How to play the requinto guitar: requinto for beginners

The requinto is the lead guitar in sierreño and corridos: the intro everyone recognizes, the runs between the singer's lines, and the ending. This guide takes you from holding a 12-string for the first time to playing your first requinto run.

1. What the requinto is

In a sierreño group there are usually three parts: a rhythm guitar playing the chords, a bass or tololoche keeping the low notes, and the requinto playing the lead. The requinto answers the singer. It plays short runs in the spaces between vocal lines, never on top of the words.

Most sierreño players use a 12-string guitar, called a docerola. It has six pairs of strings, and you play each pair as if it were one string, which gives the requinto its thick, cutting sound.

2. What you need

• A guitar. A 12-string is ideal. A regular 6-string works for learning, and everything transfers.
• A few picks. Medium or heavy picks give the clear attack requinto needs. Thin picks flop on a 12-string.
• A tuner. Twelve strings drift out of tune easily. Use our free 12-string tuner, or any clip-on tuner.
• Fifteen minutes a day. Short daily practice beats one long weekly session.

3. Tune your guitar

A 12-string uses the same notes as a 6-string, from the thickest pair to the thinnest: E, A, D, G, B, E. The difference is that each note has two strings.

Most sierreño players use cuerdas pares: both strings of each pair tuned to exactly the same note, using two regular sets of strings. Factory 12-strings usually come in octave pairs instead, with a thinner string an octave higher on the lower pairs. Check yours before you tune.

Tune one string at a time, resting a finger on the other string of the pair so it cannot ring. Always tune up to the note; if you go past it, drop below and come back up.

Read the full tuning guide or open the free tuner.

4. Hold it and the pick

• Sit toward the front of the chair with both feet flat. Rest the guitar's waist on your right leg (left leg if you're left-handed).
• Angle the neck slightly up so you can see the fretboard without hunching.
• Hold the pick between the pad of your thumb and the side of your index finger, with only a little tip showing.
• To press a pair, put your fingertip just behind the fret wire, covering both strings. Press only until the buzz stops.

5. Your first three chords

Most corridos use three chords. Musicians in this genre call them primera, segunda and tercera. In the key of E, those are E, B7 and A. Pairs are numbered from the thinnest (pair 1) to the thickest (pair 6).

B7 always wants to go back to E. That pull is why musicians call it the preparación. See the three chords in five keys.

6. The corrido rhythm

Corridos are in 2/4 time: two beats per bar. Your picking hand does two jobs, a bass note on beat 1 and a strum on beat 2.

On an E chord: pick pair 6 on beat 1, strum the higher pairs on beat 2. Then pick pair 5 on the next beat 1, and strum again. That back-and-forth between two bass notes is the sound of the corrido.

Count "one, two" out loud and keep it slow. Steady always beats fast.

7. Your first requinto run

Here is the run nearly every requinto player uses to end a song in E. It walks down the scale from the third note to home: G♯, F♯, E, all on pair 1.

The numbers are frets on pair 1, the thinnest. Pick them one at a time, alternating down and up, and let the last note ring over an E chord. That three-note idea, played in any key, is how most songs in this music end. See the same ending in five keys.

8. How to practice

Use a metronome set slow enough that you never make a mistake. When you can play something clean three times in a row, speed it up a little.