Sure, you may look at your fingers on the fretboard to make sure they’re going to the right notes, but are you watching how your fingers move from fret to fret? How they inadvertently fly up off the frets between notes instead of moving smoothly from note to note? Do you know the angle at which your pick strikes the strings? The only way you’ll know this is by watching yourself.Īudio and video recording is obviously a great tool for self-observation. That sounds straightforward, but most people don’t really watch what their fingers are doing. Here’s a guide with links to each section in this article:įind a good way to observe and analyze your own playing. But before we get down to the nitty-gritty of actual fingers on strings, let’s think about a few overarching approaches that will help you along the path to great guitar tone.
In this article, we’ll provide you with some ideas for improving specific aspects of your right- and left-hand technique, whether you play fingerstyle or with a flatpick, as well as some practice tools.
How do you get good tone? It’s a question that seems almost impossible to answer, especially since there are numerous varieties of acoustic guitar tone that qualify as “good.” However, the answer (or answers) are pretty simple: clean up your technique, play efficiently, reduce muscle tension, and, most importantly, listen to yourself, all the time, with an aural magnifying glass.