Category: Guitar Techniques

If you know how to play a Dobro guitar you have at your command a whole range of notes that you cannot get to without a slide. You can slide into notes which, with that unusual Dobro wail, makes your audience’s hair stand on end. When we talk about knowing how to play a Dobro guitar, we are talking about a resonator guitar. The attraction to so-called “Dobro” guitars is the unique tone of the single cone resonator guitar with a wooden body. There are resonator guitars with metal bodies, but they have a totally different sound. The actual name Dobro is the property of the Gibson company which bought out the National Guitar company which owned the patent to the original resonator which had three cones.

Most really good Dobro guitar players have the guitar sitting in their lap. You can play with the guitar in the conventional position but that does not allow you nearly as much freedom to express yourself and explore the possibilities of the instrument. To play a resonator guitar you will need to get yourself a slide that is made to be used on a bottleneck guitar or make use of a bottle or some other cool-looking object that many slide guitar players use.

If you associate the slide guitar sound with a Dobro you might want to reconsider buying a resonator, because you can get the slide guitar sound using any acoustic guitar. You just need to be careful if you are using non-standard tunings that involve tuning the strings up rather than down because you do not want to bend the neck.

One of the main techniques you will need to learn to develop your own Dobro style is string damping. You do not want extra noise from the strings, so if you have the slide on your pinky finger, you drag one of the other singers just after the slide using only enough weight on the strings to get rid of extraneous noise.

You will also be using your right hand to damp the strings that you do not want to sound if you pluck several strings but only want one or two to sound. This technique is called palm muting but it is really done by applying the side of your right hand to the strings as you play.

You may already know that when you play a conventional guitar you place your left hand fingers slightly behind the frets. With a Dobro you have the slide right above the fret when you play a note or chord. You will need practice to get that sound of sliding from one note to another, and you will need to work on producing vibrato by moving the slide back and forth rapidly.

Guitarists who know how to play a Dobro guitar will have a collection of alternate tunings at their fingertips. Remember, every time you change the guitar from conventional tuning you will need to learn all over again where the notes are on the fretboard. This is not as big and boring a job as it sounds. If you take care to learn alternate and open tunings one at a time, remembering where the notes are just comes by itself with practice.

Most slide and Dobro guitar players recommend Open G as a first tuning. You can quickly change to this tuning by changing both E strings down to D, then your fifth string down from A to G. Another useful tuning is Open D where you change your strings down to D A D F# A D.

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If you are a new guitarist who is curious about the guitar techniques you will be learning in the future or if you are looking to develop a little more style in your guitar playing, this article will tell you about some commonly used guitar techniques. I am also going to describe how to play a flamenco guitar technique that I think you will enjoy playing around with. I am not attempting a complete list of the things you can do on the guitar because each guitar playing style has its own techniques but hopefully you will get some ideas of where to go next in developing your technique.

Left hand guitar techniques can pretty much be moved from one musical genre to another. One exception I can think of is the technique of fretting bass notes by wrapping your thumb around the guitar neck. This technique is not used in all genres even though you are welcome to try it out in whatever you are playing, but it is downright frowned upon in classical guitar playing.

One technique that is used in classical and rock guitar playing is the use of the right hand to damp the sound of the strings. You put the side of your hand over all six strings and then pluck with your fingers or use up and down strokes with the pick. If you try it on your electric guitar you will instantly recognize the sound from numerous punk or metal tracks. A variation on this technique is to have your hand “floating” above the strings and bring it down to damp your notes just after you have played them.

Common to all kinds of plectrum guitar styles is the invention and use of strumming patterns. The “pattern” is varied by whether you use up or down strokes with your pick and in what order. A basic pattern is made by just alternating up and down strokes across all six strings in time with the music. Once you are comfortable with this technique you can vary it by using two up strokes together or two downstrokes followed by upstrokes, or you can just play the three bass or treble strings.

Whether or not you are exclusively a plectrum or finger-style guitar player you should at least experiment with the flamenco strumming technique known as rasqueado. With this style of strumming you are making use of each of your four fingers alternately to produce a completely different effect from plectrum strumming. To start you can rest the thumb on the sixth string and just strum the fourth, third, second and first strings. Begin by having all the fingers curled up, then drag each one across the strings in succession starting with the pinky. Play slowly at first and just use downstrokes.

Once you are used to playing down strokes using this flamenco guitar technique, you can stop resting your thumb on the sixth string and follow your fingers down with it. So now you are playing five down strokes in succession. You can play a series of these rasqueado and join them up by performing an upstroke with the thumb. To summarize, you do downstrokes with the pinky, ring finger, middle finger, first finger and thumb. This gives you a long continuous strum. Then to begin another rasqueado, you bring your thumb up across the strings and start again with the pinky.

So now you have some details about some common guitar techniques plus some info on how to play flamenco style strumming. That should keep you busy for a while. Remember to search YouTube for any of the techniques I have mentioned so you can watch a guitarist performing these techniques.

Here is a video lesson on guitar strumming:

More Links For Learning How To Play Guitar
I am giving you a link to a page of links for guitarists. Do not go to that page unless you have some time to spare. There are links to guitar-related sites of all kinds and once you start surfing them you will be unable to stop. You have been warned. Here it is, a Categorized Directory of Websites for Guitarists

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Left handed people can become guitar players but there are some adjustments you need to make to your guitar and your outlook. First if you think that you “should” be right handed because that is how guitars are designed, think again. If the hand that keeps telling you it wants to perform actions is your left hand, you are better off listening to it. This is your active hand, which makes your right hand passive. So in a way, your left hand tells your right hand what to do. Paul McCartney is one guitar player who tried to make his right hand do the picking and it did not work. He only started to get anywhere with playing the guitar after he changed the strings around and started picking with his left hand. There are lots of left handed guitar players who have mastered their instrument and gained fame and fortune. I have already mentioned Paul McCartney, and there are many others like Curt Cobain, Tony Iommi, Jimi Hendrix and Slim Whitman.

Dick Dale, “King Of The Surf Guitar” is one notable exception to this rule. The first guitar he learnt to play on was a normal right handed guitar. So he forced his hands to learn to play without changing the order of the strings on the guitar. Even after he was able to buy custom made left handed guitars, he still played with the strings in the right hand positions because that is what he was used to. Bobby Womack and Albert King also play like this.

So what changes need to be made to a guitar to make it suitable for playing left handed? Well, when you hold a guitar in playing position the sixth string - the E string which is the thickest guitar string needs to be on top of the guitar, that is closest to your shoulder. To achieve this the order of the strings needs to be reversed. If you hold a right handed guitar in front of you and look straight at it, the sixth string is on your right hand side. To string the guitar for left handed playing, the first string should be on the right hand side.

Also, the two parts of the guitar that actually hold the strings on - the bridge and the nut need to be changed around. If you look closely at these parts you will see that they have slots cut in them to hold the strings. Naturally the nut and bridge will need to be turned upside down to fit the strings in the reverse order. Here is a tutorial on Bridge Conversion for Left Hand Players

Now for the question of buying left handed guitars. Many guitarists complain that left handed guitars cost around double the price of right handed guitars, so you will need to do some serious shopping. Tokai and Vintage make serviceable mid-range left handed guitars for a reasonable price,. Fender make all the ‘basic’ model Telecasters and Stratocasters for leftys, and Gibson make left handed versions of all their flagship guitars.

Now let us look at another challenge for left handed guitarists - chord charts. If you do a search on the web you will find a range of printed left handed chord charts and chord generators. A good on to start with is “Left Handed Guitar Chord Chart”, by Robert Tarchara. There are also books that are written especially for left handed guitar players:
Mel Bay Left-Handed Guitar Chords, by William Bay, 2005
Guitar Case Guide to Left-Handed Chords, by Rikky Rooksby, 2001
Guitar Case Guide to Left-handed Scales, by Rikky Rooksby, 2006

Fortunately there are many left handed guitar players who have been willing to share the knowledge and experience on line. Some can be found on forums, others have set up their own websites. Among other tips they can help with where and how to buy left handed guitars.

There are lots of tutorial type videos on the web for left handed guitarists. Here is one where Elliot Easton discusses the challenges of being a left handed guitar player:

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