How to play the guitar with a pen

Photo courtesy: Marcos Kaiser

When I first saw Marcos Kaiser play the guitar with a pen I remember feeling profoundly wonderstruck. I went on to use this technique in my fingerstyle cover of ‘Hedwig’s Theme’ from the Harry Potter series. Watch it below:

I wanted to share some tips that’ll neaten your sound should you ever decide to join the ‘Guitar and Pen’ wagon –

• I’ve noticed that cheap ball-point pens with hand grips work best.
• You’ll need to roughen the pen. Use sandpaper to do this. Scrape in motions parallel to the length of the pen. Repeat on the opposite side so that you won’t need to flip the pen when playing notes on the lower string.
• To play, fret a note and rub the pen against the string in a plane perpendicular to the sound hole.
• The sound amplifies as you quicken the rubbing action.
• Bending the string while playing helps me get a more spooky, distorted tone.
• The pen will smoothen as you play. To keep it rugged, periodically use sand paper on the pen.

Check out the other stuff I come up with: www.nowshoing.com

• This technique only works for melodies that have notes over adjacent strings, since you cannot shift the pen to another string in between a tune, at least I haven’t been able to do so.
• Also, the sound is clear only on the upper four (I want to say three) strings because of the outer winding on these strings. When you rub your pen against the string the small gaps between the winding helps produce that eerie sound.

Source: Pinterest

• Speaking of windings, try to get strings which are ‘roundwound’ they have bigger gaps. They’re also the cheaper ones usually.

Yea, that’s basically it! What all tunes were you able to play using a pen? Write to me here.

I’ve also figured out a way to play percussive rhythms on the guitar using a pen, but I’ll save that for another article.

If you liked what I played, feel free to drop by my YouTube channel and show some love. See ya!