How to hold your guitar

Body positioning

First, find a comfortable place to sit where you can have your legs in front of you and your feet on the ground. This is your "foundation" that the guitar will rest on.

Next, make sure you're sitting comfortably and have good posture.

Playing guitar for hours will eventually strain your back if you do not maintain a nice upright sitting posture. Pick up your guitar and place the back of the guitar against your stomach. If you are right handed, the guitar neck should be pointing towards your left. Rest the guitar body on your right thigh.

Now place your left hand around the guitar neck and place your right arm around the body so that your hand is lying by the strings. Adjust your body positioning as necessary, so that you are completely comfortable.

Hand Positioning

If you're left handed, don't worry, Jimi Hendrix was left-handed! You basically have two options here. The first option is to buy a right-handed guitar and re-string it, so that the order of the strings in figure 3 is reversed. The second option you have is to buy a left-handed guitar.

If you're right handed, you will use your left hand, as shown below, to construct chords.

Figure 7

As you can see in Figure 7, the left hand fingers are bent and pressing down on the strings on the fret board. The back of the neck is curved, so that your hand molds into the shape of the neck. In this image, the thumb is arching aver the top of the neck. This is a common thumb position for constructing chords.

It is also ok to press your thumb into the back of the guitar neck when constructing chords, although this is more common when playing scales. Try out both thumb positions and use the one that is most comfortable for you.

Figure 8

It is also ok to press your thumb into the back of the guitar neck when constructing chords, although this is more common when playing scales. Try out both thumb positions and use the one that is most comfortable for you.

Don't worry about what strings your left-hand fingers are pressing down on at this point. We are just trying to get you familiar with the hand and finger positioning.

For the chords you will learn in this book it is very important that you have only your fingertips touching the strings. If any other part of your fingers are touching the strings when you construct a chord, it will sound muffled or muted. To be clear, there are many instances, such as when constructing bar chords, that it is perfectly fine, in fact desirable, to allow your entire finger to lay across the strings. However, for the basic chords in this lesson, it is important to only press down on the
strings with your fingertips.

Right Hand/Arm

This is the hand that you will use to "strum" the strings to make the different chord sounds. Remember to position your hand so that when you strike the strings, you are strumming in the shaded region of figure 5. This is the most resonant sounding part of the guitar.

Figure 9

Lie your right arm over the guitar. Your right bicept should be resting on the top of the body of the guitar. Your hand should be positioned directly above the sound hole in the guitar. This is where the sound is produced. Figure 9 shows the correct right hand/arm positioning.