How to Strum an Electric Guitar

Hey. I’m Will. I’m here and working hard in my home studio.
I’m mapping all kinds of different topics for all you guys
and girls out there that are scouring the internet for the
next free guitar lesson tip. So I’ve been working on all
the cures and common mistakes that guitarists make from
learning right here on the internet. I hope you find
today’s tip really helpful.

Today I’m going to talk to you about string attack,
how we attack the strings, how we plow through the
strings to get the best sound possible. I’m going
to be explaining this from your point of view. I’m
going to be the Guitar Doctor today and let’s check it out.

We’re going to be talking about our string attack.
We’re going to be talking about this hand today.
You’re going to be surprised at this, but basically
what I’m going to be talking to you about is hitting
the strings harder. Why do we do that? Unless you play
really gentle acoustic music, then maybe you want to
play nice and calmly and smoothly and quietly because
that keeps the vibe of the song. But when you’re playing
rock or country or blues or metal or anything like those
styles of music or a combination, what really helps is if
we hit the string nice and hard.

We can change something like this… I’m just grabbing my
Led Zeppelin or AC/DC G chord here. I’m just playing a G
chord without my first finger. Now my finger automatically
mutes the A string. So what I can do is just plow through
all six strings.

I can make something transform from this… Into something
like this… What I’m doing there is I’ve got this pick
plowing through those strings. By the way, I’m using quite
a thick pick. I’ve got a 1 millimeter thick pick and I am
just going for it. Each one of those strings is really
connecting with that pick. What this comes from is we want
to make this body of wood, whether it be an acoustic guitar
or an electric guitar, resonate as much as possible. If we
plow through the strings, we get this whole thing vibrating
and what ends up coming out here is sounding really big and full.

I mean, certainly there’s a maximum. There will be a
maximum way of just kind of hitting the strings so hard
that they’re just flying out of tune and not really sounding
that good. But if you plow through the strings nice and solid
like that, everything will stay nice and in-tune with your
hard strums and end up sounding really nice.

So what it’s all about here is adding some aggression,
some muscle, some soul and like some oomph. I don’t know,
whatever you want to call it, just getting that – it’s
almost like playing guitar more athletically, more like
a sport. You just transform. It’s just hitting the strings
harder. Pound through those strings.

Really, most importantly, guys, I really have to say that
this is all about breaking down your shyness barrier.
We can’t play the guitar being shy anymore because it
ends up just sounding gentle and kind of weak and stuff
like that. If you just get in there and start hitting the
strings harder and just owning it, this instrument is just
going to sound a lot fuller, more powerful and just way huger.

I hope you enjoyed today’s video. I’m going to be releasing
more videos like this. So until then, keep on ripping it up.