Lauren Bateman shows how to hold acoustic and electric guitars without hurting your wrist. The key is angling the neck upward, whether you sit with the guitar on your thigh, use a strap, or play it between your legs. A footrest or strap adjustment can help.
Hello and welcome back. In this video, we're going to talk about how to actually hold our guitar. So there's a few different ways that you can hold your guitar. And the most common way to do it is to pick up your guitar and there's a hump. You'll see this little space under your guitar. What I want you to do is I want you to put your dominant side the hump. So I'm a righty. So I'm going to lift my left or Sorry, Hello. So I'm a righty. I'm going to lift my right leg into that hump. So it's going to sit right on my right thigh and I'm just going to put my arm right over this other hump of the guitar and then that's how you hold it. If you're a lefty, you would want to put your left leg into the hump of the guitar. Now when we're holding the guitar, if you have your guitar strap, you're going to want to shift the guitar so that the neck is pointing up. This will take a lot of pressure off your wrist and it'll be much better for you long term. Now, for some people, particularly with electric guitar, I like to sometimes play in what we call the classical position, which is where you take the big bottom hump, this one here, and I put it between both of my legs, and then the guitar is really sticking up here. I don't particularly like doing this with an acoustic guitar because the body's so w. It's a little bit awkward, but you can do it. But for my electric guitar, my electric guitar is really, really thin. So it's very comfortable for me to play my electric guitar like this. So that's one way to do it, is to put the big bulge in between both of your legs and then make sure the guitar neck is pointing up. The most common way for people to do it is to lift your dominant leg, put it in the hump of the guitar here. And this way your guitar sits right on your thigh. Now the unfortunate part with this, if you don't have a guitar strap, is that the guitar tends to point down and this is not good for your wrist and it makes it harder to play chords. So get that guitar strap and lift the neck up. Okay. Lift the neck up so that it's more comfortable for your wrist and it's going to be easier for you to play. Some of my students have a footrest. One of my students actually used a log. He had like the magic guitar log. But they would put their dominant foot up on the footrest because they wanted their guitar higher. Now, you can always adjust your guitar strap to make the guitar come up higher. But some people like playing with their foot elevated, or they'll hook the heel of their shoe on. If they're playing in a chair that has, like, a ledge or a stool that has, like, a spoke, they'll hook it on that. Some people like playing with one of their legs elevated. You can do that. I don't particularly like it. Sometimes with electric, I do. But for the most part, myself and the majority of my students play by finding that dip in the guitar, lifting up the dominant leg and putting it down on your thigh and just letting the guitar sit there. And then because we have guitar straps, we can lift the neck of the guitar so that it's pointed up so that it's much better for your wrist. So that's the basics of holding the guitar. Play around with it. Make sure it's comfortable. Now, if you're wearing. If you're wearing. If you're holding an electric guitar, the body's much thinner, so you might not be able to just rest your arm on the guitar. Just let it hang over the top of the guitar. You'll see here, at least on my acoustic, my elbow is kind of in front of the guitar. With an electric, where you have a narrower body, your arm is going to be able to hang a little bit lower. But the same thing, you're just going to want to put your arm right over this big hump in the back of a guitar. So there you go. That's how to hold an acoustic and an electric guitar. Play around with it. You choose which one feels better for you. There's no right or wrong answer. If you like the classical position, go for it. If you like a footstool, go for it. The biggest thing is to make sure the neck of that guitar is pointing up and not pointing down. So that's how to hold a guitar. And I will see you in the next video.
