I'm curious as to whether any others of you find it more comfortable to leave your thumbs up and floating over the fretboard vs. resting on the beveled surface on the back of the stick. When keeping my thumb on the beveled edge as Free Hands suggests, it seems like an uncomfortable reach with my fingers to get all the way across to the highest pitch strings in each register and I can't arch my fingers enough to clear adjacent strings. Part of that may be that I have smallish hands, but I'm also playing an older mid 80's version standard 10 string so it's not a wide fretboard either. Any disadvantages to playing in that way? I'm still a rank novice at this point and aside from a few month long stint when I got my stick about 8-9 years ago, I really just started digging into it again back in December.

As a passing comment, Where you have your elbow / forearm positioned makes a difference. If you keep it tucked in all the time. It’s going to be harder to place your fingers. Greg Howard has a good ergonomics lesson he does at seminars etc. It’s probably worth an online lesson with him on that issue. He can give you some good guidance that might take you a while to discover on your own.


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I think that your thumb or a finger should always be in contact with the stick. It grounds you. It’s like a safety line in space. If you get detached you might find you way back or you might get lost. Keeping a digit on the stock at all times stops you from losing your spot and missing notes. Someone posted the Rachel Flowers a blind Stickist keeps herself grounded and never gets lost.

Sounds like a bit of a pickle, trying to find the balance between adequate reach and having a "grounding" element.

My initial, reflex reaction to the idea of not having a thumb behind the instrument was, "Not a good idea."

Then, after a few moments of consideration and thinking about piano players, I figured if the Stick was immobile (eg on a stand, or laying horizontally across one's lap), it might work.

Then, after a few more moments, I find myself wondering if it could work while wearing the instrument normally if, say, the left hand had the thumb on the instrument in the traditional manner while the right hand had the thumb floating...would the relationship between the two hands be sufficient to enable accurate playing by both hands if only one of them kept itself "grounded"?

No answer in this, just sharing my stream of consciousness. Perhaps I'll have to give it a whirl just to check it out.

From a ergonomic perspective, since the stick is usually played in the upright position (same as a Sax for example) both thumbs rest more naturally opposed to the other fingers - so, for me, this would be their natural position when playing a stick, witch is not to say you can’t bring them up front for an occasional thing, either one of them for that matter. Both of them at the same time presents another problem concerning sustaining the instrument in it’s optimal position - you would need to have it rest against some other part of your body (shoulder, belly...)
Anyway, Mike said it all, the secret lies in the elbow: just lift it up a little bit and everything falls into place, thus avoiding weird angles in the fingers or wrist. might not be natural for the first few weeks but it will improve everything. On a final note: listen to your body, it’s the best teacher you’ll have. If you put the thumbs in front, you can immediately feel the added tension in the wrists as they need to bend in order to grant thumb access to the fretboard. A little tension for a specific passage is natural but to have that kind of tension all the time when you play is a recipe for injury.
PS
Another thing you might want to keep in mind is: rotate the instrument just a little bit and have it face forward instead of facing you too much - we tend to want to look at it and end up exaggerating making it very hard for the left hand to access all the strings - the smaller the hands the harder it gets. I have small hands too so the non angled belt hook is super helpful.


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If u are playing a Railboard, there is a natural resting place for your thumb in the sculpted area underneath the neck. That’s one of reasons why I bought the instrument. I was having wrist pain from my wooden sticks by not adhering to proper ergonomics

The main thing for me is to turn the thumb so that the "side" of it is making contact, not the pad. This allows your hand to open up over the board more.

Thanks to all for the constructive input. I got layed out by my second vaccine dose or I would have responded sooner. After paying a little more attention to my elbow posture, I think that may be part of it. I also suspect that I'm using too little gain or volume and overcompensating by hinging my wrists to transfer more force to the strings, rather than having a more typewriting sort of motion.

Since I'm a lazy old guy, I mostly practice sitting down with a homemade lap bar so as I play the top of the stick is resting solidly against my shoulder and the bottom is secure on my lap and the movement is negligible so I guess I didn't learn the need to stabilize with thumb contact. A video lesson should probably be in my immediate future once I don't suck embarrassingly badly to let a pro hear me.

Old guy sitting w/ the Stick resting on my shoulder - I try to get away from that. It should float. No typing. Maybe a lesson with Greg. Don't worry about sucking it's about proper technique!