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Plucking an instrument may be primarily done with one’s fingers or likewise implement. Traditionally, a large crystal glass was used to chop groups of strings for plucking during the 14th-century Recercada art song from Spain. Some pluckers use multiple small implements, such as Javanese puppets or Japanese zills, which are like tiny cymbals attached by metal wire ropes to adjacent nails on the surface of the instrument.

The technique of plucking is usually based on the player’s four fingers and, less frequently, the thumb. The index finger is most commonly used to pluck or strum the strings, while the other three fingers are usually only used for providing extra support to the hand that is gripping around the neck. Some players use two fingers to pluck, such as the jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan. The plucking hand can be placed either below or above the strings to provide different timbres of sound.

In music production producers usually use pluck vst plugins to make this effect.

Plucking is usually done by fingers but it can be made with other body parts too like feet (on Indian sitar or Balaban), arms, tongue and even torso in some cases. Holding and moving the pluckers (usually the fingers) in different ways, thus producing different sounds, constitutes what is known as finger style.

An example of this technique can be seen demonstrated by Jimmy Page at Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same concert movie. He plays a chord progression with his left hand while plucking the strings with his right, producing ringing notes. He then does the same but with both hands in a very virtuosic manner.