Right Hand Technique Got you down? Relax! Grab a Beer!

Let’s face it, learning good right-hand technique in the guitar world, whether it’s fingerpicking or flatpicking, stinks beyond belief! But we all know mastery of these skills is necessary to pull yourself from the pool of “average” guitar playing. I’d be willing to bet that getting frustrated with learning clean right-hand techniques contributes significantly to the relatively high guitar-dropout rate! As I learned from Chris Proctor last summer at the Accent on Music Guitar Seminar, you must learn to turn your right hand into a “trained monkey” while your left hand becomes the “star athlete”. Because your left hand is endlessly learning new ways to stretch, bend and twist into thousands of bizarre, unholy positions you really need to have the right hand motor skills under control to the point where it’s mindless. I hope the technique I describe in the following paragraphs help.

In the endless pursuit of making repetitious activities on the guitar somewhat “exciting”?? I stumbled on a technique that I think has changed my guitar life forever. I have no idea if I’m the first person to discover this, so until I hear otherwise I’ll declare myself the inventor of “Beer Guitar”…Actually, this article has very little to do with beer, so parents can take a deep breath.

I was working on a new tune and I was having troubles holding an alternating bass pattern with my metronome set to 108 beats per minute (bpm). I kept practicing with my right hand and released my left hand from the strings to take a sip of my “High Concentration 100% Whey Protein” shake I was working on for breakfast (dee-licious…not!). Well the guitar was tuned to the alternate tuning DAdgad’ a.k.a Open Dsus4, where the first and second strings are lowered in pitch to D and the 2nd string is lowered to an A. A quick side-note: Just lowering the first E string to a D is called Drop-D tuning and lowering both of the E’s to D is mainly called Double Drop-D in music circles. For an explanation of the case and punctuation of the letters in the notes, please see Mark Hanson’s Q&A answer on his site: Accent on music Q&A

Here’s some of my favorites in Drop D tuning:

• Dear Prudence (Beatles)
• All Apologies (Nirvana)
• Rocky Mountain High (John Denver)

In Double Drop-D:

• Midnight Rider (Allman Brothers)
• Ohio (Neil Young)
• Strawberry Curl (Mark Hanson)

In DAdgad':

• Renewal (Doug Smith)
• Led Zeppelin (Black Mountain Side)
• Nearly All of Al Petteway’s songs (DAdgad’ is his standard tuning)

OK, back to our topic. I suddenly realized that I was playing my guitar, working on exercises that I despise more than combing my hair with a cheese grater and at the same time doing something independently that I almost enjoy. This experience reminded me of when I first discovered that I can actually enjoy mowing the lawn on a hot, muggy day so long as my Ipod is cranking some excellent music. (Kiddies beware! Your mother actually knows what she’s talking about when she tells you to turn the music down. My years of drowning out the sound of the lawnmower with my old Sony Walkman Cassette Player and Ipod has taken its toll on my hearing a bit).

Back to the guitar, I suddenly wondered how far I could take this. What if I tried things that I do enjoy such as walking around the house (or outside!), drinking a cup of coffee (hell, how ‘bout a hefeweizen), or talking to someone while working on exclusively right-hand technique? OK talking to someone while practicing your guitar probably won’t work, especially if it’s with the wife or your teenage daughter trying to tell you how well she did on her report card…The cat, mirror or invisible friend named Jip Jones will do just fine.

A lot of people have trouble playing and standing up, so this will help that as well.

Always try to use proper right hand technique while doing this. Once you get better and better there will be an epiphany you reach where you realize that the proper hand positioning and technique must be mastered for continuous improvement, especially with fingerstyle. Good technique is the only way to sustain a life time of playing. Leo Kottke nearly lost his ability to play in the early 80’s because of his ultra-aggressive right-hand attack on the guitar, especially on the 12-string. He suffered severe tendonitis as a result and had to stop playing for a while. Imagine losing your abilities to use your hands after dedicating your life to the art? Fortunately, Leo learned the classical style of playing and has since put out several excellent albums.

I recommend you start off tuning your guitar to a relatively easy open-tuning, especially if you are new to the world of alternate tunings. I suggest starting with Open-D tuning. To get to Open-D, take the Dadgad’ tuning mentioned earlier, but lower the 4th string d down a half step to F#. A chromatic tuner will save you much grief and frustration with open tunings because they can register the sharps and flats of all keys very precisely. Now your strings are tuned to DAdf#ad or Open-D.

Open-D has several advantages for learning this technique and others as well. First of all, you can play all the strings open to produce a beautiful sound. Your left hand can be doing nothing at all! All six strings are played so even if there’s a misfire on any combination of strings your axe will still sound great! Any major chord can be played by barring the six strings so to make a D chord, play the strings open or barre the 12th fret. To play a D#, barre the six strings on the first fret or the 13th fret. To play a G, barre the 5th fret. Come on, all you people who are afraid to try alternate tuning…Give it a shot! Almost every open chord uses one or two fingers. Many are movable! If you ever want to learn to play slide, you WILL learn this tuning! Here are the chords just mentioned.

Notice the rich bass and ringing harmonies by combining the thundering drop-d bass note with the octave D chord formed by barring the three treble strings with your index finger. Take it one step further and grab a coke bottle or a drinking glass (or how ‘bout a slide if you have one!) and lay it evenly across the six strings on any fret. With slide, you must actually place the slide over the fret (the metal divider) or you will be too sharp or too flat. Be sure to press very lightly onto the strings; you don’t want them touching the fretboard, just enough to get a good tone. When I revise this I will put audio clips of all these examples right on the page. I’m going to the Carribean tomorrow so I’m kind of rushing right now!

If you are interested in further studies of alternate tuning ,the Complete Book if Alternate Tunings and Alternate Tunings Picture Chords , both by Mark Hanson, are the best resources for learning alternate and open tunings that I have come across in my 15 years of using them. I certainly wish I hadn’t only discovered these two or three years ago! The first book has 16 separate chapters on individual tunings and all their variations plus common chord forms for the most suitable key of the song and the major scales for that tuning. The second book is a chord dictionary. I don’t have this one yet, but I saw it at Mark’s camp and browsed through it. Look for a review one of these days!

In closing, I recommend you practice this technique with a metronome or a drum machine and try as hard as you can to keep the right hand under control. When you feel comfortable playing the notes of your picking or strumming pattern, start using your left hand to do something else. The original goal here was to develop your right hand abilities, but why stop there? This is a great time to start learning how to keep the two hands thinking and working independently. Also try to get them to work together. With your left hand tap the chair to the beat of your pattern. Try talking to the cat while you’re playing. I’ve seen gigs where the performers were playing crazy fast Travis patterns while telling a story to the audience. This is one way to get to that “pinnacle of musicianship” as Mr. Kottke puts it.

Farewell! Emailing this to my webmaster and ready to go to bed and get up at 4:15am to catch my bus! Thanks for reading.

-Jeff