Break Away II

There are many ideas for both the left and right hands of a guitar player. As you learn new techniques you will expand your repertoire and flexibility.These are the terms and skills you should know and work on right away.

Skills for the Right Hand

Flat picking is the name of strumming the guitar with a plectrum or pick instead of your fingers to play. Flat picking is a skill all guitar players need to know.

Finger picking is usually described as playing the guitar with only your fingers, not with a pick. Fingerpicking allows the guitarist to play technically challengingparts by using many fingers at once to play.

Playing with a constant, alternating bass is another style or pattern of fingerpicking. Playing the alternating bass with your thumb, you play the melody with your index, ring and middle finger.

Classical guitar playing is the pinnacle of guitar playing achievement and requires control over all of your fingers. Study some classical techniques so you can learn the techniques used and benefit from them, even if you never play classical.

Dampening is the technique that uses the heel of the right hand to muffle or mute the sound of the guitar.

Left Hand Guitar Playing Techniques

The barre chord is formed by using the index finger of your left hand to hold down all of the strings at once. Only after mastering the barre chord can you advance as a guitar player.

The arpeggio is a useful tool to help to build a improvisation as well as understand the theory of music. The arpeggio is probably the most basic of music theory skills and a great way to build your
solos.

Dampening is a technique that can be used by either hand and involves muting the strings just slightly to produce a muffled, percussive sound.

A hammer-on is a left hand technique that refers to using only your left hand fingers to press down in a forceful method to sound the string.

A pull-off is when you take your finger off the string and causing it to sound the note. The combination of hammer-ons and pull-offs is a great way to build a lead solo as well.

As important as it is to have a good song to play in the first place, proper use of guitar technique just adds an entirely new layer to a guitarists playing.  Your guitar playing will lack heart and soul if all you do is replicate the notes as they are written down, even though you do hit them in the correct order. A good guitarist should strive to learn all the techniques he/she can master, and the benefits will surely become obvious. Don’t be fooled into thinking these techniques sound too advanced for the beginner, you don’t have to be playing lead guitar to master them.

Each of the techniques mentioned here can be found in the rhythm section of many different songs.  So these techniques should be mastered even if you only play rhythm guitar in a band.

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Pull-offs and Hammer-ons

Hammer-ons and pull-offs are very similar techniques. If the song calls for multiple notes to be sounded on a single string then rather than picking and fretting each note indivudally the fretting hand is used to produce the sound. The Hammer on comes into play when the note is higher up the string and the guitarist must fret the note with sufficient force to produce the appropriate note.

If the second note is further down the string then you perform a pull-off. To perform a pull-off you must use your fretting hand to to actually pluck the string, pulling you finger away to sound the note. If you have a rapid sequence of notes all close to gether then then you will likely have to master the Hammer-on and pull-off to play them effectively.

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Bending

Bending literally involves pushing a ringing string along a fret to change the pitch.  A great bend will allow for easy movement between notes and uses changes in string tension to produce the sound. This movement through the microtones of two notes can be very effective in slow bends. You can also unbend a string back to the original note for the opposite effect. A lot of lead riffs and quite a few rhythm riffs are pretty heavily based on this technique.

This can be a tricky a technique to pick up because there is an audible component to it. You need to pay attention to the pitch of the note while performing the bend.  If you miss it then the note can go really bad, and sound flat (or sharp depending which way you are going). However dont let this put you off, once mastered this technique is very satisfying. It really does make a huge difference to the sound you can produce.

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