classical technique there are decisions. Do you tach 'one finger a fret' or the polyphonic approach of 4th finger for D and G on the top two strings? Do you teach apoyando or tirando first? What is the best left hand position - Spanish or German? Or somewhere between? And so on. Classical technique is obviously not a single thing, but a body of related practices and discussions. In fact, I notice that classical players are much more likely to discuss with interest the quirks and idiosyncrasies of players.

Jazz musicians seem to do this less for some reason.

Most recreate the notes with their usual technique. For example, here is Nathan Borton from ages ago using a very 'proper' left hand:

I'd be interested to hear it without the original track. How close can one get without physically imitating what Wes did?

[djg]

Most recreate the notes with their usual technique. For example, here is Nathan Borton from ages ago using a very 'proper' left hand:

I'd be interested to hear it without the original track. How close can one get without physically imitating what Wes did?

i see stuff like this all the time on youtube. it creates a cognitive dissonance that somewhat creeps me out. i dont think you have to physically imitate wes, but you gotta grab some of the spirit in which these notes are played, imo.

[starjasmine]

Tell them what?

What I wrote was intended to reference to people's misgivings about adopting Benson or Django (or Wes presumably) style technique as in some way limiting compared to 4 fingers/alt picking.

Oh, I was just yanking your chain a bit, Christian ;-) To be a bit more fair and precise, the thought that "if I learn to play XXXX way, I can play ANYTHING" is the misperception that is so common. Reality is closer to what you said in one of your previous posts WRT the right tool for the job: advanced players learn a variety of approaches that they can pull out on demand to execute an idea.

I would beg to differ about technical problems limiting ideas, though. That may be a very practical approach that numerous players adopt, but IMO players like Bruce and Pasquale constantly push their own boundaries. I think especially in the case of Bruce, his musical ideation is driving his technique, not the other way around. He's not afraid to make a mistake or flub a note - if that happens, he just laughs it off and gets it right the next time. His willingness to take risks is one of the things that makes him interesting to listen to and keeps his formidable chops ever-expanding.

I'm not saying that the physical aspects of playing an instrument are to be ignored - I agree with you that they can be an important part of creativity and expression. We've all had the experience of playing a guitar that just feels better to play than another one, and the "feels right and sounds right" chemistry between the player and the instrument is important. As are the practical realizations in the moment about what you may or may not be able to pull off in a given situation because of feeling tired, or hands being cold, or not being able to hear yourself onstage - any number of things. But to say that everyone shapes their ideas around their physical limitations seems to deny the purposeful development that musicians pursue as a means of honing craft and expanding musical ideation.

[paulkogut]

Thanks for your latest dive into Wes' technique! I think if one is serious about playing jazz on the guitar, taking a long look at Wes' left hand is a must. I'm not saying everyone should do it like he did, but everyone should understand the what, how and why of what he's doing to make an informed choice about their own technique

Where we differ is I'm not hearing near as many upstrokes as you are. I was too young to have heard Wes in action, but I've had long talks with John Abercrombie and Carmen Caramanica, each who saw him up close, and their consensus was essentially all downstrokes, aided by slurs and ghosted hammer-ons Sure there are triplet flourishes on octaves and block chords that are obvious upstrokes , but the meat of the single line vocabulary was downstrokes.

As I've said before, the thumb is somewhat secondary to dealing with Wes' technique. Once you figure out what the left hand is doing, the right hand naturally comes along for the ride. However anyone chooses to pick, I'm glad to see folks taking a look at Wes' fingerboard organization . Best wishes for everyone's music!

PK

[Christian Miller]

Thanks for your latest dive into Wes' technique! I think if one is serious about playing jazz on the guitar, taking a long look at Wes' left hand is a must. I'm not saying everyone should do it like he did, but everyone should understand the what, how and why of what he's doing to make an informed choice about their own technique

Where we differ is I'm not hearing near as many upstrokes as you are. I was too young to have heard Wes in action, but I've had long talks with John Abercrombie and Carmen Caramanica, each who saw him up close, and their consensus was essentially all downstrokes, aided by slurs and ghosted hammer-ons Sure there are triplet flourishes on octaves and block chords that are obvious upstrokes , but the meat of the single line vocabulary was downstrokes.

As I've said before, the thumb is somewhat secondary to dealing with Wes' technique. Once you figure out what the left hand is doing, the right hand naturally comes along for the ride. However anyone chooses to pick, I'm glad to see folks taking a look at Wes' fingerboard organization . Best wishes for everyone's music!

PK

Hi Paul, thanks!

Well this isn't a hill I'm going to die on. Some of the upstrokes are more conjecture`than others.

I've been spacing out listening sessions a little so I can be as objective as possible, but I would say that when I listened to it I noticed there is a marked difference between the rather legato articulation of the more scalar material at 43 and the rather more articulated playing before which is more arpeggio based.

Playing wise this can all be executed with slurs and works great, but I thought I heard more definition. I'll listen again tomorrow. It's possible I will change my mind again.

I have been practicing my thumb upstrokes for a little while. It's becoming more intuitive, and I would even describe as pretty comfortable for some figures. Where I struggle with it a bit is on that ascending C-11 arpeggio going into bar 37. Wes plays also very similar figures in the Nica's Dream chorus I transcribed recently. I originally thought these were slurred, and that's the way I interpreted them in my transcription, but the closer I listened to them the more articulated they seemed.

If I can't come down on either side, I might do a comparison in the video of the two different ways, A/B'd against the original audio and let the audience see what they think. In fact, that's an ideal solution...

[Christian Miller]

Oh, I was just yanking your chain a bit, Christian ;-) To be a bit more fair and precise, the thought that "if I learn to play XXXX way, I can play ANYTHING" is the misperception that is so common. Reality is closer to what you said in one of your previous posts WRT the right tool for the job: advanced players learn a variety of approaches that they can pull out on demand to execute an idea.

I never know who people are talking about when they say 'advanced players.' Is that Great players? Pro level players? Players beyond the intermediate level?

Or does it imply some level of formal complexity to what they do beyond that (e.g. Ben Monder compared to Grant Green)?

I would beg to differ about technical problems limiting ideas, though. That may be a very practical approach that numerous players adopt, but IMO players like Bruce and Pasquale constantly push their own boundaries. I think especially in the case of Bruce, his musical ideation is driving his technique, not the other way around. He's not afraid to make a mistake or flub a note - if that happens, he just laughs it off and gets it right the next time. His willingness to take risks is one of the things that makes him interesting to listen to and keeps his formidable chops ever-expanding.

I'm not saying that the physical aspects of playing an instrument are to be ignored - I agree with you that they can be an important part of creativity and expression. We've all had the experience of playing a guitar that just feels better to play than another one, and the "feels right and sounds right" chemistry between the player and the instrument is important. As are the practical realizations in the moment about what you may or may not be able to pull off in a given situation because of feeling tired, or hands being cold, or not being able to hear yourself onstage - any number of things. But to say that everyone shapes their ideas around their physical limitations seems to deny the purposeful development that musicians pursue as a means of honing craft and expanding musical ideation.

OK, if I could park all of this off to the side, because the nature of improvisation etc is sort of a separate (if related) topic.

There's a sort of a dismissive attitude a lot of people have about techniques like Django, Benson and Wes's, where is assumed that these techniques are limited in the material that can be executed and therefore incompatible with 'true improvisation'. You can't 'play any note at any time', in theory. I feel like I hear this sort of thing a lot.

Firstly, these techniques are much more flexible than people think. The kind of speeds that you would need to worry about this stuff, you would be using some type ingrained muscle memory anyway.

Secondly, this sort of thinking seems to me rooted in a misconception about the way improvisation (and audiation) in jazz works, possibly deriving from chord scale theory. Improvisation doesn't work on a note by note level, because music doesn't. We need to be hearing on the phrase level, because phrases go somewhere. That of course being one of the key the differences between beginner-intermediate players and accomplished jazz players. The latter play phrases, not just notes. That relates to how we practice material for improvising of course.

TBH for me it's dead simple. I think Wes is the baddest, and I want to learn more about how he played.

[Aiq]

great stuff Christian could analyse this guy...

If you really want to become ill watch this guy’s Martino AI.

On second thought don’t.

[paulkogut]

Hi Paul, thanks!



Where I struggle with it a bit is on that ascending C-11 arpeggio going into bar 37. Wes plays also very similar figures in the Nica's Dream chorus I transcribed recently. I originally thought these were slurred, and that's the way I interpreted them in my transcription, but the closer I listened to them the more articulated they seemed.

If I can't come down on either side, I might do a comparison in the video of the two different ways, A/B'd against the original audio and let the audience see what they think. In fact, that's an ideal solution...

Does the Nica's Dream video show his left hand during the phrase in question? I think he's playing that arpeggio with the Bb note on the E string 6th fret, so he can sweep an Eb triad across the top three strings. And if he plays a descending figure using those same pitches, he fingers it like you have it, with two notes on the B string...

I heard a rumor once that he had his amp souped up by an Indianapolis tv repairman so he could get the notes to speak with just some left hand pressure without needing to pick at all. John Abercrombie advised using a clean boost pedal for similar effect

Looking forward to checking out your video!

PK

[Christian Miller]

Does the Nica's Dream video show his left hand during the phrase in question? I think he's playing that arpeggio with the Bb note on the E string 6th fret, so he can sweep an Eb triad across the top three strings. And if he plays a descending figure using those same pitches, he fingers it like you have it, with two notes on the B string...

I believe so. I remember being surprised that he used this fingering, because that's how I would have done it myself! This is the reason why I have used this fingering here.

I heard a rumor once that he had his amp souped up by an Indianapolis tv repairman so he could get the notes to speak with just some left hand pressure without needing to pick at all. John Abercrombie advised using a clean boost pedal for similar effect

Looking forward to checking out your video!

PK

Food for thought... thanks, Paul.

[starjasmine]

I never know who people are talking about when they say 'advanced players.' Is that Great players? Pro level players? Players beyond the intermediate level?

Or does it imply some level of formal complexity to what they do beyond that (e.g. Ben Monder compared to Grant Green)?

I'm not trying to slice it that finely. I'm just saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Those players who have a lot of tools in their toolbox typically have them because they aren't trying to get by on doing the minimum. They've become "advanced" (whatever that means) because discovering, exploring, learning and advancing is a big part of who they are as musicians.

OK, if I could park all of this off to the side, because the nature of improvisation etc is sort of a separate (if related) topic.

There's a sort of a dismissive attitude a lot of people have about techniques like Django, Benson and Wes's, where is assumed that these techniques are limited in the material that can be executed and therefore incompatible with 'true improvisation'. You can't 'play any note at any time', in theory. I feel like I hear this sort of thing a lot.

While I don't doubt you've encountered that attitude, I hope you haven't heard it from me. I don't recall ever dissing the technique of any of these masters!

TBH for me it's dead simple. I think Wes is the baddest, and I want to learn more about how he played.

Fo' sho.

[Christian Miller]

I'm not trying to slice it that finely. I'm just saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Those players who have a lot of tools in their toolbox typically have them because they aren't trying to get by on doing the minimum. They've become "advanced" (whatever that means) because discovering, exploring, learning and advancing is a big part of who they are as musicians.

On the other hand one can become very advanced by going deep rather than going wide?

While I don't doubt you've encountered that attitude, I hope you haven't heard it from me. I don't recall ever dissing the technique of any of these masters!



Fo' sho.

Yeah I’m not really disagreeing with you, but trying to clarify the point that you were questioning.


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[charlieparker]

Three finger pronated playing is the most intuitive way to play with a relaxed left hand. Your thumb ends up in its natural position, to the side of the fingers, instead of forcing it behind the middle finger at all times like so many guitarists are taught. It minimizes flex in the DIP joint -- too much causes hand issues. There are some people with really big hands and pinkies that are almost the same length as their ring finger who can comfortable play with four fingers in that pronated position, but that's a small minority of players.

You're correct that most people have to supinate the wrist to play with four fingers with a relaxed left hand. If anything, most people don't supinate enough. Your index finger ends up fretting the string more on the side than the tip. Between that and the pronated position, that covers the overwhelming majority of stuff you'd need to play. More players discover the pronated version; the supinated version looks "wrong" to many people.

There are still some things where a neutral wrist and fingers parallel to the fret is best, particularly in passages where getting each string to ring out clearly is paramount. A great example is an open C chord. Impossible to play pronated, and supinating your hand too much will mute the high E string. And there are certainly great players who play with a neutral wrist all or most of the time. But it's absolutely not required, and I think most players would be better suited to not make it their default left hand technique. The fact that its taught that way is because of Classical Guitar Technique Hegemony, where classical guitar (with thicker necks, music that emphasizes polyphony, exploits lots of open strings, and actively encourages sympathetic resonance instead of muting) is assumed to be the universal correct way to play any kind of guitar, in any genre. How many beginner students, in one of their first lessons, struggled to get all 5 notes in an open C chord to ring out, and have their teacher say, "See? This is why you need to play on the tips of your finger all the time, or notes won't ring out." One of the first things they learn, and they don't have the experience to know that's the exception, not the rule.

A lot of people's hands got needlessly ruined, because a lot of guitar teachers arrogantly thought they could declare that players like Wes and Benson were doing things "wrong" from a technical standpoint.

I don't know. I have spent a fair amount of time trying to adopt the 3 finger technique and I invariably get more pain doing it. Personally, I think you need larger hands to do it effectively, although Bernstein seems to manage. With 3 finger technique one really needs to employ much more sliding and shifting. So, it's more than just hand positions to do it effectively.

[dasein]

Hmm... who is going to tell Bruce, Pasquale and Frank about that?

I would never tell a musician of their caliber that they're doing it wrong. If it works, it's right. But that's the point I was trying to make earlier with Wes/Benson: the absurdity that their left hand technique is somehow "wrong" just because it does not fit the classical guitar ideal.

Nobody would bat an eye if someone said that Pasquale would probably not be able to play guitar like, say, Tony Rice (200 BPM+ eight note lines with perfect alternate picking regardless of string configuration, on a steel string dreadnought). Pasquale would be the first to admit it. His technique is not designed to do something like that; he'd have to become proficient at a whole slew of new motions.

And likewise, someone like Wes or Benson is going to struggle to use the same fingerings as someone like Allan Holdsworth, even accounting for the difference in hand size. That kind of pronated position can struggle with certain kinds of stretches (incidentally, Holdsworth did use that kind of hand position for certain lines, but he had other ones for various kinds of lines).

This is not to suggest that there is some kind of deficiency in Wes/Benson's playing because they couldn't do those things. First, the very nature of the guitar layout means that there's often many ways to play a particular line, so if one way doesn't work for you, there's a good chance another one will. But just as importantly, we need to get away from the idea that being a virtuoso means that you can play anything in any possible way there is. We are all working with certain limitations. In my experience, virtuosos are very good at picking when to actively struggle against certain limitations and when to work within them.

I don't know. I have spent a fair amount of time trying to adopt the 3 finger technique and I invariably get more pain doing it. Personally, I think you need larger hands to do it effectively, although Bernstein seems to manage. With 3 finger technique one really needs to employ much more sliding and shifting. So, it's more than just hand positions to do it effectively.

Sliding and shifting is non-negotiable for that kind of playing. It also lends itself to certain kinds of vocabulary and not very well to others. Three note per string ideas are out. I should also mention that I have studied videos of Benson very closely in slow motion, and he definitely uses his pinky some of the time. He plays a "one-note-per-string" minor triad with fingers 4 2 1 just like most people would. But most of his playing is first 3 fingers + shifts/slides. The speed at which he could play some of those lines still boggles my mind.

You really should not trying to stretch your fingers apart (finger abduction). A good way to practice this is to relax your left hand and put a strip of tape along the backs of your fingers. Now you cannot stretch them at all -- if a note is immediately out of reach, you must shift or slide to it.

All that said: if this position is not working for your particular anatomy, then do not force it, full stop. This supersedes everything else. How it feels (relaxed, no strain) is more important than how it looks.

[charlieparker]

I would never tell a musician of their caliber that they're doing it wrong. If it works, it's right. But that's the point I was trying to make earlier with Wes/Benson: the absurdity that their left hand technique is somehow "wrong" just because it does not fit the classical guitar ideal.

Nobody would bat an eye if someone said that Pasquale would probably not be able to play guitar like, say, Tony Rice (200 BPM+ eight note lines with perfect alternate picking regardless of string configuration, on a steel string dreadnought). Pasquale would be the first to admit it. His technique is not designed to do something like that; he'd have to become proficient at a whole slew of new motions.

And likewise, someone like Wes or Benson is going to struggle to use the same fingerings as someone like Allan Holdsworth, even accounting for the difference in hand size. That kind of pronated position can struggle with certain kinds of stretches (incidentally, Holdsworth did use that kind of hand position for certain lines, but he had other ones for various kinds of lines).

This is not to suggest that there is some kind of deficiency in Wes/Benson's playing because they couldn't do those things. First, the very nature of the guitar layout means that there's often many ways to play a particular line, so if one way doesn't work for you, there's a good chance another one will. But just as importantly, we need to get away from the idea that being a virtuoso means that you can play anything in any possible way there is. We are all working with certain limitations. In my experience, virtuosos are very good at picking when to actively struggle against certain limitations and when to work within them.



Sliding and shifting is non-negotiable for that kind of playing. It also lends itself to certain kinds of vocabulary and not very well to others. Three note per string ideas are out. I should also mention that I have studied videos of Benson very closely in slow motion, and he definitely uses his pinky some of the time. He plays a "one-note-per-string" minor triad with fingers 4 2 1 just like most people would. But most of his playing is first 3 fingers + shifts/slides. The speed at which he could play some of those lines still boggles my mind.

You really should not trying to stretch your fingers apart (finger abduction). A good way to practice this is to relax your left hand and put a strip of tape along the backs of your fingers. Now you cannot stretch them at all -- if a note is immediately out of reach, you must shift or slide to it.

All that said: if this position is not working for your particular anatomy, then do not force it, full stop. This supersedes everything else. How it feels (relaxed, no strain) is more important than how it looks.

Yeah. I love the sound. I am planning to study Bernstein's approach as I don't have mitts like Wes. He is also a guy who seems to get a lot of mileage without crazy technique.

[pamosmusic]

Yeah. I love the sound. I am planning to study Bernstein's approach as I don't have mitts like Wes. He is also a guy who seems to get a lot of mileage without crazy technique.

Or doesn’t generally hit you with it.

His crazy technique seems to come in the double stop, chord stuff.