Strum Along

I once remember being asked a question by another guitarist, and to be honest, he had a very good point. The problem was the point of view that he was asking the question from. I had the a similar perspective to him before I found the answer, and this is one of those things that turns your way of thinking upside-down.

“What was the question?” I hear you ask “What was the simple thing that turned your current ideas on their head?”. What he asked me was “How come right handed guitarists use their left hand as their fretting hand, and left handed guitarists use their right?” simple enough question, eh? Before I’d really bothered to ask this question myself I’d just put it down to a strange peculiarity of the design of the instrument (like how come all the strings are tuned in 4ths, but the G and B strings have a third?).

Which Hand Do You Use?

The confusion with this question arises because we often think of the fretting hand (traditionally known as the “stopping” hand, as it stops the strings) as the dominant hand when we play, and we’re forgetting which hand actually plays the notes. The reason that a right handed player uses his left hand to stop the strings is so that he can use his other (dominant) hand to sound the notes. Ask yourself, which hand is really more important? It’s not the fretting hand, although this hand is important in producing the correct notes -the notes we want- but the strumming hand is the one that’s really creating the notes, this is the hand that produces the tone.

This is what turned my thinking upside-down: each hand is just as important as the other. This applies whether you play classical, fingerstyle or with a pick- the hand that sounds the notes, the hand that controls most of the tone, is the strumming hand. It was truly a revelation to me, all of this time I had been working on my fretting hand to play notes and forgetting how I was really pulling the notes from the guitar- by picking them.

I’m not about to say that too much emphasis is put on your fretting hand, but it’s certainly easier to find technical exercises and articles for improving your fretting hand…but what about the other hand?! Both hands should be equally important to you. I hope you’re now realising how important it is to train up both hands.

Learning to Run

Do you remember when you first learnt to walk? OK, maybe you don’t, but if you’ve ever seen a young child attempting to walk for the first time you’ll soon realise how difficult they find it. Yet as adults we find walking so simple- just one foot in front of the other, why is that? Why should it be that something so difficult to learn at first would be so easy for us now. The answer is: practice. The only reason we can walk so easily now is practice, and so with practice our guitar playing will also become just as easy.

So what can we do to practice our picking hand? Well, have you payed attention to your attack? I mean pick-attack of course, how you strike the strings- this can make so much difference (think about pinch harmonics, which are really just a specialised way of striking the strings). Take a simple tune, or just one note will do, and really pay attention to the sound you’re creating when you hit the notes. Don’t use effects -no distortion- just the pure sound of a clean guitar (or, even better, an acoustic), you’ll really be amazed at how many different sounds you can get out of your guitar just by changing how you use your picking hand (fingerstyle, hybrid picking, flatpicking, pinch-harmonics to name a few…).

Check out this video (below) where Paul Gilbert talks about pick attack, notice how he can get so many different sounds by just changing the angle of his pick.
If you like my blog, please don’t forget to subscribe.

click here if you can’t see the video

December 6, 2009 at 12:00 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises, Music News and Opinions, Practicing and Practice Routine | 1 comment

One Response to “Strum Along”

1. Chainsaw Guitar Tuition » What is Anchoring, and Why is it Bad? says:

   15/01/2010 at 3:16 pm

   [...] This is one of those subjects that you’re either highly knowledgeable in, or have no idea about. I would have put myself in the latter category until recently and although my own picking technique was good I noticed this problem occurring in the technique of others quite frequently. So I decided it was worthy of a blog post, especially after my blog about the importance of “neglected hand”. [...]

Copyright 2009 Chainsaw Guitar Tuition
Grab the feed