Hey, everybody. It’s Aaron with freeandeasyguitar.com and this lesson right here, I’m going to teach you guys a little bit more about how to hold a pick and how to hold the guitar, how to fret a note and get you started on making some clean sounding notes, okay. So, I got my favorite guitar here and I got my pick. There are a couple of ways you can hold the guitar. I personally don’t like this and that is with this little augmentation in your guitar I like it to set right on this leg. It’s a lot easier for me because I like to play just regular strumming stuff.
[Demonstration]
There are a lot of classical guitars and you’ll see some people play, they like to put the guitar in the body in this and rest that little finger out through my right leg on their left leg if they’re a right hand player. And a lot of times the reason they do this is because they’re both finger style and they like to get a better view up here and have this closer to their body.
[Demonstration]
Stuff like that you know.
[Demonstration]
So you’ll see a lot of classical guitars play like this. Another thing too, the way to put your arm, depending on how big your body is, how long your arms are I’ve set in some of the previous videos. You may want to look again you have three quarter size that means three slash four like 75% of the size in a full guitar just smaller the frets are closer together, the neck is smaller and the guitar is actually smaller so you can fit you’re arm around it.
A lot of you, you can’t tell because you know I’m on a video but I’m 6’4 so I’ve got a pretty long arms, alright. And I have no problem resting my elbow right up here just back horn and I’m still reaching up here in the strings. Some of you may have a problem with that. What you can always do is kind of bring the arm in front of the guitar like this and play.
[Demonstration]
My arms are too long so that’s why I put my elbow back here. It’s up to you but that’s why I just put my arm and the bicep kind of right there so my elbows are almost in the corner and draw my arm forward and that’s how I strum.
So this left hand as far as how to hold you’re guitar up here, I’ve seen a lot of guys are really technically gifted and are experts on the guitar that play only with their thumb on the back of the neck. For a long time I thought that only good guitars all put their thumb on the back of the neck at all times. And now I watch John Mayer’s “Live in L.A.” with the latest tour. He plays just like I do as far as with his thumb wrapped around it sometimes. Now that’s when they only show you guys as you can play and you play chord you can wrap your thumb around here if you like.
When I play bar chords which you learn later, don’t worry, my thumb is always in the back of the neck so it’s really up to you. If you want to start from the beginning and hold your finger on the back of the neck at all times, that’s great. If you want to wrap your thumb around a little bit and you play your chords, that’s cool, too. John Mayer does it. He is phenomenal so I don’t think it’s really going to impede you from becoming good at the guitar.
So that is a good thing about guitar up here. So, that’s all for you to know right now if you’re using left hand. For your right hand holding the pick, I’ve seen lots of people do it different ways. Some people hold it with two fingers like this. I hold it just with one because it freezes these other fingers open to do hybrid picking.
That’s one of the places that bred pays to the country guitars makes us living with this. He plays the pick with his thumb and pointer and then he picks strings with his middle ring and pinky but that’s kind of an advanced technique on hybrid picking so I wouldn’t worry about that as a beginner.
One thing that you guys are going to want to do for the time you start playing is just however the pick feels naturally to you, hold it but you want to make sure that you have this pick that come three sides like a triangle, alright. These two rounded ends are the ones that you keep in your finger and just kind of point it in is the one you’re going to be picking the strings with. Just let it roll down.
Now, this is the first problem you’re probably going to run into when you start doing strums and stuff like that the feature of the pick is going to slip out of your hands as a beginner. It’s probably going to fall in your sound hole. It’s happened to me hundred of times, so if it happened to you, you’re no different to anybody else, just take your guitar, turn it upside down and shake it like crazy until the pick falls out, alright.
Over time you’re going to get use to holding the pick. Your finger strength will get better. You’ll just get a feel for it and then you won’t have these problems anymore so don’t get frustrated with that. Also, when you start strumming your chords or your notes, your rhythm is probably unless you’re really gifted, I always thought that I was really coordinated until I started to strum when I first learn to play the guitar and it was really awkward. So don’t get frustrated with that, just keep working at it and we’re going to talk more about that later. I just wanted to let you guys know there are some problems you run into. Don’t worry everybody hits these walls.
As far as we talk about how we hold the guitar in leg and about how to hold the pick in your left hand. The next thing I want to talk to you guys about is fretting a note whether you’re playing just one single note or you’re playing a whole chord one of the most important things you need to focus on is keeping your finger wherever you're holding the string down is closed to the fret but above it as you can.
So you want to think of it as almost like stepping up a ladder. Let me step up a ladder, your foot comes down. So you’re coming up a ladder and you’re foot is going to come down right on top of each of these frets if this was the ladder and you’re climbing up. That’s almost which one to do is a note. If you’re going to play a note, remember we talked about this, this is the first fret second and third. I hope you can see that first, second, third frets. Whenever you're stepping up this ladder, whenever fret you play on your note you want to make sure you’re right above it.
Almost like you’re stepping on that fret like you’re stepping on the ladder. So you turn it back like this, this thickest string is your E string, you remember we talked about E, A, D, G, B, and E. So we’re going to play on this thickest string below E. Whenever you’re playing the first fret which is there is your first fret. The first middle strips you want to step above it and you want to stay right above it like you’re stepping on that ladder as close as you can and you get a clear sound.
[Demonstration]
Now what will happen as a beginner and you have to keep focus on this. If you mess up just try and do as much as you can. If you’re not stepping on that ladder and you move up, before you move away from that ladder it’s the harder is to hold it down. When you’re up here you just have to hold it right down over that step. As you can keep moving farther, it gets harder and harder to hold down, that’s where you’re going to hear the buzzing.
[Demonstration]
So, try to stay as close to that step as you can. Now, obviously when you play some chords, your fingers maybe close to each other and you may have some that are a little bit further above the fret than others but you just have to press down hard enough. So that’s all you much you know about fretting notes.
One way I would practice this and this is really the first picking drill that I started with, some people like to start with picking, some like chords, I’ll leave that up to you, guys. I had sort of the chords because if you learn four to five chords you can play a whole song but if you want to start with picking, here is a good picking exercise. It’s really simple. You take your low E string and you're going to play, no fingers on it which is called open.
If you hear someone say open, it means there are no fingers on the string so that’s an open low E string. Put you’re pointer finger right above that step of ladder, right above that first fret, that’s the first fret note, slide your pointer finger up.
This is just pointer finger for right now.
[Demonstration]
First fret and slide up, second fret make sure you’re just above that fret just like on the step of a ladder, third fret, fourth fret, fifth fret, sixth, seventh, eight, nine, 10, 11, and 12. Once you do that on that string, go to the next string, your A string.
[Demonstration]
Up to 12 and back down, all the way down. Once you did all the six strings then you can use one finger for the first fret and your middle finger for the second like that, alternating or you can just start one pointer finger on the first and middle on the second, ring on the third, pinky on the fourth.
I’m going to warn you right now your fingers are going to take some time for them to listen to you so don’t get frustrated. And what you want to do is when you play it you just want to make sure you’re getting a clear sound. And you’ll get that clear sound as long as you push down on the string right above that fret which is just like I said just like stepping up a ladder.
Make sure you're right above that fret just like you're stepping a ladder. Alright, so take a look at that do that for some of the picking techniques. I hope that help you with some of the basics on how to hold the guitar or the pick. And as always if you have any questions you can send me an email at questions at freeandeasyguitar.com.
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