You can sit with your feet flat, your legs crossed, or with your feet on a footrest. Just make sure you have good posture and that you’re comfortable. The best practice chairs are hard-backed chairs with no arm rests of any kind, or stools. Sit far forward on the chair, so your back isn’t touching the back-rest, your butt right on the edge of the seat. Keep your back very straight. [1] X Research source Guitar stools are available at most music stores, and they’re perfect for practicing. They’re also rather expensive. If you want one, go for it, but practicing in your own kitchen chair should be fine. Just avoid the couch, the La-Z-Boy, and other soft recliners, which will build bad posture and bad guitar habits.
Your dominant hand is your “strumming hand” or your “picking hand. " This hand will be used to pluck the strings of guitar and create the sound. While it might seem more comfortable to use that hand for fretting, it’s much easier in the long run to learn this way. [2] X Research source Your non-dominant hand is your “fretting hand," used to press the strings down onto the fretboard and create the individual notes.
Some dreadnought-style acoustic guitars have a nice cutout that should seat nicely on your other thigh, helping to orient the guitar properly. Take some time to feel out your guitar and seat it comfortably on your lap. You shouldn’t have to hold it up with your hands, when it’s balanced properly.
Some guitar teachers won’t emphasize holding the guitar in this manner. Once you get comfortable, you can hold the guitar however you like. For the beginner, though, it’s much easier to access the freeboard this way. If your guitar teacher teaches you to play with the neck of the guitar parallel with the ground, try it out the other way.
To make sure you’re not hugging too tightly, practice strumming, letting your hand fall comfortably, about an inch below the sound-hole of an acoustic guitar, or even with the pick-ups on an electric guitar. Your hand placement in relation to the sound-hole will affect the sound. If you play over the sound-hole, it will create more a gentle sound that adds ambiance. If you play back towards the soundboard and towards the saddle, it’s going to create a harsher, tighter sound. You should think of this less as “holding” a guitar and more as letting the guitar rest comfortably on your lap while you play. The less you “hold” it, the easier it is to play.
Some guitar teachers will put a small piece of tape just behind the third fret, on the neck of the guitar as an indication of where you should place your thumb. If you’re learning properly, your fretting thumb should always remain on the back of the neck, your other fingers arched over the fretboard. Be careful not to wrap your thumb around. Alternatively, guitar wizards from Hendrix to John Fahey have broken this rule with abandon, incorporating the wrapped-thumb to great effect. If you’ve got long fingers, you can get away with it. Follow your guitar teacher’s instructions, if you’re receiving them, or experiment to see what works best for you.
Make sure your guitar is outfitted with strap pegs before you buy a strap, or consider having them installed at the guitar shop. You’ll need at least one strap peg at the base of most guitars to make a strap work. Most guitars will come with them pre-installed.
To strap an acoustic guitar with one peg, you’ll sometimes need to insert the skinny end of the strap around the head, under the strings where they attach to the tuning pegs. Some straps won’t come with this, but you can use a shoestring inserted through the peg-hole on the skinny end of the strap to make do in a pinch. If your acoustic comes with two pegs already, just attach the strap to both pegs at the top and bottom of the guitar body and you’re set. [6] X Research source To strap an electric guitar, insert the pegs through the tabs on each end of the strap and you’re should be ready to rock. Some straps will come with a variety of different tabs to allow for a variety of lengths. Start tight and loosen up if necessary.
Err on the side of keeping the strap short. You don’t want to have the guitar too low or you’ll struggle to play with your strumming hand. Likewise, if the guitar is too high, it can be tiring to hold your arms up that high to play. The length of the guitar strap will have a lot to do with your playing style. Some players want the guitar as high as possible to allow easy access to the fretboard, while rockers want the guitar as low as possible, because it looks awesome. There’s no right way.
This is especially useful if you’ve got an input jack on the bottom of your guitar and it gets loose over time. You can keep the cable from slipping out and falling all the way to the ground.
