Economy of Motion

Before you read this article, I want to ask you to do something. Doing this one thing will help what I’m about to say to fall into place.

Pick up your guitar.

Just hold your guitar, as if you are about to play. Imagine you are going to start to play your favourite song- I want you to actually fret the notes and get ready to strum that first chord. Just before you’re strumming hand hits the strings…stop. I’m not asking you to relax- just totally stop dead.

Hold that position.

What do you notice? More importantly, why would I get you to do something like that? Surely you want to hear about actually playing the guitar, not how to pick one up?! Well I’ll tell you what I’m getting at…

Think About How You’re Sitting Now

Think. When you picked up the guitar, and got ready to play your favourite song, did you automatically sit up? Or are you slumped in a casual sitting position? Yes, this really is where economy of motion starts- not in your fingers, but your entire body. Next, how are you holding the guitar? The weight of the guitar should be over your leg if you are sitting, or over your shoulders if you’re standing (via a strap).

Gripping the Guitar

If this is how you sat right away (and be honest!), give yourself a gold star- or should that be a “rock star”?! Either way, you did the right thing! If you sit slumped over, you’ll probably find it impossible to balance the guitar properly- you’re probably trying to hold the guitar with your hands (again, be honest!).

When we hold the guitar with our hands, guess what happens? That’s right, they have to tense up to take the weight of the guitar. This is incredibly bad for our guitar playing- we want our hands to be free to play guitar, and not busy holding one!

Watch this short video about the technique of the guitarist “Shawn Lane” and how your technique should be relaxed when playing fast and slowly.

click here if you can’t see the video

Economy of Effort

There’s a huge myth going around about playing the guitar, and that’s that in order to play efficiently, or fast, you keep your fingertips as close as possible to the fretboard. Yes, this seems to make sense at first, but it’s really a false assumption. You see, “economy of motion” really means “precision of motion, economy of effort”. If you’re constantly forcing your fingers to be next to the frets, guess what? You’re actually engaging MORE MUSCLES to do this! In case you missed the maths there: more muscles = more time spent engaging all these muscles! Not just that, but the muscles that you use are actually restricting the movement of your fingers by trying to hold them still!

So by this point, your fingers have not only tensed up from holding the guitar, but they have also “locked up” and take greater effort to move! Do you want to know what the worst part is? If you find yourself in this position, you need to then use more effort to counteract the effort put in to keep the fingers still. We end up just “attacking” the strings in an attempt to play anything over a certain speed- and this is exactly what can cause “barriers” in our technique or “speed walls”, where we cant seem to get any better beyond a certain point.

Never Ending Spiral of Tension

That’s right, the tension will escalate as you try harder and harder to “play through” it- but it wont work this way. So what can you do? Well, what you need to do is re-focus your effort. Start of slowly again, without “gripping” the guitar with your hands. What you need is not a focus of muscle energy- it takes very little force to hold down a string. You need to focus your mental energy, concentrate on getting a co-ordination between your picking hand and your fretting hand.

Never Just “play through it”!

Playing through tension only creates more tension- don’t set yourself up to overcompensate for a bad seating position. What you need to focus on is co-ordination, and accuracy. There is a point on each fret where, if you hit it correctly, will produce a note with very little “force”- your fingers should be like little hammers, little machines, striking this spot. You will probably have to experiment a little bit to get to this point and I’m not saying that finger strength is unimportant. The trick is to hit the string with just the right amount of force- no more than necessary- and in exactly the right place at the right time.

In conclusion, real economy of motion is gained by relaxing, not tensing up, and using the minimum amount of “effort”. This is all achieved in the first place by the correct posture and the right hand position. If you head over to the exercises section of the site, you can learn more about correct hand position and practice it with the exercises I provide there.

For private tuition, please contact me for one to one lessons!

November 4, 2009 at 1:48 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | 1 comment

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