Strumming / Rhythm guitar
Most beginners decide to play with a flat pick, or plectrum. It's
the easiest way to get a clear, loud sound out of guitar, especially
on steel strings. Nylons aren't as suited to playing with a pick
and prefer to be plucked by the fingers.
I have always been a finger style player and I never use a pick.
I find them difficult to control, but only because I never use
them. I tried for a while to use finger-picks, which slip on the
ends of the fingers, but they also were uncomfortable for me.
The term "rhythm guitar" is often used. This describes
a style of playing where you become half guitarist half percussionist.
You can use you plectrum to either pick single notes or strum all
six, or combinations of both. A common way of playing rhythm is
to pick the root note of the chord and then strum the rest of the
chord.
Like this.
Which looks like this on the fretboard. The root notes are slightly
larger and the Em root note is the open bass E string. I've added
a D note (third fret, B string) which appears in all the chords.
The G remains a G, the Em becomes an Em7 and the C has become a
major nine chord. I did this just because it sounds more interesting.
Here it is animated
And here is one way of playing it. I'm playing
the root note of G on beat 1, then strumming beats 2 and 4, same
pattern on the Em7, the same pattern for the Cmaj9 but not playing
the root note on the second bar. I'm also adding in a couple of
up-strokes to kick into the next bar. There are as many patterns
and variations as there are snowflake designs.
Here is
a 3/4 time version.
As for technique, I'll leave it up to you. Obviously there are
downstrokes and upstrokes, you can "mute" the strings
with the fleshy side of your hand to get a percussive sound --
a zillion ways of getting those strings a vibratin'. If you do
have a yearning to make music, you should just experiment and mentally
file the results. This goes on forever by the way. In fact, the
more you know, the more music becomes one big experiment -- even
during concerts or recording sessions.
There are a few players out there who can flat pick and finger
pick really well, but not many. Most players gravitate towards
one or the other as their 'standard' mode. I chose my fingers.
On to fingerpicking 
|
