Can You Strum An Electric Guitar With Your Fingers?

Can you strum an electric guitar with your fingers?

Yes, you can fingerpick on an electric guitar

and you should. The mechanics are very similar to fingerpicking on an acoustic guitar but the strings are often a smaller gauge and less taught. This means you will need to pick more softly but the technique creates an excellent tone.

Can I play electric guitar with my fingers?

A common misconception is that fingerstyle, sometimes referred to as fingerpicking, is limited to acoustic guitar, and of course, this couldn’t be further from the truth –

you can definitely play fingerstyle on the electric guitar

!

Is it OK to strum with fingers?

Strumming with your fingers can be a valuable technique

. Using your fingers gives you more flexibility to get different sounds. There’s a wide variety of sounds you can get depending on whether you’re hitting with the fleshy part of your fingers, your thumb or your nail.

Should I play electric guitar with a pick or fingers?

Can you strum an electric guitar without a pick?

Without a proper pick, you risk accidentally scratching the body of your guitar or having it snag on your strings. Depending on the material, it can also slip out of your fingers while you’re playing. But

by using your thumb, fingers or both, you can safely strum like a pro on steel-string and nylon-string guitars

.

Can fat hands play guitar?

If your fingers are wide enough, you might be able to press down both strings with your index or middle finger

. This is how 12 string guitars are played – two adjacent strings fretted under one finger, but 12 strings produce a very specific type of sound (a chorus effect) which you might not always want.

Can you strum an electric guitar with your thumb?

Strumming with your thumb gives you a rounder sound

, and strumming with a pick gives you a brighter sound. Things to keep in mind when learning how to strum the guitar with your thumb: With the down strums, use the fleshier part of your thumb. On the up strums, your nail may catch the string.

Is strumming with thumb OK?

Is it Okay to Strum With Your Thumb?

Absolutely it’s okay to strum with the thumb

. Typically in fingerpicking, the thumb is the bass player. In the realm of fingerstyle the thumb is used quite a bit more.

How can I play electric guitar without a pick?

Is it OK to strum without a pick?

The first thing to work out with strumming without a pick is your thumb. Naturally,

you can easily strum your strings with just your thumb, and you can even strum in an upwards direction

. So, you can alternate between downstrokes and upstrokes as you would with a pick.

Is fingerpicking harder than strumming?

Summary.

Strumming is easier than fingerpicking

or using a guitar pick, (at least initially) but both methods have their own difficulties that you have to figure out.

Does Ed Sheeran use a pick?

Some of Ed Sheeran’s songs are played fingerstyle while in others he uses a pick

. When he does need to use a pick in a song, he uses custom-made picks by Dunlop with artwork to match the current tour.

Do most guitarists use a pick?

Although there are always exceptions. Guitar players like Mark Knopfler, Lindsey Buckingham (Fleetwoodmac) and Jeff Beck (after years of using the pick) are popular guitar players and excellent exponents of fingerstyle rock guitar. That being said,

most electric guitar players use the guitar pick

.

Do you strum electric guitar?

Does playing guitar Change your hands?

Playing guitar can change the shape of your finger, although not in a very noticeable way

. The strength and speed required to play will make you build muscle, elasticity, and dexterity. Those factors could make your fingers look or feel slightly thicker or longer, but callouses are the most noticeable change.

Which guitar is best for fat fingers?

• Ibanez GAX30.
• Epiphone Les Paul Special.
• PRS SE Custom 24.
• Gretsch Streamliner.
• Epiphone SG Special wide neck guitar.
• Ibanez RGA42FM.
• Ibanez Artcore AS73.
• Squire Classic Vibe Jazzmaster.

How long does it take to learn the guitar?

Is it OK to play guitar with your thumb?

Starting guitar with only the thumb is normal

– even I started that way. It just felt natural. However, only using the thumb for all 6 strings is limiting. You cannot pluck multiple strings like you would during fingerpicking and you cannot pluck them quickly like you could when using the pick.

Can you strum a guitar with your nails?

How do you strum quietly?

What is the correct way to strum a guitar?

How do you strum smoothly?

Do I need nails to play guitar?

Simply put,

you don’t need nails to play guitar

. However, some classical and acoustic guitar player grows their nails to achieve more control, dynamics, and speed on the instrument.

How do you play electric guitar without strumming?

Do professional guitarists use picks?

Most professional guitar players use standard picks

. Depending on what guitar style they play, this can range from thin to thick, and round to sharp. They have selected the plectrum that best fits their sound and technique.

Can I play guitar without a pic?

Is it better to learn guitar with or without a pick?

Strumming chords on a steel-string guitar tends to be richer with a pick

, and you get a louder volume in general. The downside to using a pick is that string skipping (jumping over one or more strings) can be more difficult than when playing with fingers, e.g. when playing arpeggio patterns.

Where do you strum an electric guitar?

What is the hardest chord to play on guitar?

Should you learn strumming or fingerstyle first?

No,

it is much more beneficial to start by learning to strum with a pick

. Fingerpicking really should not be learned first, much less fingerstyle. The reasons are many. For one, basic rhythmic skills must be developed first in order to learn how to fingerpick properly and effectively.

Is Ed Sheeran a billionaire?

Ed Sheeran could become the first British billionaire musician

after another “golden year” saw his wealth reportedly increase by £40 million, according to the Sunday Times Music Rich List.

Can you play the guitar with small hands?

How big of a guitar should I get?

Generally, adults are comfortable with full size guitars (

40” Concert size and 41” Dreadnought in acoustic guitars

). If you are small in stature consider a 40” Concert size guitar or smaller. If your are very tall consider a 41” Dreadnought size guitar.

Can you use a coin as a guitar pick?

Coins don’t wear off like guitar picks

.

You should try using a coin as a guitar pick, then! It may not have a massive effect on your tone, but you’ll likely notice that it gets harder to hit the right strings when your pick is excessively worn off. However, a coin doesn’t wear off if you use it as a guitar pick!

Did Jimi Hendrix use a guitar pick?

Looking through the photos, one can usually notice that he holds a red/black pick in his hand. This is

probably Fender’s (more likely) or possibly Manny’s Music (probably used just on occasion), 351 shape celluloid pick

.

When should you throw away a guitar pick?

As guitar picks wear out their shape tends to change, from a very pointy tip to a more rounded tip, and trust me, these ever-changing picks with which you’re playin’ will make you give in and cry. So my advice is to make sure you actually throw away your picks

as soon as they start to wear out

.