Hello my name is James Manuele, I'm a guitarist and instructor here at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. And I'm here to discuss classical guitar techniques. The first thing of any classical guitarist he or she will need to sit in the classical seating technique. Notice I have on my left leg a foot stool. It raises the guitar high enough to approach the neck, and put the guitar between my right leg and my left leg. Giving me contact points of actually four contact points in the inner thigh, the leg, the chest, and my right arm that stabilizes the guitar. Would provide me with the classical guitar sitting position. Now for my hand technique, my right hand will always sit as so. Fingers, my index fingers will be on the third string, my middle finger will be on the second string, my ring finger or ulnar will be on the first string, and my thumb will be resting on the sixth string. So a very first technique that any beginner classical guitarist will use is to arppegiate open strings of the guitar. So the first thing I will do is a strike with a free stroke, open strings of the guitar. P, I, M, A, placement, and the thumb will go down to the fifth string. P, I, M, A, placement, and the thumb will go down to the fourth string. P, I, M,A, then back up to the sixth string. If I were to play this open arpeggio a little bit faster this is what it would sound like. This is one pattern, and you can change up and try many patterns. Different types of patterns with the right hand to work on your arpeggios, and dexterity with you fingers. The other techniques I would like to address the first basic technique of the left hand would be trying to get your left hand in first position or open position. So the fingerings on left hand are number one, two, three, four spanning across the first four frets of the instrument. Now notice my hand my fingers are arched, I have plenty of space between the neck and my wrist, and I am playing on the tips of my fingers. And my thumb behind the neck is very low on the lower end of the neck, because my fingers are playing the bottom string. The exercise begins basically just starting on the first string, and going up to the second string one finger at a time without moving the other fingers. This will help you get independence on each finger. As your hands go up so does your thumb, and the whole hand it still plays properly on the sixth string. I still have my arch, I still have my space, and I am still playing on the tips of my fingers. You can reverse the exercise going back down still keeping the arch, still keeping your first position moving one finger at a time. This is a basic exercise to do. Once you get this left hand in position you can combine the right hand, and alternate the fingers on the right hand with I and M. Same exercise now I am going to articulate each note. Thus giving you an exercise of the right hand and left hand, the chromatic scale. These are just a couple of the very, very beginning of basic classical guitar technique.
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