Now to the way you play the classical guitar. The basic thing to understand is that plectrums and fingerpicks are not used by classical guitarists. The sound produced is a product of the guitar player’s fingertips or fingernails plucking or striking the nylon strings. It is the guitar player’s choice whether to use nails or just the flesh of the fingertips. Many people think that it is more difficult to play the guitar without nails, but players who just use their fingertips say it is no more difficult to learn to play that way. If you have your right hand close to the bridge of the guitar you will produce a sharp, dry tone. If you pluck the strings with your right hand nearer the neck you will get a warm, mellow sound.

The plucking of the classical guitar strings can be done in two ways. The “”rest”" stroke is where the thumb or the fingers pluck the string and come to rest on the next string. The “”free”" stroke is where the thumb and fingers attack the string in such a way as to avoid the adjacent strings. If you need to know more about the difference between these two techniques a search on the internet will give you videos and pictures that illustrate the two strokes. When you try to use these techniques you will notice the marked difference in sound. Another technique used in classical guitar playing is the tremelo technique where the right hand thumb plays a bass note followed by the index, middle and ring fingers playing melody notes in quick succession. A famous piece employing the tremelo is Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tárrega. Finally a rather tricky technique is used for playing solos using the sound of harmonics. This involves the right hand index finger damping the string while the ring finger plucks. When you play chords by scraping the right hand fingers or thumb across the strings it is called a rasgueado. You can strum chords with the thumb using a down stroke, the index finger using up or down strokes or, less commonly, by using the flamenco rasgueado which entails the little finger, ring finger, middle finger, index finger and thumb following each other in a down stroke across the strings.

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