Posture For Playing guitar

When you're getting set up to play guitar for the first time, or if you've been playing for a while teaching yourself and you notice you're having some trouble, maybe with the mechanisms of the hand or comfort while playing, it's a good idea to turn your attention to posture.

Posture While Seated

There are two ways of placing the guitar on your lap when you’re playing while seated. You'll see that I'm playing this Telecaster with a strap here. Using a strap on an electric or an acoustic guitar allows you to place the upper body horn or upper bout of the guitar against your heart. I like to call it a heart-centered position. You're playing music from your heart, you want to move people with your music, play with expression, get them to feel something about your performance. Well, connect with your instrument at a heart level.

You'll notice with the guitar placed in front of my heart at the upper bout, it also sets my left hand up to feel really secure and comfortable in the first position as well as any other position on the neck that I might need to move to. It allows me to play the guitar with a straight unimpinged wrist, meaning I don't have a kink from having to reach around too far. This happens when the guitar is set too low with the strap or too low on your leg. And I also don't have a wrist with a backbend in it and the thumb coming up over that can happen if the guitar is too high, or if you're playing at an angle on your right leg.

You'll notice many people will play the guitar over on their right leg. This puts the headstock at a disadvantage for shifting. Your hand might be able to reach the first position all right, but it's going to be very cumbersome for you to see what you're doing and to play in the upper registers accurately.

In this heart-centered position, I'm also able to reach my right hand around and keep a nice bend in the wrist here, kind of a small arch to the hand. It's not flat, which will create some tendinitis or function issues for you later on down the road if you rest on the top, and it's also not overly arched. With the guitar once again in too low of a position, you can expect this to happen. Just a nice subtle arch to the hand allowing me to reach the strings comfortably whether I'm using a flat pick or fingerpicking with my fingers.

Seated Posture with a Footstool

When playing in a seated position, an alternative to a strap is the footstool. The footstool can be adjusted to a multitude of different heights and angles, allowing you to play an acoustic guitar, a classical guitar, or an electric with that heart-centered

position. After you've selected your footstool height and position, bring your left foot up on top of it, bring the guitar directly down so that this lower bout curve connects almost flat with your leg. 

You'll have a little bit of space here. If you looked from this side, you'd notice a bit of a triangle shape to the space between your leg and the bottom of the guitar. When it's in this proper position, you'll be able to feel that heart-to-heart connection again, and it should be comfortable enough you could stay in this position all day.

3 Types of Standing Postures

And then, as we look at different ways of holding the guitar while standing up, we notice that the strap gives us an awful lot of variations. Let's begin with this one. This is what I affectionately call the “Low Rider” or “Jimmy Page” posture. The guitar is hung quite low. And what's going to happen is playing in this position, though it may look cool, it will cause you a bit of trouble as you learn to play in such a low position because of the pronation of your wrist here. 

The second archetype I like to call “The Beatle” or aka “The George Harrison.” We've got the guitar elevated quite high on our body. The upside of this is it allows my left hand to flow freely on the neck and for my pick to be really comfortable moving through the strings. 

And finally, our third archetype of the strap used is this just kind of mid-strap position. Allowing the guitar's upper bout to be just a little below that heart-centric position that we get when we're playing with a footstool or sitting down using a strap. You have quite a bit to choose from when exploring different comfort levels of holding the guitar. 

Pick what works for you, but also think about what, in the long run, is going to help your technical proficiency and your growth as a guitar player.

The Posture of Your Elbow and Fretting Hand

You should also pay attention to the position of your fretting-arm. Specifically, if your elbow is tucked into your side, a lot of the muscles from your shoulder down to your fingers will tense up. Over time this can lead to tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome. A simple way of practicing proper arm posture, even without a guitar, is to hang your arms to the sides of your body and relax. Then bend your elbows slightly and bring them to where they would be on the guitar. Playing should be comfortable.

The position of your fretting hand should be relaxed and comfortable. Take your fretting hand and give the world a “thumbs up.” Next, while keeping the thumb straight move it sideways and place it on the back of the guitar neck. Be sure to place it in the center of the neck. You want to keep your thumb straight like the thumbs-up position whenever you play, but remember everything should stay comfortable. Now curve your fingers around the neck, as if you placed a tennis ball or baseball in your palm. When you start to play make sure that your fingers are coming down from above the strings, not from the side or diagonally. If you follow this posture for your fretting hand from the start, you will have an advantage in learning to play at high speeds later on. You’ll also avoid a lot of the muscle problems associated with guitar playing.