Dan FairsSudden guitar insight. Like a lot of folks, I suffer from the "flapping finger” problem on my left hand. For may people, this is the pinky; for me, it's actually that the middle finger like to try to curl up when I'm not using it. I've been working on holding those fingers close to the fretboard when they're not in use, so they can just drop onto the frets. 🧵
Except - I've just realised that this is completely the wrong way to think about it. My fingers are all in the right place when they're relaxed. So this means I shouldn't focus on "holding" my fingers close to the fretboard; instead, it's just that the single finger which is fretting a note should have just the barest tension required to hold the string down (which really isn't much) and the rest of the fingers should be perfectly relaxed.
So it's not "holding" close to the fretboard, it's just "relaxing" close to it.
Almost all of my speed and accuracy improvements over the last 6 months have come from increasing levels of relaxation while playing, letting go of any tension. This is no exception.
Relaxation and gentle precision seems to be the key to higher speeds and cleaner playing for me.
To see this in action, just watch someone like #plini play.