How To Use Your Guitar Strap Acoustic Guitar

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, welcome back. Lauren Bateman here in this lesson video, I'm answering a student's question about what's the proper way to use your guitar strap? So let's get into the lesson video.

Real quick. Before we jump into this lesson, I just want to thank a few of my YouTube supporters. Ronald Buss, Julian Bliss, Harold Hinckling or Hickling. Sorry, Harold Hickling. Thank you guys so much for your donations. Truly appreciate you supporting the channel. Let's get into the video. So I believe that the guitar strap is probably one of the most important accessories you should have as a guitarist. And it's probably the one accessory that most people go without. You don't have to spend a lot of money on a guitar strap. There are ones like this one is a custom made guitar strap. It's a little more expensive. I. All right. You don't have to go and spend hundreds of dollars on a custom guitar strap. You can get something a little bit cheaper, but get something that's comfortable. So first things first. How do you set up your guitar strap? And then we'll get into some tips I have on different comfort measures you want to consider when buying a guitar strap. So you'll see here I have my guitar strap on and my guitar is just comfortable kind of hanging out. We don't want to set up the guitar strap so that it's too low. All right? It's not good. I know. You'll see in like rock and roll, a lot of people play their guitar really low. It's not good for your wrist to play the guitar that low. It actually, ergonomically, it will cause a lot of pain in your wrist. So we want to set up this guitar strap. You can see my guitar strap here is tight, all right? It's not loose. It doesn't have a wrinkle in it. It's tight. It is holding up my guitar in my lap. Okay? And what I'm going to do, the important thing about this is when you're playing sitting down, you want there to be no difference between when you're sitting down versus when you're standing up. So let's see what happens. I'm going to put my guitar pick down because I don't think I need that for this lesson. All right, so here is my guitar. My hands are in there watching and stand up, and I'm going to sit down. Did you see my. My guitar didn't bounce. Watch when I stand up. My guitar doesn't drop. And watch when I sit down. See how it doesn't come up. So if your guitar is doing that, it means your guitar strap is maybe just a little bit too loose. And the benefit of setting up your guitar strap this way is that when you practice sitting down versus standing up, there's no difference. So you don't have to retrain yourself to play chords sitting down versus standing up. Now, the other benefit of the guitar strap, if you have it set up correctly, is it will help keep your guitar pointing slightly up. We never want our guitar pointing down like this again. It puts a lot of extra pressure on your wrist, the more of an upward angle. And sometimes we have what's called the classical position, which is the guitar kind of like this. You've probably seen that really extreme. This is very healthy for your wrist, but I don't find that very comfortable. So I play my guitar like this, and I think a majority of people do. But it keeps the guitar neck up as opposed to pointing down. A lot of people who don't use guitar straps, their neck tends to point down like that, and it causes a lot more wrist issues. So the benefits of a strap, one, when you're practicing sitting down, you're already practicing for sitting, for standing up. And two, it can help alleviate some of those wrist issues that you're having, probably because the neck of your guitar is pointing down. Hey, guys, real quick. I hope you guys are enjoying this lesson video so far. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel so that you'll know when I release new videos just like this one. So let's get back into the video now. A couple of considerations to keep in mind when buying a guitar strap. One is the width of the strap. I find thicker straps dig into my shoulder a lot less than a thinner strap. So this guitar strap is pretty thick. I stepped off screen quickly to grab my other guitar. This is my electric guitar strap, which I'm looking to to upgrade. So this is a little thinner than my acoustic guitar strap. The unfortunate side of this, there's not a lot of padding underneath this strap. And with my electric guitar, which is right behind me here. The downside of solid body guitars is that they tend to be a little heavier. So this guitar strap is digging into my shoulder a little bit. So if you have shoulder issues like that, like this guitar strap is thick. It has a little bit of a padding to it. You might. They sell guitar straps that have pads on the shoulder. So you might want to get into something that's a little bit more padded, Particularly if you have shoulder issues or if you're playing an electric guitar where they do have a lot more weight to them. It's one of the top reasons I don't play a Gibson Les Paul because is because the weight really does bother my shoulder and that's why I like my thinner Ibanez back here. Another question I got from a student was do I have to screw a knob into my guitar? So my guitar has screws already on the back end of the guitar and underneath here for a guitar strap. Some guitars have only one. They have one on the butt end of the guitar and then you have a string you can tie here. I personally, I've done it both ways. I personally like it this way better because I think it, it takes less strain. But usually there's like a string and you tie it through the nut of the guitar. Some people say, do I have to put a screw in my guitar? You don't have to. You can do it that way. If your guitar doesn't have any pegs, then yes, you're going to have to put a screw in. But some people get a lutherer to put screw on the bottom here and I just like that better. I think it's more comfortable to wear, but it's a personal preference thing. So do you have to have someone put a screw on the bottom side of your guitar? If you don't have one, you don't just know you'll do. You'll tie it up here. But if you don't have any pegs for guitar straps, you might want a luther to put a couple pegs on so that you can clip on the strap to the guitar. So I hope you guys found the tips in this video helpful. Don't forget to like this video and leave a comment below. Maybe you have a question about the guitar and I can answer that for you in another video. YouTube is going to pop up a couple, couple little videos over here. Go check those out. If one of those interests you, I would love to see you guys in another lesson video.