I Wanna Play Those TV Chords.....

[Armistice]

Speaking of thumbs, has anyone ever used their thumb on the high (pitch) strings? I often make up my own bizzarre chords and recently found that the only way to play a particular not as I was moving through this sequence was to actually bring the thumb around the low (position) side of the fretboard and use it to fret the 2nd fret on the high (pitch) E string.

Looks weird but not as hard as I thought, although if you have a low slung guitar you can't do it.

I started out with a barre chord version of Cmaj7 only alternating between fretting the high (pitch) E string at the third fret with the side of the barre finger and leaving it open (OK, so it's not a barre in that it's curved to do this) - then I discovered that there was a nice change if I then fretted the high (pitch) E string on the second fret, and while I could just about stretch the fingers so that I could use the side of the pointer again, it was actually easier to bring the thumb around.

Mind you, I do have double-jointed thumbs! Looks appalling in the mirror! Like something from a contortionist horror movie - but it works

 

[Gidge]

Originally posted by Outlaws [/B]
or

--5 optional but with index
--5 index
--6 middle
--7 ring
-------
--------

[/B]

not sure about the position, but that looks like the fingering.....then the thumb can fret the 5th fret on the bass E string.....Hendrix did that alot.......if you fret the A chord as shown above, it frees up your pinky to embelling chords in a way that cant be done with the traditional fingering of that barre chord.....

 

[sm2k]

You're being fooled!

I wondered these same things myself for the longest time...then I watched myself play in the mirror. Things look a lot different from that perspective! Fingers may appear to be fretting when they're just hanging there. Consider a standard power chord...where is your middle finger? To the layperson sitting across from you, it might appear as though you were using three fingers.

If it was easy to tell exactly how somebody was fingering, nobody would use the drop d tuning

Slackmaster 2000

 

[Dakota]

Fingers may appear to be fretting when they're just hanging there. Consider a standard power chord...where is your middle finger?

Exactly!