Strings noise while playing...

matty42

What can be done to lessen the sometimes awful string scraping sounds when playing and changing chords? Can it be helped, or is it sometimes unavoidable with acoustic playing?

One technique I do use is to try to lift my fingers off the strings when I can. I have also notice that the more confident the playing it seems to cut that down. While also enhancing over all tone.

Any thoughts on this subject?

Bones

Hi Matty,

Sorry for the late reply. I've been thinking about this and I'm not sure what to say without seeing what you are doing. I think that if you are getting a lot of noise when moving to a different chord (like up or down the neck) you should lift your fingers off of the strings during the movement. That isn't too hard as long as you are not gripping the chords too tightly. It doesn't take much force to grab the chords since we are supposed to be damping anyway. It's just a quick, momentary grip as far as I know (I'm no expert).

Also, what type of strings are you using? I think that normal bronze strings are a lot more noisy than argies.

Just my 2 cents (from a novice so take with a big grain of salt).

matty42

Right now I'm using D'addario Silk and Steel strings. I was using Argentines for a while. I don't recall a difference or not with the Argentines though. I have been trying some different strings. Perhaps I should makes a couple notes about them to help remember which was best.

Maybe it's just partly the nature of an acoustic instrument too? I'm not sure. For me it's not an all the time problem, but now and then a noisey scrape will rear its head...

Bones

I have not used silk and steel lately so I don't remember if they are worse than argies or not.

On the old set of argies that I have on if I leave my fingers SLIGHTLY touching the strings and slide up and down I definitely get that squeaky, scrapey sound so I think that to avoid that you need to lift the fingers slightly above the strings while moving the hand up and down the neck so that the fingers are not touching the strings.

Lango-Django

Has anybody ever tried spraying your strings with some kind of light oil, like Pam or WD40, to eliminate these sounds?

I've never actually tried it but I was once told that the legendary plectrum banjoist Eddie Peabody used to do this.

Jazzaferri

The only cure that I know for this is technique and lots of practice.