Acoustic Guitar Picking Patterns

Video Transcript

Welcome back to Expert Village. We are going to cover the right hand and then we'll be able to make a little more music. I know you guys are waiting to play. So, let's talk about the right hand quickly. We're going to play two ways right now, either with a pick or with our fingers. I'm going to start off with a pick. I think everyone should do that in the beginning. Between the thumb and the forefinger, as you can see my thumb goes across sideways and my forefinger is like that. It's like a fingernail (an extended finger nail). Keep it loose. Not too tight, not too loose. You want it to move around a little bit and be flexible. Of course you want the tip of it to hit the strings. As far as hitting the strings goes with the pick, you want the pick to strike them perpendicular to the strings, not at an angle. It makes it much easier. So, just kind of go back and forth on the string and get the feel for it. So if you watch my right hand, you'll see that there is very little movement. It's just basically all in the wrist. My wrist is moving back and forth very slightly just enough to make a sound. Real quick, we will introduce finger style and we'll talk more about it later. In finger style we are playing with our fingers instead of the pick of course. The classical guitarist has a little bit of fingernail, which acts as a pick. The benefit of finger style is (as you can see) I have five fingers and with a pick I have one pick. There's things that you can do with your fingers that you cannot do with a pick. I personally use fingers mostly. I use a pick when I need to. Today we're going to start with a pick and then kind of work our way into the fingers. If you are playing finger style make sure your wrist is at this sort of angle. You don't want to play at "this" angle. You want to come perpendicular across the string. Just like the pick. Alright, so we have both hands going. Next we're going to jam, we're going to play some chords and we're going to rock out and make some noise. So go practice your technique and we'll be back in a minute.

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