Two Handed Guitar

 

There are many suggestions for both the left and right hands of a guitar player. You will increase your flexibility and skill as you learn both right hand and left handed techniques.Here are the tipss you should know and begin working on today.

 

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 the holy grail of acoustic guitar playing.

 

If you play with only your fingers and not with a pick, you are fingerpicking. When you use all of your fingers, you can play complex parts at the same time.

 

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

 

Classical style guitar is using all of your fingers and keeping your right away from the body of the guitar for best freedom of movement. Study some classical techniques so you can learn the techniques used and benefit from them, even if you never play classical.

 

Using your right hand to muffle or mute the sound of the guitar is called dampening.

 

Left Hand Guitar Playing Techniques

 

Barre chords are played by using the index finger of your left hand to hold down all of the strings at once. Mastery of the barre chord is required of all guitar players.

 

Playing with arpeggios is a great way to learn a bit about music theory and learning how to solo. An arpeggio is basically a three note run, with all three notes taken from the chord, or scale.

 

Dampening is the technique of muting the sound of the strings with the side or heel of your right hand.

 

The hammer-on refers to using the left hand to sound the notes by forcefully pressing on the strings without the help of the right hand picking 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.