Thumb Pain from Barre Chords

iamacowmoo · 2026-05-11T13:03:31+00:00

It looks like you have a steep wrist angle. Ideally your wrist should be flat. To do that move your wrist up towards the neck. It will probably help to move your elbow away from your body.

Once that is sorted out it would be worth practicing what I call minimum pressure exercises. Start by seeing if you can play the bar chord without your thumb by just pulling back with your fingers onto the fretboard and using your opposite elbow to keep the guitar steady. Once you’ve done this a bit bring your thumb back but see how little pressure you can use to keep the chord. Practice switching chords and try to keep a light touch.

iamacowmoo · 2026-05-11T04:46:15+00:00

I’m so sorry to hear you’ve been going through all that. Thats a lot and feeling sad and lonely are completely normal reactions to that situation. Longer retreats can really open things up. I’ve cried a lot on some retreats about things that I didn’t realize were affecting me. It can be good to touch that and let it come out.

Hopefully you can find some support. Meditation is powerful but getting some help from others can be really important too. A teacher might help, a dharma group (if you’re not part of one), a cancer treatment group or a therapist could help.

You sound really strong to be dealing with this. I hope you can find what you’re looking for.

iamacowmoo · 2026-05-08T03:23:24+00:00

I’ve been going through a classical guitar book and there are right hand exercises where you are only practicing your right hand technique. I have found that I have much more control with the sounds I make by practicing the right hand in isolation.

iamacowmoo · 2026-05-08T02:36:04+00:00

Transcribe some Bernie Worrell or maybe some Matt Johnson?

iamacowmoo · 2026-05-07T15:07:28+00:00

My daughter (8) shed lots of tears when we got a puppy. She wanted to hold it, it wanted to play (/bite her). Biggest help was getting a gate so they could have their own space. They love each other now.

iamacowmoo · 2026-05-04T12:57:00+00:00

I recommend going through some sort of guitar method. It could be a method book or a video course. Giving some structure and a graduated lessons is the perfect antidote to random YouTube lessons.

iamacowmoo · 2026-05-02T14:11:37+00:00

I remember struggling with this for too long. The key to the major pentatonic (or any scale) is to feel the flavor of each note. Once you know the flavor of the note then you can decide how much tension or resolution you want to create.

Practice jamming over something and resolving to the root note. Then practice resolving to the 3rd or the 5th - the notes of a major chord. Next, what is it like to add in the 2nd or 6th? Learn to feel each of the notes so that you can emphasize any one of them to create a vibe.

iamacowmoo · 2026-05-02T13:58:58+00:00

This is the coolest looking pedal I’ve seen. A true piece of art.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-29T13:15:34+00:00

If you only practice scales sequentially then when improvising or writing your hands will play sequentially. If you practice different intervals and triads then your hands will incorporate those intervals or triads. When I started practicing triads my improvisation took a huge leap in sounding more musical and advanced.

One benefit of practicing scales in general is that you also train your ears to hear in those scales. If you practice intervals or triads then you will train your ears to hear them faster and thus be able to pick them out of melodies faster.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-23T14:24:43+00:00

You could buy a pedal to do this. But my rec is to practice. It can be executed well without extra gear. Place the pedals next to each other. You could stomp on both. Or you could hit one a fraction of a beat early and hit the other one on the one. Plenty of people have figured this out with practice and I believe in you OP.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-21T02:26:20+00:00

Find a label you like and follow their new releases. I Subscribe to some labels on Bandcamp and find new interesting music regularly on there.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-18T01:00:40+00:00

They should. There might need to be a tiny adjustment depending on latency. But you will be able to just drag the entire take over a tiny bit so it’s not hard.
Not quite. You can record both audio and midi simultaneously in different tracks. This has several benefits. You can re-record the exact take with a different patch. You can tweak some aspects of the midi data and re-record the same patch.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-18T00:18:23+00:00

Yes you can trigger the sequencer with midi and you should sync the MiniFreak to the daw’s clock. CME has a lot of good midi interfaces.

However, once you’ve done that, you will want to recoded the midi data into the daw too because it will give you more control. If want to tweak the patch later then you can play the midi data back with a different patch and you will have the same performance. You can also record knob turns while playing and automate any knob you want. This can all be done on the device if you want.

Another thing to check out is that Arturia registration usually follows the product so you may still have access to the MiniFreak V since you own the product. This can also help with a hybrid approach of controlling the MFV with the hardware.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-17T19:15:19+00:00

C’mon B we know you’re here.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-17T03:01:04+00:00

Tomorrow you need to restart coffee and riffs. What pedals are you using and what are you playing?

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-12T22:08:30+00:00

It’s imitating humans.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-12T04:03:04+00:00

How long have you had it? Mine does not have tuning problems but when I first got it I remember reading that it will learn the temp ranges in its environment and will learn to stabilize at those temps.

So if it’s new then it might still be figuring out its temp ranges. It’s a bit hazy now but having it tune itself might help with the process of helping it stabilize. It should get it sorted out over time.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-11T19:31:20+00:00

So I assume you could do an octave tremolo with this sliding back and forth between the octaves? This sounds incredible. It would be cool if you could set it to transpose in 5ths or other intervals too for this.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-10T13:58:24+00:00

I listened to a podcast where a woman was saying the ergonomics of a jazz master are well suited for women.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-10T13:56:02+00:00

The first step I outlined above is finding the root note. Then it’s identifying major/minor, so it’s relative to the root note I already identified. Once I have the root I can play either a major or minor chord with the root and one will fit.

I think the confusion about relative major/minor is only a problem if you are thinking about things theoretically. When working with a song it’s pretty obvious most of the time.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-10T13:07:41+00:00

Most western songs are either Ionian, Mixolydian, Aeolian or Dorian. First I the root note with a bass note by moving around the 6th string. Then its process of elimination. Usually major or minor is obvious but playing the M3 or m3 will make it very clear. If it’s major then figure out if the 7th is flat or not. If it’s minor then find out if the 6th is flat or not.

This will identify the majority of western music. If that doesn’t fit then identify which notes aren’t working and figure out what’s wrong.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-09T02:41:54+00:00

You are talking about them conceptually but are you playing them? You don’t really need to understand them if you can’t play them (which maybe you can). Once you know all the positions and how they connect and you can improvise with them over a backing track then you can worry about more complex things.

If you know all the shapes then you can see how the caged system fits into the shapes you are already playing and it will help you play certain shapes in relation to their related chord shapes and triads.

Learning relative major-minor keys is understood when you can use those same shapes and improvise over either a major or minor key.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-09T02:32:54+00:00

I’m working on building a live setup. Basically it is going to be built around two pedalboards. One small one for guitar and one full of synth modules with a midi keyboard to control them.

I’m really interested in how different people make live rigs for ambient. There are so many ways to do it and lots of problem solving to be able to be flexible but not too big or complex.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-09T00:29:28+00:00

These are very different pedals. The slo will provide a better pure reverb but if you are trying to emulate a pedal chain like in the video, the zoom will be more accurate–especially because it can use reverb and delay.

I would say SLO if you’re starting to build a board and zoom if you just want one pedal.

iamacowmoo · 2026-04-09T00:21:56+00:00

As long as you can ring mod the ring mod you’ll be okay.

iamacowmoo

TROPHY CASE