Guitar lessons for beginners and more

Tension: a Guitar Player’s Worst Enemy

If your a guitarist who fingerpicks, solos, or just strums, tension can be your worst enemy. I’m talking about the tension in your hands, arms, fingers, shoulders, or anywhere else! It’s important that as guitar players we are aware of tension and how it affects our guitar playing.

Why Tension is Bad
Tension can have a lot of negative effects on your guitar playing. One of the most noticeable effects is that it can tremendously slow down your fingerpicking speed or how fast you execute a riff or lead line. Tension can also really limit the amount of time you can play your instrument in one sitting without experiencing soreness.

If you’re having a hard time with strumming, tension in the hand and the wrist can prevent you from strumming smoothly. It can also give you a hard time when it comes to playing a really fast strumming pattern.

What to do about Tension
There a lot of ways you can prevent and all together eliminate tension from your guitar playing. The more tension you can remove the better. Here are some things you can try.

How to Finger Pick: Guitar Fingerpicking Basics

So you want to learn how to finger pick guitar? Fingerpicking (or sometimes referred to as fingerstyle) guitar might feel a little bit tricky at first, but there are some easy to follow basics that can have you fingerpicking in no time!

Fingerpicking Hand Position

A correct fingerpicking hand position will use your thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers for picking. Your thumb will pluck the 6th (E), 5th (A), and 4th (D) strings (the top 3 strings). Your index finger will pluck the 3rd (G) string. Your middle finger will pluck the 2nd (B) string. Your ring finger will pluck the 1st (E) string.

Sometimes your fingers may pluck other strings (there are always exceptions) but this should be our default fingering position.

Here are pictures of correct [...]