With the high frets, where do you position the thumb from your fretting hand? Around the 15th fret on my guitar, the neck merges with the body and my fretting hand is suddenly dealing with something twice as thick. (I can play it up to around the 18th fret with the thumb still behind the neck approx. where my index finger is positioned, but with frets 19-21, my thumb definitely has to be stretched away from the fingers if I want to keep it on the neck. I'm not sure if that's a good habit, though.)
This is what you do, Buckaroo :D
Sorry, just had to do that.
Hey, if you have to take your thumb off the neck, do it. There is nothing wrong with doing that if your guitar does not have a good cutaway. As long as you can play the notes you want to play, do what you have to do.
It is not odd to do this at all. I will take my thumb off the neck completely at times. My thumb will actually be on top of the fretboard with the other fingers.
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There's no particular reason to keep your thumb behind the neck when you go up high. The whole point of doing it is to expand your reach, but since everything is so close together above the 12th fret you probably don't need all that reach. By the time I'm so high on the fretboard that putting my thumb behind the neck would put it on the back of the body I've usually got my thumb hooked over the neck where it meets the body.
At the low frets, my thumb is roughly parallel to the frets. As I move up past 12-14 or so, it shifts to be parallel to the neck... not all at once, but I turn it as I go up.
If I'm playing acoustic or classical, as I get up past 17 my thumb just slides right off the neck, although I'm still holding it in line with the neck. Watch a cello or upright bass player as they reach around the body for high notes - you'll want to do roughly the same thing.
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That's why SG is preferred sometimes...its a double cut !!
I generally do it Noteboat's way on the acoustic.
Once again, thanks guys!
On classicals, the neck joins the body at the 12th fret, so to get to the upper frets you have to reach up to them with the thumb down the side of the body.
Best,
A :-)
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