This is normal, but I’m betting you’re making the common fretting mistake that most people make. You are probably curling your fingers over the top - claw style - rather than laying them flat on the strings.
My advice is to think like you’re holding a sandwich. Holding a sandwich is what the resting shape of your hand should be. That is also how much pressure it should take to fret. (Don’t stress about this too much now. This will make more sense as you progress.)
Here is a video I made for another beginner that illustrates what I’m talking about with hand shape:
My picking hand is cramping while playing “Come Together”.
I want to play it with a pick and palm muting. I really like that tone. Normally, this is not a big deal. But for some reason, on this song, my hand starts cramping a bit after halfway through.
Thoughts or suggestions? Is it the position palm muting? Just do finger style?
Aha! I think that’s what’s doing it. Using my hand more than my wrist.
Usually, when I’m pick-playing, I’m more strumming alternating strokes. For this, I’m trying to hit those two initial staccato attacks with tight, even downstrokes. That means I’m holding a lot more tension in my hand.
I need to figure out how to get that nice downstroke motion with my wrist, especially while palm muting.
…
Edit: Yup. This was the answer. Still gotta clean up the technique to not miss strings, but on the pick rake up, pushing through the strings with my whole wrist sliding up the bridge so I’m pushing through the strings using arm muscles instead of trying to push through with finger strength.
I’m working on Only Shallow by MBV. All set to record it tonight because I was rocking it all week. Apparently, I have a problem where I want to play the easy part about 10bpm too fast. The verses with all the chords, rocked it… no problem. The 4 note box pattern, nope.
Nevermind, nailed it. I couldn’t play last night, tilled the front yard and reseeded with white clover. My forearms felt like jello and I couldn’t fret anything. Picked it back up tonight and got it recorded on the first take. I ended up dropping the volume overall, I was having issues hearing the drums over the guitars and that was messing with my timing. I’ll get the video done tomorrow and post it.
Pull-offs have been totally doing my noodle in over the last couple of weeks
I just can’t seem to figure out the coordination to hold the fret for the lower note, whilst plucking with the fretting hand - I either pluck too hard and get a horrible “clanky” tone, or I lift off the lower note and get either a ghost note or harmonics instead
It feels like it’s one of those techniques that is just going to take a bunch of time to build up the correct muscle memory. Does anyone know of any good resources out there that cover the technique?
I am struggling to get out of the root note rut. When I was first learning, I was handed a bass and a piece of paper with the fretboard drawn on it and the basics of plucking. No other direction, so I thought my only job was to hit the root (I didn’t know that’s what it was called at the time). It wasn’t until 4 years later that I went through B2B. So I have the tools and the knowledge, but the application is lacking. I’m working on breaking out of it, but it’s tough. Especially not coming from a musical background. And sometimes it’s frustrating, but I am embracing the challenge and looking forward to some kind of breakthrough.
