How do you develop a lighter fretting hand touch?

A leftover from my bass and guitar days is that I tend to hold the neck in a vice grip which causes some intonation issues. When I consciously make the effort my chords sound nice and in tune but then after a few minutes I'm back in gorilla hands mode. Any recommendations for developing a lighter touch?

As a guitar player I struggle with this also. It's an occupational hazard moving between different stringed instruments and even different scale lengths and string tensions on ukes as well! I just keep working at it but there is usually a little period of adjustment when I pick up a different instrument.

I have found that my thumb moving around and gripping the neck is the first sign I am getting into trouble with too much fret pressure. I am really working on keeping my thumb centered on the neck behind my current fret position. This seems to provide the best tactile feedback and control over the proper string pressure and provides other benefits. YMMV of course!

Other than that the other exercise I try is doing a few scale runs and focusing on applying pressure only on the string I am striking and trying to keep the other fingers as relaxed as possible between notes. You get a good feel for how much pressure is enough for clear tone without tensing up and my fingers develop a better muscle memory around how that feels. Chording seems to mask this feedback and makes it harder to get that "feel" into my brain.

Captain Simian wrote:

Any recommendations for developing a lighter touch?

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... practice, my friend, practice

Admittedly I don't have/play bass, but I do have a 12-string jumbo that tires my fretting hand after a while, the rest of my guitars, mandolin, banjo etc. all have a low enough action for grip not to be an issue. However, once my hand gets tired on the 12-string I can usually pick up and play a ukulele without any problem, so I'm sure it's just down to familiarity

Yep. Practice. Lots and lots of playing and eventually your hand will loosen.

I think it's Lil Rev that teaches a technique to know how firmly to fret a ukulele. He has his student lightly grasp the uke neck, placing the thumb on the fretting hand behind the neck, and the fingers on the fretboard, and squeeze only hard enough to keep the uke from slipping from their grasp. About the only real "demo" of this I've seen that effectively illustrates this technique.

As with so much of life, it's all about awareness. Stop trying to deliberately lighten your touch. Just make a commitment that after each piece you play you will explicitly state out loud how tightly or loosely you held the neck playing the piece you just finished. Once you learn to gain awareness of your tension, the problem will solve itself

Nice, useful first post, sopher. I'm going to begin practicing this way today.

I think that one needs to look beyond the death grip and look for the root cause, which I think is tenseness. I think that gripping the uke like that is just one result of not being relaxed. I think that you will notice that when you are like that, it isn't just the fretting, it manifests itself in the wrist, the forearm, and even the shoulder and back. At least for me, focusing on just that one aspect does not alleviate the problem, and can even lead to more. You can concentrate on it so much that your playing becomes stiff and artificial. If I work on playing more relaxed, a lot of things seem to go better, and fretting is one of them. Instead of focusing on that one thing, try to let your whole body loosen up a little. You may find that will cure a lot of those little things that add up.

Good posture is essential (strap or strapless) you need to be able to glide your fretting hand up and down the fingerboard with ease. If you have to spend time worrying about holding the ukulele it will be an unwanted distraction.
Concentrate (always, every time you play) on hitting the note directly behind the fret wire and trying to extract every last bit of sustain out of it. Timing is a big part of sustaining notes, you need to hold the note cleanly and not rush to get to the next note. Practicing songs very slowly, note by note will help develop more accurate fretting and cleaner, clearer notes. I do this regularly with instrumental songs that I've played for years, just to make sure I'm on track and not developing bad habits. Creeping variance is the enemy, it's very easy to drift away from a good technique.

Practicing good technique is another way to enjoy the ukulele, it's no big deal, it even makes it more enjoyable, if that's possible!

I forgot to mention that a lighter touch comes from more strength. Developing strength in your fretting hand is essential, the more strength you have, the less effort is required. It sounds crazy but that's how it works.

You can caught up in the playing, you may be fretting harder than you think. Keep in mind, you are pressing the strings against the frets, not the fingerboard. One teacher suggested me this exercise when I was fretting harder than needed play a scale fretting as lightly as possible. Press just behind the fret and try to make it buzz.Then see what will happens.

Camsuke said:

Good posture is essential (strap or strapless) you need to be able to glide your fretting hand up and down the fingerboard with ease.

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This is the key. Keep your fretting hand relaxed and agile. Get in place: sit down, or wear a strap; position the axe so it's braced comfortably. Do NOT support the axe with your fretting hand; it has other work to do.

Back in the day I had an interesting hand exercise. At night I played guitar; during the day I pounded away at a KSR33 Teletype. Each keypress required about 50 pounds of pressure. I worked up to 80 words per minute. Needless to say, my hands became quite strong.

I haven't done that for a long long time and even then I didn't waste that hand strength on gripping fretboards. Whether playing a soprano uke, Ovation 12-string, or the Martin Backpacker guitar that requires a strap even when sitting, my fingers only press the fretboard hard enough to hold down the strings. My guitar technique includes thumbing the bottom strings at times; these are the ONLY times I grip the neck, and my thumb is only there long enough to do its job and then go away, back behind the neck.

Think of your fretting hand's thumb as a cat's tail. It's there to provide balance while your fingers dance around, not to strangle the neck.

sopher said:

As with so much of life, it's all about awareness. Stop trying to deliberately lighten your touch. Just make a commitment that after each piece you play you will explicitly state out loud how tightly or loosely you held the neck playing the piece you just finished. Once you learn to gain awareness of your tension, the problem will solve itself

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Excellent suggestion. Can be used in any life situation.

two things I used to do with classical guitar to practice light touch and low volume is to practice very softly so you can barely hear it but at full tempo and with no buzzing etc. this will help you find the right pressure for your left hand.

Also to help and develop fast tremolo, try playing a piece with the strings dampened, you can put a small piece of cloth or foam between the strings and the top right after the bridge. IT will sound percusive, but you will be able to play cleaner finger picking with your right hand and other stuff like tremolo isolated without the ringing strings.

Regarding Barres, best thing is to isolate that by using just enough pressure on the barre, and playing each note with your right hand to make sure it rings nice and clean. once they do this consistently, try changing chords back and forth then incorporate into the overall piece. It's a type of isolation and chaining that works great for difficult passages or techniques.


Both exercises work really good specially with pieces you already know well. And they should be done with a metronome so you don't speed up and remove yet one more variable. ironically, playing the opposite ie. Slow or soft will yield great results when you then speed up, or want more control over dynamics.

Volume, speed and\force if not properly control does not equal music, it becomes noise.



Best of luck,
ivan

Awareness is the ticket, I'm finding. As with everything else in life.
Camsuke, you are so right. Finger strength is of utmost importance. Strong fingers=< of the feeling to need to grip the neck in white knuckle fashion!
I practice the Craig Chee crawl every day before I play scales. My fingers are way stronger than they used to be, I have more confidence, and a lighter touch now.