I have taught so many students of so many different skill levels over the years and there’s one big difference I see in most intermediate players when they’ve been self-taught. In fact, this one technique that I see is the difference between what makes a good guitar player and what makes a bad guitar player. This one big difference I see is thumb positioning.
Your Thumb. The 5th Finger For Guitar.
Think about what you focus on when you’re learning chords or a single-note melody. You’re probably frantically checking your finger positioning by making sure that you’re on the right frets and the right strings. However, what 90% of self-taught players don’t do is check their thumb positioning. You’re probably asking, “but Tony, the thumb isn’t a finger on the fretboard so why do I have to worry about it?” I think that’s a great question and I’m about to tell you the answer but first, I want to double check that you’re going to be able to get these techniques down in your practice routine. If you haven’t checked out my free practice guide that will give you the tips all the pros use to lock these techniques and make them muscle memory, you should go check that out right here.
Ok, so now that you can practice these techniques efficiently, let’s jump right in to what makes a good guitar player vs a bad guitar player!
Two Main Thumb Positions
There are two positions our thumb should be in when we’re playing guitar: over the neck and behind the neck. As always there will be exceptions to the rules, but for now I want you to focus on these two positions. Over the neck refers to our thumb hanging over the neck and behind the neck means that our thumb will be supporting our fingers by pressing down behind the neck. Seems simple right? Of course it seems simple because everything on the guitar is pretty simple from a theoretical standpoint. However, putting it into practice will be more difficult! Let’s learn when we should be using each thumb position.
Thumb Position 1: Over the Neck
We primarily want to put our thumb over the neck when we are playing open chords. Open chords refer to our basic chords that use open strings such as: G, D, Em, C, Am, etc. When we play these chords, it’s a no brainer to put our thumb over the neck. “Why would we do this?” you might be asking, I’ll break it down for you:
- Bending Your Knuckles
- When we put the thumb over the neck, we can bend all of our knuckles more
- We NEVER want to concave our knuckles when playing open chords
- Fingertips
- As a result of bending all of our knuckles, we ensure we fret each string with our fingertips and not the pad of our finger
- This helps us avoid the unnecessary muting of strings and makes our chords cleaner
- As a result of bending all of our knuckles, we ensure we fret each string with our fingertips and not the pad of our finger
- Palm Positioning
- With better thumb positioning, your palm will automatically be in a better position aligning with the bottom of the neck
- Wrist
- Your wrist will be straighter instead of bending at awkward angles and causing discomfort
Like I mentioned before, all of this is easy in theory but when you pick up your guitar next, it will most likely be difficult to actually put this into practice. If your muscle memory is telling you that this isn’t right, you’re going to have to be very conscious of making sure you focus on your thumb positioning each time you fret one of these chords. I definitely recommend you use my personal technique to learn how to build good muscle memory when fretting chords. I promise you with hard work and dedication, your chords will start getting easier, sound cleaner and be more consistent.
Now let’s check out our second thumb position: Behind the neck.
Thumb Position 2: Behind the Neck
When we are playing single-note melodies, scales, solos, and barre chords, putting your thumb behind the neck is absolutely key. I’ve seen so many guitar students and players who don’t use this method and I see it drastically destroy their potential. To put this into practice, I want you to fret your pointer finger on 5th fret and put your thumb over the neck. Now try to stretch your pinky over as many frets as you can with your pointer finger still fretting 5th fret. How many did you get? 3? 4? With your thumb over the neck, it hinders your mobility and range of your fingers.
Now try the same thing while putting your thumb behind the neck and see how many frets you can reach. I’ll bet you can reach 5 at the minimum but most of you will be able to reach 6 or more frets. This will not only help our reach but will help us play cleaner and more consistently. This also helps us keep our hand in position so we don’t have to completely move our hand back and forth when trying to play notes that are only 3 frets apart.
Like I mentioned with thumb position 1, if you haven’t been doing this, your thumb will not be happy with you when you try to play this way. However, if you want to be a good guitar player, you will need to put in some hard work to adjust your muscle memory. It will take more time now, sure, but it will make you a better player for the rest of your life. Don’t believe me? That’s fine. You can play however you want. I’m only here for the players who want to improve their playing and avoid the slump of learning guitar.
