Left and Right Hands
The hands are obviously very important when it comes to playing the guitar. This lesson will teach you the names of the fingers on each hand, as well of the function of each hand as a whole.
As with all of the lessons on this website, I’m going to be discussing everything with the assumption that you’re a right handed guitarist. If you happen to be a left handed guitarist, simply substitute the word ‘right’ for ‘left’.
Left Hand
The left hand is the hand that we use to fret notes. The thumb stays on the back of the neck and we use all 4 fingers to fret notes. This is done by pushing the string down behind the fret to effectively shorten the string. The shorter the string, the higher in pitch the note will be.
We give numbers to each of the fingers. The index finger is 1, middle is 2, ring finger is 3 and pinky is 4.
Take a look at our in depth lesson on left hand position and technique. We teach you everything a classical guitarist needs to know about the left hand.
Right Hand
The right hand is used to play the strings of the guitar. We use the thumb plus 3 of our fingers to play the strings. The thumb is called p, the index is i, the middle is m and the ring finger is a.
The little finger is considered by most to be too short to reach the strings. Because of this it is not used by many guitarists. There are a handful of classical guitarists who believe we should use the little finger to play the strings too. It is more commonly used in flamenco strumming techniques such as the rasguardo. The name of the pinky is c.
Fortunately it is possible to play the vast majority of pieces using just 3 fingers plus the thumb. There are very few occurrences where it is actually necessary to use the little finger.
Classical guitarists tend to use two techniques for playing the strings; apoyando and tirando. You can find out more about each in the lesson linked below:
