Guitar Technique Lessons for Beginners

What are the basic guitar techniques?

The basic guitar techniques are clean fretting, one finger per fret, alternate picking, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, bends, vibrato and palm muting. Learn them roughly in that order: each one builds on the one before.

Strumming is a technique too: see the guitar strumming patterns page for the right-hand rhythms.

How do you practice guitar technique?

Practice technique slowly, in time and little and often. Ten to twenty minutes a day with a metronome works better than one long session a week. Play each exercise cleanly at a slow speed before you speed up.

A 15-minute technique routine

1. 3 minutes: the 1-2-3-4 exercise above at 60 beats per minute.
2. 3 minutes: alternate picking on the top two strings.
3. 3 minutes: hammer-ons and pull-offs, then slides.
4. 3 minutes: chord changes, G to C to D, four strums each.
5. 3 minutes: a tune, for example one of the guitar song tutorials.

Self-assessed Tick off each step when you can play it twice without a mistake, then raise the speed by 5 beats per minute next time. The metronome and backing tracks keep time for you.

How do you play electric guitar?

Play electric guitar with the same chords, notes and tuning as an acoustic, through an amplifier. Start with the amp on a clean sound and the volume low, then learn power chords, palm muting and string bends – the three techniques that make an electric sound like an electric.

1. Turn the amp volume to zero, plug in, then turn the guitar’s volume knob up and the amp up slowly.
2. Start clean (no distortion) so you can hear mistakes. Add a little gain (overdrive) for rock.
3. Learn power chords: root and 5th on neighbouring strings, one shape you can move anywhere.
4. Mute the strings you are not playing: the side of the picking hand and the underside of fretting fingers stop them ringing, which matters more with distortion.
5. Add palm muting and bends once power chords feel easy.

e|------------|------------|------------|---------|
B|------------|------------|------------|---------|
G|------------|------------|------------|---------|
D|------------|------------|------------|-5-------|
A|-2--2--2--2-|-5--5--5--5-|-7--7--7--7-|-3-------|
E|-0--0--0--0-|-3--3--3--3-|-5--5--5--5-|---------|

e|------------|-----------|
B|------------|-----------|
G|------------|-----------|
D|------------|-5--5--7---|
A|-5--5--7--7-|-3--3--5---|
E|-3--3--5--5-|-----------|

Electric strings are usually thinner than acoustic ones, so bends and vibrato are easier, but a light touch matters: pressing too hard pulls notes sharp.

How do you do hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides?

For a hammer-on, pick a note and bring another finger down hard on a higher fret without picking again. For a pull-off, pick the higher note and flick the finger off sideways. For a slide, pick once and keep pressing as you move to the new fret.

All three join notes smoothly (this is called legato). The exercises in the player above use them on the G, B and high E strings. Tab writes them as 0h2, 2p0 and 2/4.

How do you bend a string on guitar?

To bend a string, fret the note with the ring finger, put the middle and index fingers behind it on the same string, and push the string sideways towards the ceiling. Check the target pitch first: for a whole-step bend from fret 7, play fret 9, then bend fret 7 until it matches.

e|-------------------------|
B|--9--7b9--7b9r7--7~~~~---|
G|-------------------------|
D|-------------------------|
A|-------------------------|
E|------------0-0-0-0------|
            PM-------

In words: B string fret 9 (the target note); fret 7 bent up to the pitch of fret 9; fret 7 bent up and released back down; fret 7 with vibrato. Then the open low E string four times with the palm muting the strings.

Bend the top three strings up (towards your face) and the bottom three down, so the string does not slip off the neck. Bends are not playable in the tab player above, because the site’s sound engine plays exact frets; use your ears and the target note.

Common technique problems and how to fix them

Classfern’s free guitar tools on lessonplanner.info run in your browser: beginner guitar chords and first strums, the guide to reading guitar tabs, the guitar scales finder and the guitar tab play-along with hundreds of out-of-copyright tunes.