Swamp Yankee
Well-known member
> Your thumb is not planted dead center in the back of the neck ( neither is mine, usually)
> but you’re also not jamming the neck down into the web between thumb and index finger
> in a power grip like you might hold a baseball bat.
> It’s that baseball bat grip that makes barre chords very difficult, in my experience.
I think these grips are those whom you call baseball bat grip.
Yep - that's the one...in more general terms, it's the "power grip" - as opposed to the "precision grip" in which the thumb and index finger are used in a sort of pinching hold.
Hey - if a player can cleanly execute Bbs and barre chords, with the power grip - and that player has no problems switching to other chord shapes consistently and quickly, then there's nothing inherently "wrong" with using it. But I'd argue they're likely to be the exception, rather than the rule.
In my experience, that grip causes all sorts of problems with those chords - in the case of the Bb, it makes it much more difficult to "banana" with the index finger while arching the ring and middle fingers over the E and A strings so as to fret the C and G strings at the second and third frets, respectively. Likewise, if the player is using the full barre with the index finger...
But by rotating the hand counter clockwise, the thumb moves to the back of the neck and all those other fingers can do their duty more easily...assuming the player does not have other hand related problems which prevent them from using that grip.
And given how often I've seen the "power grip" with new players - and how common it is that new players complain about Bb and barre chords.... it seems to me that is stands to reason that they ought to look to the way they're holding the neck to potentially solve these problems.