Fretting Hand Position for the Best Sound

So let's move back to our fretting hand now and just talk about fretting hand position. Where is the best place to fret a particular note to get the best sound?

Relaxed Left Hand

First of all, we want a nice, relaxed left hand. Here are some tips to achieve that:

• Imagine you're trying to put a thumbprint in the back of the neck with your fretting hand.
• This will keep your wrist nice and low, maintaining a nice gap underneath.

We want to avoid:

• Grabbing the neck like a baseball bat, as this is very restrictive to the movement of your fingers.

To allow free movement of your fingers:

• Keep the hand relaxed.
• Remember what we discussed about the elbow; it should not be jutted into the side of your stomach.

Fret Position for Optimal Sound

Now we're going to discuss where physically to play a note within a fret to get the best sound. We will start with the third fret on the A string, which is this note here.

Fret Area

• This whole area technically is the third fret.
• You can see that compared to the size of my fingernail, I could probably fit two to three of my fingers in this fret if I wanted to.

Best Position

The best position to be in is right up against the fret wire of the third fret:

• Fret Number One
• Fret Number Two
• Fret Number Three

I'm not on top of the fret (which is the metal); I'm just the other side of it.

Minimal Pressure for Clean Sound

When I fret it there, it means that I have the least amount of pressure to apply to the note to get a clean sound.

Listen to this clean note now.

There's no buzzing or anything like that. If I move to the back of the fret and play the same note with the same pressure, I'll get a buzzier sound:

• You can hear that kind of buzziness.

I can fix it by pushing down a lot harder, but that forces the string out of tune a little bit because I have to push down so hard.

Single Notes vs. Chords

Where possible, though it's not always an option with some chords, if you're playing single note passages, you have a choice of where to go within the fret.

The best place to be is right at the top of the fret.

• If you play on top of the metal, you'll get a dull, muted sound.
• On the other side, you will achieve a nice clean tone.

This principle applies anywhere on the neck, but particularly down here where the frets are nice and big, and you have a choice of where to place your finger within the fret.

Always place it as far forward in the fret as you can, if possible.