In guitars, there are lots of technicalities that you can use to improve your playing capabilities. Clean sound, Aggressive tones, and soothing melodies that can make your listeners amazed on how you play it is some of the examples that these techniques can give you.Now, this lesson is about to teach you a wonderful technique how to play it. This is often used, particularly, with folk songs and love songs (yeah!) also. Most of the beginners that I had seen were eager to learn this stuff because they had “personal interest” to play a “love song”, for some reasons that you can think of. But some says they were just really into this stuff as their personality dictates their taste about music.
Whatever the reason that you had in your mind right now doesn’t matter. The important thing here is that you learn how to pluck your own guitar, and that’s the bottom-line.
Hand and Arm positioning
The first thing that you need to consider is the position of your hand and also your arm in the instrument. The position, as I had said in my previous lesson, is a crucial part. You must do this with comfortable position and you can freely move both of it (hands and arms) while you play the guitar. You also need to place each of your fingertips close to the string, or you can place and touch the string, is more of a good idea.
Another thing would be resting your arms into the second hump from the body of the guitar that we had been done in our previous lesson. You don’t need to lock the guitar in your body and hold it tightly. Just relax your hands and arms, and focus on the chords that you’re doing while you pluck each strings with it. That way, your focus is in the sounds that you’re making instead of it.
Using your fingers while you pluck
This time, you will use all your fingers. This part has lots of technicalities, styles, and methods how to use your fingers to play a song with it. Since you are a beginner, we will do the basics, and that means we will use all of it. The fingers that will do most of the work plucking the strings will be: your Pinkie, Ring, Middle and Point fingers. These will pluck the last four strings in the fret board and the remaining finger (thumb) will be the one to do the bass of the chords. This is the finger allocations for each string:
- Pinkie - String #1
- Ring - String #2
- Middle - String #3
- Point - #4
You may notice that the thumb is missing. Well, the thumb is responsible for the bass of a specific chord that you do while you play a song in it. This finger has two strings that it can use unlike the rest of the fingers in a specific note. String #5 and String #6 are the strings that have been concerned about this, and either of them will be used by your thumb to produce a bass sound for a song making it bolder.
Plucking the guitar
Plucking is similar to strumming. They both have the same mechanics while you play it. The only difference is the style plus its details while you play it. The timing and the rhythm is just the same too. And to start plucking this instrument, you need to hit the bass string first with your thumb (of course!). After hitting that string, you will automatically start to pluck. First, hit the strings with an arrangement of 4, 3, 2, and 1 downward. And if you had reach the last string (string #1), you will hit the strings again with the arrangement of 2, 3, and 4 upward to make it a cycle. That’s it! You had made a cycle just like you’re strumming.
Usually, string #6 is used when a chord comes with a bar/flat. If there’s no finger pressing that string in the fret board use string #5, instead. That’s how simple it is. So you won’t be confused when to use string #5 and String #6 when you’re playing the instrument like this.
Pick or Finger
You can use either of them if you prefer it. But using a pick with a particular song, especially if it is a folk song, will give you a hard time playing it. It is possible, but you must have a tremendous amount of experience to do it. But still, it is your choice what you want to use.
There a lot of songs that plucking with fingers are more precise to use than a pick. If you’re good at it (pick), then there will be no problem to play with it after all. Picks can help you play without hurting your fingers, while, fingers can make your playing more convenient and faster while you pluck the guitar. There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages this two has. But, no matter what you use, it is you that matters in this. So, even if you use the pick or not. It always depends upon your skill in playing this instrument.
This post is quite long now, so I will wrap this thing up here at Guitar Tutorials for Beginners. You can watch some artist like Harem Scarem, Andy Mckee, Eagles, Eric Clapton and many other artists to give you inspiration about this technique and furnish it. Enjoy playing the guitar and cheers with your success with this instrument.
