Lesson: Left Hand Preparation for Classical Guitar

Left Hand Preparation (or Planting) Lesson. The main benefits of preparation in your left hand technique are: accuracy, speed, security, and efficiency. Another great term for efficiency is economy of motion (using small smooth motions). It’s a great way to practice your repertoire. It’s also a way to work on your left hand technique rather than just playing something over and over.

Times & Topics

  • 0:00 – Intro, Definition, and Reasoning
  • 1:45 – Why Prepare the Fingers?
  • 2:36 – Accuracy and Security
  • 3:28 – Example Practice (Sanz)
  • 7:49 – Preparation Tapping Exercise

You can see more lesson videos at the lesson archive page. You can help out the site and these free lessons by visiting the support page. If you’re looking for a technique book, try out one of my two books:

Here’s the video link on my YouTube Channel if you want to watch it there.

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Bradford Werner
Bradford Werner

Bradford Werner is a classical guitarist and music publisher from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He originally created this site for his students at the Victoria Conservatory of Music but now shares content worldwide. Curating guitar content helps students absorb the culture, musical ideas, and technique of the classical guitar. Bradford also has a YouTube channel with over 100,000 subscribers and 14 million views. He taught classical guitar at the Victoria Conservatory of Music for 16 years and has freelanced in Greater Victoria for 25 years. See more at his personal website.

6 Comments

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  2. Hi Brad, again, just a terrific lesson which resonates with me. I was curious whether the left-hand planting you discuss here has any similarity or connection to Aaron Shearer’s Aim Directed Method approach for playing with the left hand. Hope you are well.
    Stephen Courtney

      • Hi, Brad:
        Shearer’s “Aim-Directed Movement” is introduced in Part 1, pp. 47-8 of his Learning The Classic Guitar. He defines this concept as “the process of knowing where to move your fingers on the fingerboard before actually moving them.” He means positional knowledge without looking at the fingerboard.

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