Dare to Be Rare: Five Unusual Guitar Techniques

Here's a pretty cool lesson video posted by Bad Guitar^[1] in April 2015.

Bad Guitar's motto is "no talk, just licks," which is actually kinda refreshing.

Anyway, in this video, which has already garnered more than 1,000,000 views, Bad Guitar presents what he calls "5 rare guitar techniques just for fun."

Here are his five techniques in order, complete with his own explanations (with a bit of editing; for the unedited version, head here^[2]). Before we go, we suggest you follow Bad Guitar on YouTube.^[3] He posts some pretty useful stuff for sure.

1. Picking hand bending (0:19): Not an ultra-rare technique but something pretty cool for people who prefer fixed bridges but still want to do some whammy bar tricks. I think Zakk Wylde does something similar, so you might want to check out his technique.

2. Playing harmonics by resting a finger on top of a string (1:23): There's a pretty common trick where you play a repetitive legato pattern and slide your finger/palm along the string to get different harmonics. This is exactly that, but instead of playing harmonics randomly, the finger rests on a string and the fretting hand plays legato patterns to bring out specific harmonics.

In the video I rest my finger on the 12th fret and play a legato pattern using the open string (12 frets below the resting finger), the fifth fret (seven frets below) and the seventh fret (five frets below). Pretty cool for spicing up your tapping runs too (2:33). That's what I mainly use it for.

3. Picking and tapping combined (2:35): This is for those of you who don't mind playing dirty. The dull corner of the pick frets the string on every stroke and every