How to Do a Rest Stroke on Classical Guitar

Classical guitar has two basic techniques for plucking the strings: apoyando (Spanish for "resting") and tirando (Spanish for "pulling", also known as the free stroke). The rest stroke is the easiest and usually the first one learned by classical guitarists. The following steps will show how to do a rest stroke on classical guitar.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Trim the nails on the playing hand to the correct length. Guitarists who use both types of strokes must keep their nails considerably shorter than those who use free strokes exclusively.

2. Hold the playing hand slightly higher for rest strokes. This technique requires the finger to stretch out to pluck the string so that it assumes a more relaxed posture while resting on the next string. This adjustment to the hand's position should be made at the elbow.

3. Play rest strokes with preparation in most cases. Preparation is the process of placing the left side (for right-handed players) of the nail on the string before plucking it. This allows the string to be initially plucked with both the finger and the nail so that the finger slides off leaving only the nail for the final release.

4. Pluck a string with a finger and rest it on the next string to produce a loud pronounced tone. Note that rest strokes cannot be used to play adjacent strings simultaneously. Rest strokes should be played through the string with a deliberate follow through.

5. Use rest strokes most often for bringing out single melody lines, especially during solos when they are competing with harmony.