43. Two Reasons To Target Just Behind The Next Highest Fret

The proper place for the fretting fingers is just behind the next highest fret wherever possible. For example, the common chord G major should appear as the following:


Here is  D major:


However, there is a tendency in beginner players to favor the “rear” area of the fret. Here is the same D chord with this erroneous setup. THIS IS WRONG:

Fretting the rear of the fret area means more finger pressure is required to sound the  string cleanly, not a good thing!

Sometimes, the specific reason for poor finger placement is due to a lack of flexibility in the fretting hand. For a simple C chord, the 3rd (ring) finger may feel it is required to stretch a

long distance, thus not reaching past the rear of the 3rd fret:

This (erroneous) default position of the hand exists simply because the fingers are not accustomed to stretching across guitar frets (or probably anything else for that matter). However, as seen in the a minor chord example, the fingers inexplicably tend to gravitate toward the rear portion of the fret regardless. This would not pose a problem in and of itself if the pressure needed to sound the fretted note cleanly were uniform across the fret area. This is not so!  The most finger pressure needed to sound any note cleanly is at the rear; the least pressure is at the front.








The working area of the “fret” is the portion of the fretboard that lies between any 2 of the frets. To eliminate any confusion, remember that the thin metal strips along the neck are called frets, and the working area between any 2 of these strips is ALSO called a fret, or fret area. Thus, the third metal strip from the nut is the 3rd fret (as noted in the caption above the neck in the photo), but it is the working area between the 2nd and 3rd of these metal strips that is always referred to as the 3rd fret (as shown in the caption below the neck in the photo)


The “front” of the fret therefore is simply the part of the fret area closest to the metal strip which borders the next highest fret.   Whether playing chords, partial chords, scale tones or anything else, strive ALWAYS to play toward that area of the fret.

Example: If you are playing the note F on the 3rd fret, 4th string, your target would look like this:


NOT like this!


Certain chords and partial chords, double stops etc, do not allow for every finger to be at the front.

Consider a simple E chord:


You can see that the middle finger cannot be at front; the ring finger is in the way. In cases like the the middle of the fret is sufficient.

The other reason to aim for the front area of the fret is to have a more precise target.


This is important!

If the target of any fretting finger is ‘in the middle’ (thinking this is the goal is a common misconception), or worse, just  vaguely “anywhere” in the fretting area, then you are leaving yourself a very large margin for error! Having a precise target means when you miss, you will not miss by nearly as much.  Practicing this has made a great difference for me

. © 2012 Jim Greenfield