Tips on the 0-4-0 chord?

Playing/Techniques
#1

I see the 0-4-0 chord in a few traditional songs but theres always one of two problems:

  1. if i arch my finger enough to make a clean chord, the yubikake inadvertently mutes the san-no-ito
  2. if i try to avoid the first problem, the pad of my finger is too big and the two strings to either side of it hit against my finger, dulling the sound.

any tips on how to deal with this? use even less of the finger pad? get a new yubikake?

thanks

#2

If I understand you correctly you are using your index finger. Since it is on the middle string which is spun, you don’t need the finger nail. Use your ring finger for this chord and you should get rid of the yubikake problem!

I’ve had problems with the yubikake before and sure enough some improvement on it would help but for this chord you can remedy it without changing your yubikake.

#3

I second what Karl said.

If you have time, could you take a picture of how you’re pressing the string? I’m interested to see how you’re doing it.

#4

best i could get picturewise: http://imgur.com/cBGFUzG

i do use the 3rd finger, but the slight movement/aching of it always draws my first finger in. only just realized it was involuntary after taking the picture. i suppose thats another thing that only get better with time

#5

You can try to move your hand a bit to the left while still maintaining the ring finger, so that your third finger is a bit more angled.

You can also try to move the san no ito closer to the ni no ito.

#6

ok i always get confused with this. for the more ‘professional’ stringing for those tricky 4300 measures, are the two thinner strings moved closer or farther? i feel like closer is harder to manipulate them separately, and would ruin the 0-4-0 chord entirely. is it actually farther apart and im just remembering wrong?

#7

Hmm, I wonder. What if you rotated your hand clockwise so the thumb is higher? That would bring your index finger down enough so the yubikake won’t touch the string. I just took some pictures. As you can see, the yubikake doesn’t even go over the sao when using the index finger, and only barely goes over with the index finger.

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