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The Tuesday Tip - High Thumbing

Hello all,

I thought it would be useful to do a series of blog posts addressing some of the most common issues my slide students have. 

Getting back to the basics of slide guitar technique, high thumbing can cause some real issues. 

High thumbing means bringing the left hand thumb up and over the guitar. It's a strong habit in guitarists that, like myself, are not classically trained. It is not necessarily a bad habit in guitar playing and can sometimes be useful, like when you add a bass note with your thumb.

However in slide playing it can be very beneficial to keep the thumb lower down on the neck to provide stability for the slide and a pivot for your vibrato. Also having the thumb up the top can make it harder to manoeuvre the slide into all the positions you need and can crucially make you more inclined to squeeze the string down onto the fret with the slide causing unwanted buzzing sounds.

To help with this issue I made a series of video lessons for my Slide Success program focusing on the role of the thumb, with added "thumb-cam" footage 

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If you're trying to correct this on your own at home, the first and best place to start is simply noticing when you are doing it. Each time, pause in your playing and consciously correct your position. Keep correcting until you build a good new non-high-thumbing habit!

If you need more help to supercharge your sliding, drop me a message and I'll see what I can do: 

https://m.me/phillip.henry.169067/

 
PS: here's a picture of where your thumb should be:

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