What Guitar Techniques Should I Practice? A Reference Guide for Guitarists

You've picked some tunes you actually want to learn. You've listened to them, mapped out the sections and broken the difficult parts into smaller pieces.

Eventually you're going to hit something you can't play.

Maybe it's a fast run. Maybe it's a chord voicing you don't recognize. Maybe the notes aren't particularly difficult, but you can't make the rhythm sound anything like the recording.

Now what?

First, you need to figure out what the guitarist is actually doing. Then you need to decide whether the technique or skill behind it belongs on your practice list.

That's what this reference guide is for.

What follows is not a checklist of techniques every guitarist must master. It's a menu of things that might be worth practicing when the music you're trying to play calls for them.

That's the same reason I recommend starting with the music when deciding what to practice on guitar: the technique should serve something you're actually trying to play.

Your music comes first. The technique has a reason to exist because the music gave you a reason to learn it.

How Do You Figure Out What a Guitarist Is Actually Doing?

Sometimes it's obvious. You hear a huge bend and know it's a bend. You see Eddie Van Halen tapping and there's not much mystery about what's happening.

Other times, it's surprisingly difficult to tell.

Something you hear as a hammer-on might actually be a slide. A run that sounds alternate picked might include pull-offs. A phrase you assumed was played in one position might actually be somewhere completely different on the neck.

Before adding a technique to your practice list, do a little detective work.

Listen First

Start with the recording.

Listen to the passage several times without worrying about tab. Slow it down if you need to. Listen for how the notes are articulated.

Does every note have a sharp attack? Do some notes flow together? Are notes ringing over each other? Do you hear slides between pitches? Bends? Muted notes? Accents?

You don't necessarily need to know the name of the technique yet. Start by figuring out what you're actually hearing.

Find a Live Performance

Nowadays, it's usually not hard to track down a live performance of an artist playing the tune you're trying to learn.

I do this fairly often when I can't figure out a phrase.

Pay attention to both hands. Sometimes the secret to a phrase is happening in the picking hand while you're staring at the fretting hand.

Live performances aren't always identical to the recording, but they can give you a much better idea of how the guitarist approaches the part.

Look for Play-Throughs, Clinics and Lessons

Sometimes you can do even better than concert footage.

Many guitarists have filmed play-throughs of their own music. Others have spent years making instructional videos, doing clinics and demonstrating their techniques.

Paul Gilbert is a great example. He's demonstrated and taught many of the things he plays in his own music. If you're trying to understand a Paul Gilbert phrase, there's a pretty good chance Paul has explained something somewhere that will help you understand how he approaches it. I know because I've watched many of them myself!

Search for the tune, but also search for the technique.

Instead of only searching for:

how to play Technical Difficulties

try:

Paul Gilbert Technical Difficulties picking

or:

Paul Gilbert string crossing

You may find that understanding how the guitarist generally plays makes the particular phrase much easier to figure out.

Watch Other Guitarists Play It

Don't limit yourself to the original artist.

A good cover or lesson video might give you a much better camera angle. Watch several guitarists play the same passage and you may discover that they don't all play it the same way. That's useful information.

Sometimes other musicians explain the original artist's technique better than the artist does!

There may be several perfectly good ways to play the same phrase.

Why I Don't Like Relying on Tab Alone

Tabs can be useful. I use them.

But tabs, for the most part, aren't my ideal way to learn a tune.

One of the biggest problems is simple: a lot of tabs are wrong.

I've personally spent time struggling with a passage only to eventually realize that the tab itself was the problem. The notes might be wrong. The position might be wrong. The fingering might not make sense. Sometimes the transcription gets the pitches right but puts them in a completely different part of the neck than the guitarist actually used.

That's a frustrating way to spend your practice time.

The more I've learned the fretboard, scale systems and diatonic harmony, the less dependent I've become on somebody else's tab. If I can watch where a guitarist is playing, recognize the scale position or general area of the fretboard, I can often pick up my guitar and work out the rest by ear.

Sometimes that's actually easier than trying to find an accurate tab.

And here's another important point: you don't necessarily have to play the phrase exactly where the original guitarist played it.

You may find the same notes in another position and prefer the fingering. You may like the tone better on a different string. Your hands may simply prefer another approach.

You're trying to learn the music. You're not auditioning to become that musician's clone.

Tabs, chord sheets and transcriptions are tools. Use them alongside the recording, video, your knowledge of the fretboard and your own ears.

Use the tab as evidence, not gospel.

Experiment With the Guitar in Your Hands

Eventually, stop researching and start experimenting.

Try alternate picking the phrase. Try adding legato. Move it to another position. Change the fingering. Try economy picking. Watch what happens if you start the phrase with an upstroke instead of a downstroke.

Sometimes you'll discover the original technique. Sometimes you'll discover your own solution. Either outcome can be useful.

The point is to identify what is preventing you from producing the musical result you want.

Once you've done that, it helps to know what kinds of techniques are available to you.

Guitar Techniques to Consider Practicing

This is where things can get dangerous.

A guitarist can look at a list like this and immediately think:

Crap. I need to practice all of this?!

You don't.

Think of this as a reference. Scan it when you're trying to put a name to something you're hearing or identify a skill that might solve a problem in one of your tunes.

Picking-Hand Techniques

Alternate Picking

Alternating downstrokes and upstrokes. It's one of the primary approaches for playing continuous picked lines and becomes especially important when speed and string changes enter the picture. Paul Gilbert is an obvious player to investigate here.

Downpicking

Playing repeated notes primarily or entirely with downstrokes. It can create a very different attack and feel from alternate picking and is a huge part of some rock, punk and metal rhythm styles.

Economy Picking

Combines alternate picking with sweep-like movements when changing strings. Instead of always maintaining strict down-up alternation, the pick can continue in the same direction as it moves onto an adjacent string.

Sweep Picking

Moving the pick across multiple strings in a continuous direction while the fretting hand articulates individual notes. It's commonly associated with arpeggios and fast lead playing.

Directional Picking

A broader picking approach that allows the direction of the string change to influence the picking pattern rather than forcing strict alternate picking in every situation.

Tremolo Picking

Rapidly picking the same note or a small group of notes. It appears everywhere from surf guitar to metal.

Crosspicking

A picking approach used to move cleanly across multiple strings, often while maintaining a flowing repeated pattern. It's particularly associated with bluegrass and acoustic guitar playing.

Hybrid Picking

Combining the pick with one or more fingers of the picking hand. It can make string skips, chordal ideas and certain lead phrases much easier to execute.

Chicken Picking

A highly articulated style of hybrid picking associated especially with country guitar. It often combines pick-and-finger attacks, muted notes and snapping strings.

String Skipping

Deliberately jumping over strings rather than always moving to adjacent ones. It can create wider intervals and unusual melodic patterns, but it can also expose weaknesses in your picking accuracy.

Raking

Dragging the pick across muted or partially muted strings into a target note. You'll hear it frequently as an expressive attack in blues and rock lead playing.

Palm Muting

Using the picking-hand palm to control how freely the strings vibrate. This can range from light damping to the tight, percussive sound heard throughout rock and metal.

Pick-Hand Muting

Using the picking hand to silence strings that shouldn't be ringing. Sometimes the notes you're playing are fine and the real problem is all the noise around them.

Fretting-Hand and Legato Techniques

Hammer-Ons

Producing a note by bringing a fretting-hand finger down firmly enough to sound it without picking the note again.

Pull-Offs

Sounding a lower fretted or open note by releasing a fretting-hand finger, usually with a slight plucking motion.

Legato

Connecting notes smoothly using hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides rather than picking every note.

Slides

Moving a fretted note along the string into another pitch. Slides can be functional, expressive or both, and they're easy to mistake for other types of legato when you're learning by ear.

Position Shifts

Moving the fretting hand efficiently from one area of the neck to another. A phrase may be easy in one position but become difficult because of the shift required to reach the next one.

Trills

Rapidly alternating between two notes, commonly using repeated hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Fretting-Hand Muting

Using unused fingers or portions of the fretting hand to prevent unwanted strings from ringing.

Finger Independence

Developing enough control that one finger can move without unnecessary movement or tension from the others.

Tapping

Using a picking-hand finger to fret notes on the neck. Eddie Van Halen is the obvious reference point, although tapping has developed into an enormous vocabulary of its own.

Multi-Finger Tapping

Extending tapping to multiple picking-hand fingers, allowing more complex melodic, arpeggiated and chordal ideas.

Bends, Articulation and Expression

Technical ability isn't only about playing fast notes.

Sometimes you can play every note in the phrase and it still sounds nothing like the recording.

String Bending

Physically bending the string to raise its pitch. Hitting the intended pitch accurately is every bit as much a technique as playing the correct fret.

Pre-Bends and Release Bends

Bending the string before the note is sounded, then either holding or releasing it afterward.

Unison Bends

Bending one note until it matches another note being played simultaneously.

Vibrato

Repeatedly varying the pitch of a sustained note. Width, speed and control can dramatically change the personality of a phrase.

Staccato and Note Length

Controlling exactly how long notes ring. Sometimes the difference between your version and the recording isn't the notes at all. It's when the notes stop.

Accents

Making particular notes stand out from the surrounding notes. This can completely change the feel of a phrase without changing a single pitch.

Dynamics

Controlling how loudly or softly notes and phrases are played.

Double Stops

Playing two notes together. Double stops are everywhere in blues, rock, country, R&B and countless other styles.

Octaves

Playing the same pitch class in two different octaves simultaneously. Wes Montgomery is probably the most obvious guitarist to investigate if you want to hear just how much music can be made from octaves.

Natural and Artificial Harmonics

Producing bell-like overtones by touching or manipulating specific points on the string.

Pinch Harmonics

Using the pick and picking-hand thumb together to emphasize a harmonic immediately after the string is picked.

Whammy-Bar Techniques

Using a vibrato system to alter pitch, from subtle vibrato to dives, scoops, flutters and much more dramatic effects.

Rhythm Guitar Techniques

Rhythm guitar can expose just as many weaknesses as a blazing solo.

Strumming

Controlling the pick across multiple strings while maintaining time, dynamics and the correct rhythmic pattern.

Alternate Strumming

Using downstrokes and upstrokes as part of a consistent rhythmic motion.

Palm Muting

Controlling sustain and attack with the picking-hand palm. The amount of pressure matters enormously.

Fretting-Hand Muting and Dead Notes

Using the fretting hand to create muted, percussive attacks rather than clearly pitched notes.

Syncopation

Accenting notes or chords in places that don't fall on the most obvious beats. If you know the chords but the part still doesn't feel right, rhythm may be the actual problem.

Subdivision

Understanding and feeling how beats divide into eighth notes, sixteenth notes, triplets and other smaller rhythmic units.

Accents and Groove

Playing the correct rhythm isn't always enough. Which notes receive emphasis and how they sit against the beat can determine whether the part actually grooves.

Swing and Shuffle Feel

Unequal rhythmic subdivisions that create a very different feel from straight eighth or sixteenth notes.

Reggae / Skank Rhythm

The short, syncopated chord attacks associated with reggae. Timing, muting and note length matter as much as the chord itself.

Funk Rhythm

Often combines sixteenth-note subdivision, muting, accents, chord fragments and a nearly continuous picking-hand motion.

Galloping

A repeating long-short-short rhythmic pattern common in rock and metal rhythm guitar.

Chugging

Tightly controlled, often palm-muted rhythm playing where attack, muting and rhythmic precision are critical.

Arpeggiated Rhythm Parts

Playing the notes of a chord individually rather than striking the entire chord at once. Clean string transitions and control over which notes continue ringing become important.

Fingerstyle and Acoustic Techniques

Fingerpicking

Using the fingers rather than, or in addition to, a pick to pluck individual strings.

Thumb Independence

Maintaining a bass pattern with the thumb while the other fingers play something rhythmically or melodically different.

Alternating Bass

Moving the thumb between bass notes while maintaining the harmony above it.

Travis Picking

A fingerstyle approach built around a steady alternating-thumb pattern with syncopated notes played by the fingers. Merle Travis and Chet Atkins are obvious places to listen.

Pattern Fingerpicking

Using repeating right-hand patterns across the strings to outline chords.

Melody and Accompaniment

Playing a melody while simultaneously supplying bass notes, chords or other accompaniment.

Open and Alternate Tunings

Changing the guitar's standard tuning to make different voicings, open strings and fingerings available. Sometimes a part that looks bizarre in standard tuning suddenly makes perfect sense once you discover the tuning.

Slide Guitar

Using a slide rather than fretting notes conventionally, creating continuous pitch movement and a completely different approach to intonation.

Lead Guitar Vocabulary

Some things don't fit neatly into a single mechanical category but are still worth recognizing when you hear them.

• Double stops
• Octaves
• Harmonized lines
• Pedal tones
• Sequences
• String-skipping lines
• Call and response
• Repeated motifs
• Chord-tone targeting
• Chromatic approaches
• Rakes
• Legato runs
• Scalar runs
• Arpeggiated lines

These are less about collecting tricks and more about recognizing the vocabulary inside the phrases you're trying to learn.

Don't Forget: The Problem Might Not Be a Technique

You might work through that entire list and discover that your hands aren't really the problem.

You don't know where the notes are. You don't understand the harmony underneath the phrase. Your time is shaky. Or you keep forgetting what comes after the bridge.

Those are practice problems too.

The following subjects are too large to properly teach here. We'll dig deeper into many of these systems in other articles. For now, the important thing is simply recognizing that one of them could be the missing piece.

Fretboard and Scale Systems

• Fretboard note knowledge
• Interval recognition on the fretboard
• CAGED
• Three-Note-Per-String (3NPS) scale patterns
• Pentatonic positions
• Major scale positions
• Modes
• Arpeggio shapes
• Triads across the neck
• Chord-tone visualization

Chords and Harmony

• Open chords
• Barre chords
• Power chords
• Triads
• Chord inversions
• Seventh chords
• Extended chords
• Suspended chords
• Shell voicings
• Drop voicings
• Voice leading
• Diatonic harmony
• Chord melody
• Harmonized melodies

Ear, Rhythm and Musicianship

• Learning by ear
• Transcription
• Interval recognition
• Chord recognition
• Internal time
• Rhythmic subdivision
• Metronome work
• Playing with recordings
• Memorization
• Song form
• Improvisation
• Harmonic analysis
• Standard notation
• Reading tab

Performance Skills

Don't overlook this category either.

You may be able to play every individual part of a tune and still discover that performing the complete thing exposes a completely different set of weaknesses.

• Playing a complete tune without stopping
• Recovering after a mistake
• Starting confidently
• Ending cleanly
• Playing from memory
• Playing standing up
• Playing with other musicians
• Playing for another person
• Playing under pressure
• Recording yourself
• Preparing for a live performance

The simplest guitar lick in the world can suddenly become a different animal when people are watching you play it.

How Do I Turn This Giant List Into a Practice Plan?

If you just read all of that and thought, "Holy crap, now I have 75 more things I need to practice," I've failed.

You don't.

Go back to your tunes.

The process we've been building throughout these articles looks something like this:

Tune → Section → Problem → Possible Technique or Skill

For example:

Those last two examples are important because the solution isn't always a new physical guitar technique.

Now you can come back to the lists in this article and look for possibilities.

Don't ask:

Which 15 of these things should a serious guitarist know?

Ask:

Which of these tools might solve the musical problems I've uncovered?

That's an entirely different way of building a practice plan.

These Are Practice Candidates, Not Your Practice Plan

Suppose you do this with five tunes and end up identifying:

• Alternate picking
• Picking-hand/fretting-hand synchronization
• String bending
• Vibrato
• Thumb independence
• Chord inversions
• Groove
• Fretboard visualization
• Memorization
• Performance practice

Great.

That doesn't mean all ten things belong in tomorrow's practice session.

You've created a list of practice candidates.

Some may need your attention immediately. Some may matter eventually. Some might already be close enough that one focused session solves the problem. Others could become months-long projects.

And your practice time is limited.

So now we finally arrive at the next question:

Of everything I've discovered, what am I actually going to practice?

That's where the next step comes in: building a guitar practice plan you'll actually use.