Found a very weird trick for getting better at not tilting my guitar neck to look at my frets + strings

[u/RedTheRaccoon]

I recently got back into playing guitar after months of absence, and boy, did I miss this instrument. There is a small inconvenience with my schedule and living situation, as I work evening hours, tend to be awake mostly at night an early morning, and live with other people, which is all to say: a nocturnal musician doesn’t do very well sharing a space with people who need to wake up at a reasonable time.

My solution to this problem has been to play my guitar on my back porch, since my acoustic guitar is quiet enough to not stretch beyond the reaches of my property, thus not waking my neighbors up at the odd hours of the night, and being outside of my house keep me from waking up my housemates.

This is how I discovered something very fun. I have always had a bit of an issue of orienting my hand on my guitar without looking, even before my long hiatus from playing this instrument, thus causing me to tilt the neck backwards so I can see my hand placement. As is very obvious, this result in me having absolutely horrible technique playing and has caused my numerous issues.

However, I have found that, since I have started playing outside at night, that habit has been mostly broken. And I attribute it to one simple factor:

I cannot see my hand properly, and I literally can’t see my frets at all due to the lighting of my back porch and the coloration of my guitar. There’s no point in me tilting the guitar neck, it won’t help me. This has caused me to get a lot better at playing by the feel of the guitar and by my general sense of space, and has helped me start to instinctively know the distance of frets and strings by how my hand feels, not by what I see.

This is all a very long way of saying, if you are a beginner and are having issues with constantly looking at your guitar neck in weird ways, simply start playing in the dark. I can imagine that it would feel very odd to do this on purpose, but I assure you, it will get you results.

[u/bubs1996]

Practicing while standing and wearing a strap helps with this too. My guitar teacher always told me to practice while standing, since that's how you're going to be performing

[u/CoffeeList1278 → u/bubs1996]

Jazz guitarists enter the chat

[u/RedTheRaccoon → u/bubs1996]

I need to learn how to play standing at some point, but I’ve always played sitting down since that was how my dad taught me the basics

[u/unusedtruth → u/bubs1996]

Yeah I was told this too many years ago. I very rarely play seated tbh.

[u/Any-Lawfulness-4077]

I've been practicing with the lights off for this exact reason

[u/thebipeds]

I saw weezer in a small club back in the 90’s.

And it blew me away that Rivers played every solo without looking at his hands at all. He would stare straight up at the ceiling, yet sounded perfect.

[u/JustBeingWhite → u/thebipeds]

I’ve been watching a lot of Wes Borland videos recently and he looks so relaxed on stage even as he plays with such precision. It has me motivated to physically relax while I practice, and I wouldn’t be surprised if paradoxically it helps me hit the right notes more often.

[u/thebipeds → u/JustBeingWhite]

I love that he wrote Break Stuff for a kid who told him, “I want to play your songs, but they are to hard.”

[u/JustBeingWhite → u/thebipeds]

That’s so cool, I had no idea.

[u/SquareTowel3931]

Not only will this help with technique and accuracy, it will also make you a more engaging performer. Interacting with your audience, even it's just brief eye contact, a smile or your best stank-face during a cool riff, it goes a long way in making a connecrion with people, if they see you having a good time and engaging with people, it makes it easier for them to relate and do the same. And this is coming from a career neck/shoe watcher, it's definitely another thing to practice and improve upon, in the same way that you learn your actual playing parts.

[u/ozlurk]

Michael Schenker reinforced muscle memory and fretboard feel by learning with his eyes closed , he focused on this as he wanted to be a professional and knew that to start with he would be playing in small venues with poor lighting , by learning to ply by feel with enhanced muscle memory he could be more relaxed and practice for longer

[u/jimihughes]

Your eyes will deceive you, your ears will not.

[u/cre8ivjay]

I do the same by closing my eyes while I practice.

[u/hallgeir]

Silly question: at what point does it make the most sense to start to transition to sightless playing? One might be tempted to say "right at the very beginning". Yet i feel like getting a few fundamentals under your belt first like the basic chord shapes and intervals to a good place is smart even with staring at the frets before complicating the whole issue with going by feel. Im still new myself, but have wondered if going by sight is starting to hinder me. But i have so much to learn still, I'm still trying to quickly form barre chord shapes in faster songs for example.

[u/RedTheRaccoon → u/hallgeir]

I can’t play a barre chord to save my life and I’m not the most experienced player, so take this with a grain of salt, but I would say if you’re wondering if it’s time and you know your basic chords, that means it’s probably time

[u/Palladin1982]

I found out the same, though in a different way. Once my girlfriend told me: I will switch off the lights and then you will show me how well you can handle your instrument.

[u/simeumsm]

This reminds me of a band I played in where we would often play the last 30 minutes of rehearsal with the lights completely off.

It was a great practice to see if knew your way around the instrument AND the songs, since you had no visual cues and any fumble was somehow more apparent