Improving Your Guitar Playing – How To Stop The Sliding Noise On Acoustic Guitar Strings

The noise you get when your fingers slide up and down the fretboard is a real nuisance to the acoustic guitar player. The truth is that some noise is going to be unavoidable when you do long slides or chord changes. If you listen to the records of any great player who plays on acoustic guitar – whatever style – you will hear a little finger noise.

You could ask yourself whether you really need to eliminate the string noise. It simply goes with the territory and it could be that it is only lack of experience that causes you to be bothered by the noise. Sometimes new guitarists get worried that they should be able to eliminate the sliding sound with a trick that experienced guitar players know. The fact is experienced guitar players probably aren’t bothered by the noise.

The first positive step you can take is to learn scales and chord shapes in many variations so that you only slide your hands up or down the fretboard only when absolutely necessary. As an example you could try playing all the chords for a song at the same fret. You can’t do this all the time but when you don’t need to make a long stretch in the name of expressiveness, then keep your chords close together.

Another consideration is HOW you move your fingers when you play. You could lift your fingers slightly off the strings when you are playing scale passages that require a long change. Also, many guitarists slide between chords, especially if the chords are bar chords that use the same shape. You could try the technique of holding the shape and visualizing your left hand at the next position. If you practice chord changes this way for a while you will find that you are dragging your hand less.

There are chemicals that you can spray on your guitar strings that lessen string damage from the oil on your fingers as well as cutting down string noise. Or you could try baby powder or baby oil, or just wash your hands before playing to get the oil of your fingers.

The next thing to try is the use of electronics to fade out the noise. I have never tried this kind of thing myself but I don’t think you should go to this much trouble unless you are playing quietly and the sliding is making more noise than the playing. Do a search for Waves DeEsser or Algorithmix.

Technorati Tags: acoustic guitar