Effortless Classical Guitar: Refining Your Right Hand

Playing guitar with your fingers instead of a pick offers an entirely different range of musical expression.

But for many guitarists, plucking with the fingers never feels as effortless as playing with a pick.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Follow these steps to move your right hand from struggling to thriving:

1. Practice Away from the Guitar

    a. Make a Fist

Make a fist and release it. Notice how all finger joints flex at the same time when you make a fist. Notice how all finger joints extend at the same time when you release the fist. This is how you want the fingers to move when playing.

I don’t mean that you need to follow through all the way to the palm when you pluck, just that the joints within each finger should flex together when the finger plucks and extend together after the finger plucks.

    b. Scratch Your Leg

Scratch your leg with your right-hand fingers. Keep the fingertips in contact with your leg the whole time. Again, notice how the joints in each finger flex together and then extend together.

2. Block Chords

Now let’s look at a simple arpeggio that would be plucked with individual fingers:

Before playing the passage as written, practice playing block chords:

In other words, practice plucking with all the needed fingers at once. This will help clarify the left-hand shape and will also help you get used to preparing all needed right-hand fingers on the string.

3. Plant Each Finger

Now play the passage as written:

Place each finger of the right hand on the string before it plays. This is often called planting.

The order in which you plant the fingers will vary depending on the arpeggio.

For our current example, here is how I would plant thumb (p), index (i), and middle (m) fingers:

a. As p plays, plant both i and m on the next strings they will play.

b. i plays

c. As m plays, plant p on the next string it will play.

4. Hand Still

Keep the back of the hand still while you play. Don’t rock it from side to side. If you find yourself tempted to rock the hand back and forth, this is often because of the length of the middle finger. To overcome this, you can curve the middle finger more so that all right-hand fingertips are in a straight line with each other.

5. Finger Joints Flex and Extend

Make sure that all joints in each finger flex together when plucking and extend together after plucking. You practiced this away from the guitar earlier, but you will need to set a habit of doing this consistently while playing the guitar.

The most common problem is for the large knuckle to extend (lift up) while the middle joint is plucking. Instead, flex the large knuckle with the middle joint when plucking and extend the large knuckle with the middle joint after plucking.

With some practice, you can set new habits that will make your right hand feel effortless.

To get each practice session off to a great start, use a simple Warmup Routine.

For a free PDF of my Warmup, click here.

Keep making music!