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46 Part I: You Got a Right to Play the Blues TEAM LinG
To play the blues properly while sitting down, stick to the following steps:
1. Sit in a comfortable desk chair (one without arms), stool, or straightback
chair.
A couch is too relaxed for serious study (though you can certainly have
fun with your guitar as a sofa spud — after you’ve put in your serious
practice time)!
2. With feet apart, sit up straight and forward in the seat of the chair so
that you place some weight on your feet.
Because the exact position is largely a matter of personal comfort, you
can experiment to find the best position for you.
3. Put the waist of the guitar on your right leg, pull the guitar up against
your body, and place your right arm over the guitar’s top edge to hold
the guitar in place.
When you’re sitting, your right arm holds the guitar to keep it from
falling forward or tipping to the side toward the headstock. You won’t
have this problem if you wear a shoulder strap, which balances the
guitar in place. But take care when adjusting your sitting position so you
don’t let the guitar fall.
Don’t support the neck with your left hand because you want this hand to be
free to move up and down the neck without the burden of also holding up the
guitar.
. . . or standing up
If you want to stand when you play your guitar, follow these few steps:
1. Attach a guitar strap to your guitar’s two strap pins.
The strap pins are on the bottom edge of the guitar and on the bass-side
edge (this placement differs depending on your particular model).
2. Put your head, right arm, and shoulder through the strap, letting the
weight of the guitar fall on your left shoulder.
Then straighten up to a normal, erect, standing position.
3. Adjust the strap to get the guitar at a comfortable playing height.
Take the guitar off before adjusting the strap because trying to adjust it
while holding the guitar is sometimes awkward.
The higher the guitar sits, the easier it is to play. But there’s a catch: If the
guitar is too high, you can look uncool — more a like a do-goodin’ folksinger
from the ’60s than the gritty, hard-scrabblin’ blueser that you are.