Beginning Classical Guitar - Right Hand Picking Techniques Video Transcript

Hello friends, Chris, with beginningguitaronline.com. Today, we're talking about classical guitar basics. In this segment, we're going over right-hand picking techniques for playing on a nylon string or classical guitar.

Getting Good Tone from Your Fingerpicking

One of the things that's most challenging for people when they first begin trying to add classical guitar to their repertoire or learn some of the basics of this beautiful and nuanced style of guitar playing is getting a good responsive tone out of the instrument.

It's much easier to get a quick responsive tone out of an electric guitar or a steel-string acoustic guitar. The guitars naturally respond faster with the steel strings. However, with just a little bit of attention to your right-hand approach, you can get a great tone out of a classical guitar and add this wonderful style to your arsenal.

Classical Guitar Posture

First things first, with classical guitar, we want to talk about some posture pointers.

We want to make sure we're sitting with our shoulders level and that our feet are flat on the ground with the exception of the left leg elevated on a footstool to raise the guitar up at this somewhat 45-degree angle of the neck, or using one of the myriad contraptions available out there such as this guitar lift which fastens to the back of the guitar and elevates it into this seemingly floating in air position that allows me to stay totally relaxed in my upper body, allows my arms freedom of movement, and keeps the guitar at the most advantageous playing angle for classical guitar studies.

Once we've established good body positioning on a stool or a chair, then we can talk about bringing our right arm and our right hand to the strings to play. At this time, I'm just going to leave my left arm down, relaxed with my hand resting on my knee, or you can place it on the upper bough of the guitar in a relaxed manner.

We're just talking about the right hand, the terminology for the right-hand fingers, and how we pluck the strings. First, I'm hanging my right arm down at my side. Then I'm gently bringing it up and draping it over the guitar. You'll notice that I'm positioning my elbow just beneath the bridge line.

Practicing in front of a mirror can be a great way to get some feedback for these initial setups. Again, relaxed arm, floating up, elbow just behind the bridge line here, and my wrist, arched ever so slightly as my hand comes down onto the strings and my thumb placed on the sixth string, just at the bottom of the rosette, the decorative pattern surrounding the soundhole.

I'll keep my thumb on the sixth string here, and then I'm going to extend my index finger, my middle finger, and my ring finger, and allow my pinky to just hang out in a relaxed manner. The terms for the right hand are pulgar, indice, medio, anular. And we won't be using our pinky to pluck the classical guitar strings.

Let's recap that one more time. Bringing my arm up, my elbow just below the bridge line, my thumb resting on the sixth string, low E at the bottom of the rosette. Then I'm extending indice, medio, and anular. Now I'm going to slightly curl them back, and I find my third string G with indice.

I'll find my second string, B with medio, and my first string, E with anular. I've now assigned a string to each finger. Pulgar on the sixth string, indice on the third string G, medio on the second string B, anular on the first string E.

And here with a closeup view of my right hand, you see how the placement of the fingertips, a good view of pulgar, indice, medio and anular shows that we're contacting the string at this kind of, 45-degree angle. We're lightly resting that connection where the nail and the flesh are at the end of the fingertips on top of the strings.

Beginning Classical Guitar Fingerpicking Technique Examples

In this example let the open strings ring out until you’re ready to pick the next string in the series.

Then we'll sequentially move through the fingers as we play our first arpeggio on an E minor chord. The wonderful thing about the guitar is that the open strings of the sixth, third, second, and first put together make up an E minor triad. Thumb plucking on the sixth string, returning to its resting position. Indice plucking alone, and returning to its resting position. Medio plucking alone, returning to its resting position. Anular playing high E, returning to its resting position.

Let the strings ring out until the first beat of the next measure. Be patient with yourself as you begin to play in time with a metronome.

Once again, in rhythm, one, two, three, four. Pulgar, rest, rest, rest. Indice, rest, rest, rest. Medio, rest, rest, rest. Anular, rest, rest, rest. I'm returning each finger to its home string after playing, allowing each finger to practice true independence from a preparatory position.

After you feel comfortable plucking with four beats of rest accompanying each finger, then decrease down to two beats of rest. Here we go. One, two, ready play. Two. Two. Two. Two. Again. Two. Ready, play. Two. Two. Two. Two.

And then decrease down to one finger playing on each sequential beat. We'll have four beats, four fingers playing. One, two, three, four.

Doing this exercise with the right hand creates a good staccato texture of definition between each of the notes.

Staccato is the musical term for short and stopped-sounding notes. You hear that between each note, even though playing sequentially. There's a decent bit of space given. Each finger returns to the resting position on its home string.

Now with two beats of rest in between each return preparation. One, two, ready, play. Ready, play.

Now, with no beats of rest between each return preparation. One, two, ready, play.

Playing with a Legato Tone

What we can do next is play the same exercise with a legato tone. And this ability to control your staccato playing and your legato playing is a fundamental classical music principle.

Adding the legato tone to the right hand, we're going to simply play with each finger and not return to its home base resting position on its home string. For example, thumb, two. Still floating. Indice, two, three. Now only medio and anular remain planted. Now, just anular remains planted. I have no fingers planted on the string now.

Going sequentially through our rhythmic beats helps us gain control over the finger placement and the attack. Again, with four beats of rest and legato finger strokes. We hear all the notes, kind of, coalesce together. They're all joining each other and ringing out into that broken arpeggiated E minor chord. All the strings together, if plucked, would sound that resonant D minor chord. By playing them sequentially, we call that an arpeggiated chord.

And now, with just two beats of rest between.

And now, with no rest in between each of the sequentially played notes. One, two, ready, play. Rest, rest, replant, again. Rest, rest, replant, again. Rest, rest, replant, again.

As you work on playing with a good legato tone, first try to allow the thumb to replant even though we will allow indice, medio, and anular to play unsupported. Finishing in that closed towards the palm of the hand position.

Once again. One, two, ready, play. And here we'll be playing with the thumb not returning to the sixth string as well. Replant, two, ready, play.Replant, two, ready, play. Replant, two, ready, play. Replant.

For many guitarists, who already have a good knowledge of chords in the left hand established you can experiment with playing this forward arpeggio pattern on a number of different chords with your left hand. Really, more than any of the other guitar styles, the right hand is what it's all about in classical guitar playing.

Example 2 - Playing with Alternating Bass Notes

In this second portion of classical guitar basics on the right-hand picking pattern, we're going through different combinations of that right-hand arpeggio. Here, our thumb is now going to traverse through the bottom strings and we'll play that E minor arpeggio on the top, but with a walking thumb pattern.

As always, as you continue on your journey of learning more about right-hand independence, and right-hand picking patterns as they relate to classical guitar playing, know that the benefit will spread across to all the other styles of music you may already play or may be interested in playing in the future.

A well-developed right hand can help you play country music on an electric guitar exceptionally well. It can help you when you go to learn slide guitar playing on an electric or acoustic guitar. It can help you when you go to learn a lap steel or a pedal steel guitar. A well-developed right hand is also the hallmark of all of the best fingerstyle, acoustic guitar playing.

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