Hand/fretting envy

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Man, my fingers could never move like that! Often when I see very technical playing, I admire the technique, but find the actual sound uninteresting.

Here I think the song is great (perhaps a bit overlong), and (I suspect) physiologically impossible for me to play. My hands can’t do that!

 Are my eyes deceiving me? Are those easy patterns to fret? I feel like a dinosaur trying to comprehend a fighter jet watching that.

 Obviously I can’t be bothered to practice at the moment, but let’s ignore that for the timebeing. Practice is for future me to worry about
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Comments

  • @Rocker would love this guitar tone.

    Bye!

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  • KittyfriskKittyfrisk Frets: 18376
    @Rocker would love this guitar tone.
    Here you go petal  ;)  
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  • poopotpoopot Frets: 9098
    @Rocker would love this guitar tone.
    I bet his hand would move furiously fast to this :)
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  • SassafrasSassafras Frets: 30273
    @Rocker would love this guitar tone.
    Nah, too much reverb.
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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10356
    I really like this style of playing,  in the OP vid 

    It's actually a lot easier than it looks. It's basically using a root octave or  fifth with the fretting  hand and hitting the third and higher fifth with the picking hand and then picking out snatches of chord and melody with both. If you know all the notes all over the fretboard you can pick out chord shapes quite easily with the picking hand and play bits of melody with the picking  hand 

    Nothing she is doing is complicated when you break it down to the simple sections it is. It just takes a lot of  time to practice it to get it as fluid as that. 
    www.2020studios.co.uk 
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  • boogiemanboogieman Frets: 12314
    Easier than it looks? Ha. It might be easy if you’ve got long flexible fingers like hers but my hands are like a bunch of  bananas. I could never manage to play like that, even when I had the better finger strength and flexibility when I was younger. She reminds me of Bucket, with his alien facehugger fingers. 
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  • GrumpyrockerGrumpyrocker Frets: 4118
    boogieman said:
    Easier than it looks? Ha. It might be easy if you’ve got long flexible fingers like hers but my hands are like a bunch of  bananas. I could never manage to play like that, even when I had the better finger strength and flexibility when I was younger. She reminds me of Bucket, with his alien facehugger fingers. 
    Facehugger was exactly what I thought when I saw her fingers. Meanwhile I have fingers like stubby sausages. 

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  • boogieman said:
    Easier than it looks? Ha. It might be easy if you’ve got long flexible fingers like hers but my hands are like a bunch of  bananas. I could never manage to play like that, even when I had the better finger strength and flexibility when I was younger. She reminds me of Bucket, with his alien facehugger fingers. 
    Facehugger was exactly what I thought when I saw her fingers. Meanwhile I have fingers like stubby sausages. 
    Yeah, there’s something slightly disconcerting about the way she moves her fingers. Would love to be able move around the fret board like her though. It’s the precision too. 

    At least I have the sense not to make a video where it looks like there’s a disco going on in her bum. At least I’ll have that over her

    https://youtu.be/eFBqyywZu3o

    fantastic player though, and nicely melodic too. 
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  • Philly_QPhilly_Q Frets: 22516
    When I watch clips like this I'm never sure if the playing looks difficult or not actually too bad.*

    It's complex of course (or it is to me despite @Danny1969's explanation!).  And there are some really big and precise jumps around the fretboard which look very daunting.  BUT her fingers aren't actually moving that fast, most of the time, so it does look physically possible.# 

    It's watching really speedy stuff which makes me think no, I could never do that in a million years.  Even then, some players seem to have such economy of motion that my ears tell me they're playing millions of notes but it looks like their hands are hardly moving.  Sweep picking looks easy but it's so fucking difficult.

    I don't have sausage fingers or banana hands, I guess mine are a bit closer to spiders or facehuggers.  Smallish facehuggers.  Smallish, very very slow facehuggers. 

    (*#  Of course, the truth is I can't actually play anything that anyone demonstrates on YouTube, not even the most pedestrian blues-rock.)
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  • I have tiny fat fingers and I have no trouble with stretches. Half of it is posture - look how she has the guitar, set so it's comfy for her.

    The other half is practice of course. She's playing a Jackson - nice big frets and a low action help a lot. I can do this on my Tele but not on my les paul (which has medium jumbos instead of my preferred enormous frets!). 

    Cramped shapes are much harder!
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  • grappagreengrappagreen Frets: 1340
    I can't watch her fingers as they're making me feel somewhat uncomfortable.. 
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  • I have tiny fat fingers and I have no trouble with stretches. Half of it is posture - look how she has the guitar, set so it's comfy for her.

    The other half is practice of course. She's playing a Jackson - nice big frets and a low action help a lot. I can do this on my Tele but not on my les paul (which has medium jumbos instead of my preferred enormous frets!). 

    Cramped shapes are much harder!

    Posture has never been something I thought about until recently. I need to revisit it (or take lessons again), it does seem to be key to unlocking an extra bit of headroom when playing.
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  • notanonnotanon Frets: 604
    edited July 2021
    Perseverance + time apparently


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  • thumpingrugthumpingrug Frets: 2890
    That was very nice.  Might be an "easy" technique for some but played like that it sounds very impressive.  Im sure having super long fingers helps.

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  • euaneuan Frets: 1397
    I swear her pinky is longer than my index finger.
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  • I have tiny fat fingers and I have no trouble with stretches. Half of it is posture - look how she has the guitar, set so it's comfy for her.

    The other half is practice of course. She's playing a Jackson - nice big frets and a low action help a lot. I can do this on my Tele but not on my les paul (which has medium jumbos instead of my preferred enormous frets!). 

    Cramped shapes are much harder!

    Posture has never been something I thought about until recently. I need to revisit it (or take lessons again), it does seem to be key to unlocking an extra bit of headroom when playing.

    My hand span is very small, but I can comfortably take an F5add9 chords (low e, a and d strings fretted as 1,3,5 respectively) and add an extension to the g, b or high e string. It's a bit of a stretch, but doable. Conversely, my friend with huge hands can't comfortably play the add9 chord. Without the extension, it's quite a comfortable shape that doesn't require brilliant posture. The same shape is used in Message in a Bottle to great effect (at least, that's how I play it). 

    He doesn't practice them, which is the main reason. He could probably much more easily play complex chords if he spent a bit of time practising them but he tends not to. 
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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10356
    notanon said:
    Perseverance + time apparently


    I had a crack at that years ago, worked it out by ear so I think some of mine is wrong but I also used my own way of playing the arpeggios. It's stupidly hard to play with a cleanish sound, I think Paul did a better job than me but I didn't spend a lot of time on it, I reckon I could do it a lot better now if I spent the amount of time on it that he did. 


    www.2020studios.co.uk 
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  • CarpeDiemCarpeDiem Frets: 275
    I have tiny fat fingers and I have no trouble with stretches. Half of it is posture - look how she has the guitar, set so it's comfy for her.

    The other half is practice of course. She's playing a Jackson - nice big frets and a low action help a lot. I can do this on my Tele but not on my les paul (which has medium jumbos instead of my preferred enormous frets!). 

    Cramped shapes are much harder!

    Posture has never been something I thought about until recently. I need to revisit it (or take lessons again), it does seem to be key to unlocking an extra bit of headroom when playing.

    My hand span is very small, but I can comfortably take an F5add9 chords (low e, a and d strings fretted as 1,3,5 respectively) and add an extension to the g, b or high e string. It's a bit of a stretch, but doable. Conversely, my friend with huge hands can't comfortably play the add9 chord. Without the extension, it's quite a comfortable shape that doesn't require brilliant posture. The same shape is used in Message in a Bottle to great effect (at least, that's how I play it). 

    He doesn't practice them, which is the main reason. He could probably much more easily play complex chords if he spent a bit of time practising them but he tends not to. 
    I agree with @ThePrettyDamned that practice makes a big difference, as @Danny1969 has also eluded to. Whilst hand size can limit some stretches, practicing them even if it means physically using your picking hand to get them initially can help. Arguably, shorter fingers may assist with the ability to play fast as they don't lift as far off the strings. Vinnie Moore is a good example of an accomplished player with comparatively small hands.
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  • hollywoodroxhollywoodrox Frets: 4082
    Nice work danny1969
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