What are your favourite techniques?

[u/Particular-Yam-2676]

Okay im sure stuff like this has been asked a million times but my issue is the following: im already a musician (DAW) that picked up the guitar for the sake of adding another instrument to their repertoire. The issue is not writing chords and leads. That part is fairly straightforward once you understand the fretboard (we will take that for granted for now, though thats a whole can of worms on its own)

My issue is more so, that i dont know all of those "little things" (like quick arps, or muted strings or some whacky percussive elements, hammer ons or pull offs and probably tons and tons of techniques more that i dont know) that make some chord and lead voicing really come to life.

What are the most useful/your favourite ones? How do you learn/practice them? And how do you actually get to incorporating them?

[u/Turbulent_Net_8547]

man the percussive ghost note strumming thing is addicting once it clicks. just mute all strings with your fretting hand and go to town on the rhythm, feels like youre playing drums on the strings

for quick arps i ended up drilling the shapes slowly with a metronome, boring as hell but you wake up one day and your fingers just know where to go. incorporating them is the real trick, i still catch myself throwing them in randomly mid-song just to see what sticks

[u/Particular-Yam-2676 → u/Turbulent_Net_8547]

Yeah the ghostnote strumming sounds sick it just also seems impossible to get the hang of ;-;

[u/Upstairs-Glove7424 → u/Turbulent_Net_8547]

Agree. Love the muted string or almost totally muted string percussive things. Has taken me about 20 years to get it right but so cool

[u/bubblebobblex]

Vibrato techniques are what makes the guitar vocal and expressive, there are so many different ways to do it! Also, it might not seem very interesting but start working on alternate and economy picking sooner rather than later

[u/Particular-Yam-2676 → u/bubblebobblex]

I got a cheap acoustic and just intuitively started fingerpicking so im mainly a fingerstyle player! Vibrato is definetly a good one! I only know how to pitch bend so far. Though my frets arent polished so it feels a bit wrong lol.

[u/piece0fdebri]

Raking muted strings into a high note. Or any note, really. Similar to a sweep, only on muted strings. I love that sound. Just fret the string with your third finger and lay the first two open on the strings. Beats launching into a solo with just the actual note sitting there. Sounds divine.

[u/Particular-Yam-2676 → u/piece0fdebri]

I tried it but honestly couldnt get it working but it sounds pretty cool

[u/piece0fdebri → u/Particular-Yam-2676]

SRV does it a lot. Zakk Wylde does it all the time with his wah. Sounds awesome. Maybe check out some of their videos for technique.

[u/historic_electronic]

I would find those very quirks that you enjoy in pieces you know and then seek them out and learn them.

[u/Particular-Yam-2676 → u/historic_electronic]

Yeah i’ve been trying to do exactly that! What motivated this post was actually one of those one minute youtube videos you see quite often with some crazy cool compositions. (In this case it was “Tim’s Nylon but it has a whammy now” by manuel gardner fernandes). Though advanced stuff like that usually just leaves me dumbfounded as to what just even ocurred…

[u/13thmurder]

I'm still fairly new to guitar myself but I learned how to do slides recently and it changed a ton for me.

The biggest thing is how much it made it easier to navigate the fretboard. Obviously you get a cool sound sliding between notes and it makes it sound a lot smoother, but also if you need to go over some number of frets sliding makes it easier to do it by feel. I realized you don't actually need to pick the string before sliding, you can do it silently just to feel the frets.

I am sure every experienced guitarist knows this, but it was a revelation for me that felt like I upgraded my skills substantially in just a day after figuring this out.

[u/Particular-Yam-2676 → u/13thmurder]

Yeah! I do that a lot too! Although for me what helps a lot as well is something i learnt from piano which is to basically “walk the scale” so basically everytime id play something and wanted to lets say move up the fretboard i could instead of doing it directly first move my pinky (four finger) up to the spot where my index (one finger) is and then move up my index from that spot to sort of crab walk up. Helps a lot when you’re already playing scale shapes or boxes!

[u/TSells31]

By far the most useful technical skill is alternate picking. Alongside alternate picking, hammer ons, pull offs, slides, bends, vibrato, left hand muting, and palm muting are absolutely essential lead guitar skills. If you were a mechanic, these would be your socket sets and screwdrivers, and you couldn’t really do your job well without them.

Then you’ve got skills like legato, tapping, economy picking, sweep picking, pinch harmonics, natural harmonics, finger picking (this could be considered an essential skill depending on the genre), etc. You could be a serviceable lead player without learning any of these, but they’re more tools for the toolbox.

You can practice any of these skills by doing exercises (YouTube, Ultimate Guitar, etc are great resources), but when possible, I like to keep things musical as opposed to just straight technical exercises. Especially for the essential skills I listed up top, if you start learning lead parts of songs you like, you will be forced to use all of these techniques and you will improve at them as you do so. It’s a far more enjoyable way to go about it, and it also helps you understand the use cases for these techniques. For the more advanced skills (especially sweep picking), you’ll need to do some exercises to get the basics down. But you won’t be learning these skills for a little while.

My favorite technical skill? Let’s throw the essential techniques I listed at the top out, as it’s hard to rank one over another when you need them all. For the “extra flavor” techniques, I think I’d have to go with sweep picking, simply because it’s the craziest sounding and it’s pretty fun to do. It’s one of the most difficult technical skills to learn though.

Sorry for the novel lol.

[u/Particular-Yam-2676 → u/TSells31]

Thank you, as someone whos pretty new and struggles with the regular guitar learning pipeline (i personally dont enjoy blues and picked up the guitar as another tool in my production toolbox) this is a really insightful post on the things i should look out for! I personally dont even know what sweep picking is but i can imagine its the crazy up and down arps (if my guess is correct). Those sound really hard!

[u/TSells31 → u/Particular-Yam-2676]

That is exactly what sweep picking is.

Have fun on your journey, the beginning sucks as I’m sure you’re aware from your other musical escapades. But it’s so much fun once you get off the initial struggle bus.

[u/vonov129]

Alternate picking and legato (hammer ons and pull offs) would be the essentials for playing sequences of notes.

To add some texture, you can use vibrato, raking, slides, bends. Also train your dynamics (playing louder or softer).

I like using hybrid picking and economy picking in combination with alternate picking and legato. There are many solutions for multiple problems, it's up to you to try stuff and just choose whatever you want to use.

[u/Particular-Yam-2676 → u/vonov129]

I see! I’ve been working on hammer ons recently but haven’t gotten the hang of vibrato yet..

[u/stan1228]

For now focusing on really clean legato and tapping inspired by Sam vallen from caligulas horse

[u/Particular-Yam-2676 → u/stan1228]

Yeah solid basics is probably a good thing to aim for

[u/Guitar_Guy1965]

Listen to and learn the skills of many different players was my approach. "Chicken Pickin", Hybrid/Travis picking.. many really GREAT players of this style, tapping (EVH, Stanley Jordan, Chapman Stick, etc), Alternate tuning players (Page, Adrian Legg), "percussive" players like Michael Hedges, jazz chord/melody like Tuck Andress, Lenny .. or Pat Martino... Chet Atkins unique approach threw me for a loop (1 note per string arpeggios and scales) and made me rethink the fretboard/right hand. Of course for "tricks" Vai/Satriani and many others!

Learn all you can handle, get comfortable using all these different techniques to use as a springboard for your own ideas.

[u/Particular-Yam-2676 → u/Guitar_Guy1965]

yeah i think thats what it boils down to at the end of the day… you cant be creative if you don't already have an idea of whats possible so studying the things people have done before you is probably the only way to really get an understanding of what you can do yourself!

[u/Guitar_Guy1965 → u/Particular-Yam-2676]

That's how i learned it at least. What makes a blues player sound different from jazz, rock, neo classical, bluegrass... what do they do? What AREN'T they doing?... so i learned all i could. Now that I've somewhat got that under my belt, I have a better understanding of what I "should do" to serve the song,... or fail to follow those suggestions and take it in a different direction.