Lesson: Practicing the Right Hand Alone on Open Strings

ByBradford Werner
2019

Lesson: Practicing the Right Hand Alone on Open Strings for Classical Guitar (YouTube Lesson Link). The right hand is often neglected in practice and this video addresses that issue. The main point is to have the right hand so organized that it can function on autopilot. My technique book mentioned in the video has the 100 open string exercises and the 120 Giuliani arpeggios: Classical Guitar Technique: Essential Exercises, Scales, & Arpeggios – Notation, 122 pages.

I organize the video into a few sections:

Practice open string exercises (my book has 100 of them), scales, arpeggios, etc.
Turn other exercises into open string exercises by using only the right hand.
Write out tricky passages from your music on TAB using p, i, m, a. For example, the picture below is an easy section from Lagrima. The top line is music notation and the bottom line is TAB which is great for writing out right hand fingering. I think I got the idea from Joel Thomson or Michael Ibsen when they posted it on facebook.

Practicing Right Hand Alone on Classical Guitar

Bradford Werner

Bradford Werner is a classical guitarist and music publisher from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He originally created this site for his students at the Victoria Conservatory of Music but now shares content worldwide. Curating guitar content helps students absorb the culture, musical ideas, and technique of the classical guitar. Bradford also has a YouTube channel with over 94,000 subscribers and 13 million views. He taught classical guitar at the Victoria Conservatory of Music for 16 years and freelanced in Greater Victoria for 20 years and now dedicates much of his time curating content online and helping connect the classical guitar community. See more at his personal website.