bad habits

This is going to be an interesting discussion. I understand that with the word 'habit', you essentially mean 'technique'.

My opinion is this -

Once you become a famous player, even your bad and worst habits and mistakes become a style of their own.

However, when you are learning, you should try to learn in the best possible correct manner as it is going to help you decide which one is wrong technique and which one is right.

If you have the knowledge of right and wrong, occasionally you may also make wrong technique sound cool.

It's like - You can't take somersaults in the sky, unless you learn to fly the aircraft properly first.

Secondly, you have said that if everyone plays correctly, they will all sound alike. This is not true at all. Every player thinks in a different way. Ever imagined why there are so many songs with G C D progression and yet they all sound different ?

Good technique will help you to play better. It won't make you a carbon copy of other players.

Bad habits will never make you a distinctive player. It will only decrease your capabilities on any instrument, be it guitar or piano or any other.

So, stick with good habits and techniques.

Hi,

Interesting topic. I'd pretty much agree with Rahul. Truly bad habits aren't ever really an asset. The discussion is really about what is actually a 'bad habit' and what is simply an individual style, method or variation. And there's a lot of those... :D

I had a few lessons from a classically trained friend who was really anal about all the 'correct form' stuff - "sit this way, put your shoulders here, hold your thumb there, don't put your fingers on the top of the guitar, keep your back straight" blah, blah.... He also had a habit of grabbing my hands, shoulders or whatever and trying to pull and push me into shape - a habit that came very close to earning him a few missing teeth... :evil: :evil:

I eventually showed him a bunch of photos of great rock and roll players and old blues guys doing every single "wrong" thing he was banging on about. I reminded him that these were the guys who I admired and that I had no ambition or intention to be the next bloody Segovia. That quietened him down a bit.

However, most of the ‘correct form' stuff, that presumably comes down from the Classical guitar tradition, was developed for perfectly good reasons. If you're playing Bach on a nylon stringed classical guitar then all the ‘fussy stuff' makes good sense in a pretty quick and obvious way. It helps to sit the right way, hold the guitar at the ‘correct' angle, keep your thumb in the right place and your fingers off the top of the guitar, etc. etc.

For rock and roll it seems like it isn't necessarily such a big deal though. Certainly the shape, style and demands of the music can be very different. Perhaps it's more important to feel relaxed and comfortable, although there's still plenty of ‘bad habits' that actually are worth avoiding. I've not yet seen a single rocker whose technique would cut much ice with Segovia, but that doesn't always mean they're slack about everything either. But who cares. For me, it's about the noise the music makes, not about perfection of form.

I like to have a stab at most styles of music, so I'm willing to at least try and work on whatever the ‘correct technique' supposedly is for any given genre. But if it doesn't seem to work for me, in the time frame I'm prepared to devote to it, then I'm perfectly happy to use other methods. In other words, I don't like to abandon an effort to play better purely through laziness or because I can't be bothered finding out what is thought to be 'good'. But as a permanent amateur my main priority is enjoyment, not passing exams or impressing tutors. So I'm prepared to pick which aspects that I devote a stack of time to improving, and which I don't worry too much about. :wink:

Cheers,

Chris

Bad habits? There's one I've developed to such an extent it's an integral part of my playing! Yes, that's the thumb over the top of the neck - but after the hand injury I had last year, I have to play most barre chords with the thumb over, it's less of a strain on the affected tendon. If I used the correct form - full barre chord, thumb in the middle of the neck - I wouldn't be able to play for more than a few minutes, I'd have to put the guitar down and rest.

There are other bad habits - or more correctly, sloppy techniques - I've developed over the years. They may be (strictly speaking) incorrect, but over the years I've adapted them into my playing style so I don't even think about them. Little things like playing a D chord with a mini-barre....playing an A chord with only my index and middle finger, or with a mini-barre, depending on where I'm going next....

But I don't worry about them any more - they may not work for everyone, but they work for ME......

:D :D :D

Vic

If everyone lost their bad habits and adopted new ones, music wouldn't sound the same - it would still have all the variety of phrasing, articulation, dynamics, and tone that we have today.

But everyone would play better, because they'd be able to play things that they can't play with their bad habits.

There are only a few bad habits that actually affect tone production, like draping your forearm over the face of a classical guitar (it should rest on the binding of the lower bout). Some of those can be fixed mechanically - one of my students uses an arm rest on his classical.

When most players talk of bad habits, they're talking about things like thumb position, neck angle, or fingering a chord a certain way - like always using fingers 123 for a G chord.

These habits don't impact your sound or your 'style'. But they do limit it.

Habits like thumb position (too high up, hooking over the neck, or pointed at the peg head) will limit your reach. Yeah, hooking the thumb gives you more leverage to control a bend - so go ahead and do it when you're bending. That's not habit... it's choice. But if you aren't bending, always putting it in correct position - which is habit - means you can read additional notes. On long scale length guitars, I get one extra fret of reach, two or more in higher positions, by having my thumb in the right place.

Habits like specific chord fingerings don't affect your sound at all - any way you fret the correct strings is playable. But if you always fret a chord a certain way, some changes will take you longer - because you have to move your fingers farther.

If someone tells you the "correct" way to finger a G chord is with 234 fingering, they haven't really thought it through. That fingering minimizes motion when you change to chords like G7 or C, but it requires more movement to go to D (consider ALL the movements, both fingers and wrist angle). If a song is in D, I'll use 123 fingering. Some chords, like the open A, I'll finger a half dozen different ways depending on the chords around it.

Anyway you play it, it's still G, or A, or whatever. Bad habits don't keep you from playing a specific chord or note - but they do limit the other notes/chords you can play at faster tempos. I've never seen anyone who always fingers G as 123 be able to play the C-G-C-G-C-G-D sequence in Steven Still's "Love the One You're With" at tempo; shredders who lift their fingers too high off the fretboard may be able to play very fast - but they'd be even faster with less motion.

I don't know. I have a habit to drink rum while noodling, not sure if that's a good or bad habit. It certainly has an impact on my style though.

i was just thinking about how people are always complaining about their bad habits.
If you think about it, bad habits are what gives every guitar player diversity and makes their playing different

If everyone played with all good habits they'd all play alike

Opinions and comments welcome

Bad playing habits hurt your ability to play well. Period.

What gives guitar players diversity is the way they approach things like attacking the strings, phrasing the music, vibrato, - a thousand and one "habits" that are neither bad nor good, but simply unique to that person.

What you've just voiced is the excuse a lot of mediocre guitarists use to justify not making the effort to break their own bad habits. ("It's part of my SOUND, man. I can't change that!")

I don't know who put that idea in your head, but at least you're smart enough to ask for more informed opinions ;)

well after reading all of your guys long and in-depth posts i think that what I meant by bad habit was more like technique. Like strumming with your wrist instead of your forearm and where you anchor your hand on the bridge or not.

I guess a "bad" habit couldn't be good since its bad
More like individual techniquw

I have a bad habit of playing my guitar until 2am and then not getting enough sleep before getting up for work at 7am. Does that count? :lol:

I have a bad habit of playing my guitar until 2am and then not getting enough sleep before getting up for work at 7am. Does that count? :lol:

Yes, less sleep can hurt your eyes next day. Early to bed and early to rise...

Oh wait, I myself make posts on GN as early as 4 am. :oops: