This is the kind of stuff that pro guitar players do naturally…but no one that I’ve seen will break it down and explain it like I do in this video lesson.
How to stabilize your hand to avoid hitting wrong strings & How to play fast and smooth…
In my early days of teaching, I found a lot of my students were just straight up STRUGGLING learning the basics.
Some of these students were actually singers, or drummers, or bass players, but they just couldn’t get the hang of this “guitar thang”.
This is probably the most common mistake that I see guitarists make when learning online – where they put their right hand! This video is all about how to improve your right hand for guitar.
Right hand placement is everything. I should clarify that when strumming it’s ok to have your hand ‘floating’ but for any other guitar playing – single notes, riffs, solos etc… you want your hand planted, solidified and stabilized on the bridge!
Why? Well it gives you accuracy, the attention to detail, it relieves tension from your shoulder, it allows you to focus on your pick movement and will allow you to lay more trust in your right hand so don’t have to constantly watch it.
Wouldn’t that be nice to not have to look left and right constantly? Well if you start applying the technique in this video, you’re going to get a whole lot better at guitar much sooner!!
I found out that I was doing this naturally, but I started researching how guitarists like Paul McCartney, Zakk Wylde and others were placing their right hand on the guitar and this is how ya wanna do it.
SO many beginner (and many intermediate) guitar players just don’t have this dialed in… so let’s change that.
To get the most out of this lesson, I would suggest checking out the blog/video I released right before this one which talks about the first step of our right hand stability.
Ok, so, we’re using the cushy section of our hand, right below the thumb to get firmly in place on that bridge, to give us stability (from the last lesson)….
When we’re playing something on the high strings (G,B,E), instead of contorting our wrist, we’re going to do something that freaks a lot of people out – which is moving your right hand on top of the strings, and actually resting your hand on the strings that you aren’t playing (stay with me here…)
Now, a lot of people say, “Isn’t that gonna stop the strings you want to ring from ringing?”
No! Think of it this way: If we’re playing a note anywhere on the top strings, and we’ve got our right hand resting on the low, bass strings… All our hand is doing, is stopping all the bass strings from ringing from the vibration of the guitar, you follow me?
So, this one note is going to sound nice and clear, since our right hand doesn’t touch it. Right? ALSO as an extra added bonus, we’re gaining a really nice, solid stability that we really really need especially when we’re picking and playing single notes (solos etc..). It really helps in order to play nice, clean notes.
I go over the different bridge styles work and where you can rest your hand on those guitars. This is really helpful for when you’re playing single notes on the lower, bass strings (E,A,D) – these 2 lessons go together like peanut butter and jam.
So this is all about stability, but I keep on talking about these extra added bonuses. What I’m going to show you next is, is ‘the Ring Test’ which is the secret to playing clean and sounding ultra-pro…
Try for a second playing any scale/exercise and completely ‘float’ your hand with NO stability. I want you to really pay attention to the sounds coming off your guitar when you’re NOT playing – The sounds ringing from the vibration of your guitar…
What you’re really gonna hear, is the strings ringing on their own…That’s not ideal, is it?! Imagine that through an amp cranked up on stage – sloppy, and rookie!!
You’ll probably also notice how hard it is to play any scale or exercise with no stability, it’s so easy to hit the wrong notes, right?
So, you can hear the strings ringing, when there’s no stability. Well, try the same scale/exercise and get that right hand down, glide it across the strings gaining stability and what do you think? Do you notice a difference? Cleaner easier and there’s no extra noise, right?
My point here is that not only can we gain stability with our right hand, but we also make the strings stop ringing. In turn, this makes our guitar-playing cleaner, smoother, faster and BETTER. Again, all this stability is the reason that we’re attaining this new level in our guitar playing.
Guitar right hand picking technique is VITAL to your guitar playing.
It increases your right hand stability and is incredibly important for right hand picking accuracy. Here I’m demonstrating gliding my hand across the strings maintaining a good, ergonomic wrist position.
Your right hand can gain that same stability that we use on the bridge, but when accessing the high strings (especially the G, B, and e strings) we don’t want our wrist cocked at a weird angle so simply keep your wrist straight and have your hand rest on the strings.
The whole point of this is so you can pick faster, more accurately and lay more trust in your right hand without having to look at it all the time!
Thanks for tunin’ in and keep on rippin’ it up
For full length lessons and more go to http://www.CampfireGutiarStar.com/StartHere