What are your bad guitar habits?

[Cecil6243]

Originally Posted by jcpharm

Using my thumb to fret the 6th string F# on D/F#. i've heard that guitar purists cringe at that....but my short stubby fingers can't help it!

I see nothing wrong with that if that is what you have to do.

[Cecil6243]

No bad habits. I am perfect.

[Jeff Scott]

Originally Posted by LeDave

What're your bad guitar habits?

Buying the best I can afford/justify. There's no room in life for inferior guitars.

[ChrisE]

Squeezing too hard with my left hand during gigs. I don’t do it when I’m playing at home, but put me in front of an audience and the death grip comes on full force.

Three straight hours of that leads to a pretty sore left hand.

[Coop47]

Originally Posted by ChrisE

Squeezing too hard with my left hand during gigs. I don’t do it when I’m playing at home, but put me in front of an audience and the death grip comes on full force.

Three straight hours of that leads to a pretty sore left hand.

Gorilla grip is my problem too - resulting in fretwear and intonation problems. It's gotten better over time, but not where I want it to be.

Also, I don't practice with a metronome as much as I should.

[chrislongAgain]

rushing the tune(s).
a HORRID habit.
play a song enough times and you'll find that you can shoot it out like a machine gun. at least i can. and listeners invariably say WOW! but it's all flash and no soul.
i listen to tommy emmanuel and hear this far too often (yeah, i'll get called on this. i don't care.) ...
blazingly fast guitar playing is merely athletics, and nearly NEVER has a place in MUSIC. i'd much rather listen to neil young clunking along with a few ragged chords than hear the pyrotechnics of so many speed players recording today.
that's my opinion. yours may vary.

[mischultz]

Originally Posted by Dwight

buying more guitars than I need.

And the converse: selling guitars that are absolutely fine.

[archerscreek]

I’m working on correcting the bad habit of lifting my pinky too high off the strings after fretting a note with it while flatpicking.

[jaymarsch]

Originally Posted by TBman

Been there too many times. I use Transcribe! for a lot of things now. Putting it on 50% play back forces me to go slow. I've even gone slower on those brain dead days that seem to happen more frequently now

I have never used that. I’ll have to check it out.
Best,
Jayne

[Jeff Scott]

Transcribe! is great; been using it since the mid '00s.

[Glennwillow]

What are your bad guitar habits?

I sometimes play too much. Then everything hurts when I try to get up.

It's true...

- Glenn

[PerryE]

Thumb wrapping definitely. Even though I have medium size hands it is normally very easy for me to thumb wrap both the E and A strings. Of course some chords make it impossible but still

[ChrisE]

I never realized thumb wrapping was bad. I do it quite a bit and I don’t plan on trying to stop.

[PerryE]

Good point. I do want to be faster and more accurate doing barre chords but my thumb wrapping is much faster for me. Normally when I am supposed to mute fifth string with ring finger I prefer to mute w thumb - right/wrong I don’t know but works for me

[NotveryGood]

I have the bad habit when practising on my own of playing just a small part of songs/tunes I know then moving on to something else and playing just a snippet of that too , rather than playing the whole thing through. One day Ill have to play all of a song and find I cant remember it.
Also, (and probably due to reading too much on here), I worry about humidity. In my imagination my guitars have either withered away or exploded in their cupboard!