Techniques
The moves that bring notes to life: connecting them, bending them, sliding them, muting them, making them squeal. Each technique has its own page, with examples from beginner to advanced, licks to listen to and its tab notation.
Five families
The fretting hand makes notes sing without picking them: hammer-ons, pull-offs, legato, trills, slides, bends, vibrato, double stops.
The picking hand brings rhythm and precision: alternate picking, economy picking, hybrid picking, sweep picking, string skipping, rakes, palm muting, tapping.
Sound effects change the color of a note: natural harmonics, ghost notes and muting.
Some techniques live mostly on the electric guitar (pinch harmonics, the whammy bar, volume swells, chicken picking), others on the acoustic guitar (fingerpicking, percussive fingerstyle, slide guitar).
Every page can be played: an example at the top, three examples from beginner to advanced, three licks in different styles, each at full speed and slowed down. The tab you see and the sound you hear come from the same notes.
Where to start
Start with the hammer-on and the pull-off: they don’t take strength, just precision. The slide comes naturally after that, and alternate picking is worth practicing from day one. The bend needs slightly stronger fingers: give it a few weeks of practice. Palm muting becomes essential as soon as you play rock riffs. Tapping, sweep picking and the pinch harmonic come last.
To read their symbols in a tab, see also the How to read tab page.
Before you play
A few minutes of warming up makes your fingers more accurate and keeps aches away. Twenty-nine exercises, from beginner to advanced, are waiting in the warm-up exercises.