Right Hand Playing Method for Classical Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is John Armstrong with expertvillage.com I'm a professional guitar instructor and today we are going to be discussing beginning classical guitar. Alright more on the right hand now that we have discuss kind of the proper right hand posture and the labeling of the fingers on the right hand it's next important to discuss the different types of strokes that we use with the right hand. The two main types of strokes commonly used are the rest stroke and the free stroke. First lets start by discussing the rest stroke. The rest stroke used to bring a boulder sound out of the guitar. What we do is I will do a rest stroke here on the E string using my I finger using my index finger. I strike the string and allow the finger to rest into the adjacent string so watch here as I strike the E string. I let the finger rest into the B string and I'm pushing on the B string pretty good. This ensures that I use a lot of force when doing rest stroke. A exercise that you could do to help you get use to using your fingers and doing your right stroke is to use a fingering I and A and, and just repeat that over and over again. Starting with your high E string rest strokes throughout, moving down to the B string, resting into the G string, G string, A string, and would doing a rest stroke on the E string you just want to kind of imagine that there is a string back there and you are almost resting into your thumb. That is the A string. That is a good exercise to help you get use to you using your right strokes. There are other exercise that I will be giving you later to help you get use to that technique. Next would be the free stroke. Now the free stroke is kind of the opposite of the rest stroke the finger just strikes the string and comes up to the palm of the hand. It does not rest on any stroke of string. See the finger just kind of comes up and across the palm of the hand. This is a technique we typically use when playing faster passages that do not allow use to use rest stroke or when doing arpeggio type passages or busting up a chord. Once again the same thing could be done there just do rest strokes on the E string going I,M,A,M same thing on the B I,M,A,A,M. G,D,A, and E. "