Finger Picking for Guitar
Fingerpicking, if you’ll pardon the pun, isn’t all that hard to pick up. In fact, it’s quite easy for most people to get started.
Finger picking guitar is the technique of playing the guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers. Guitar Noise has dozens of lessons covering various techniques such as Travis Picking and fingerstyle guitar, not to mention several songs arranged specifically for picking. Guitarists as diverse as Ry Cooder, Robbie Krieger, Derek Trucks and Mark Knopfler all use finger picking in their playing.
There’s a little bit of everything in this lesson, from easy arpeggios and strumming to some basic Travis style finger picking patterns. As always, David picks the song apart into small pieces that even many beginners can get with some concerted practice. Have fun learning this Harry Chapin classic!
Andrew DuBrock, one of the best when it comes to guitar tutorial books, discusses the challenges and rewards of learning fingerstyle guitar playing.
Guitar Noise contributor and Forum Moderator Vic Lewis lists his reasons for not playing guitar with a pick, or “plectrum,” if you prefer.
Learn how to play the sparse and spooky (but very easy to learn) version of Scarborough Fair that Nick and David came up with while working on The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar.
We’re going to learn different fingerpicking patterns for House of the Rising Sun, a folk song covered by the Animals, Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton and others.
Most of this song involves simple patterns that are repeated during each verse. There is some very interesting and intricate fingerstyle guitar playing.
Here’s a very cool single-guitar finger style instrumental blues piece that will teach you about driving, single note bass lines and creating cool melody lines and fills.
Guitar Noise presents the first in a new series of songs written specifically for guitar studies. Here is a cool blues number, reminiscent of Taj Mahal’s “Fishing Blues” to help you develop your finger picking, hammer-on skills and use of syncopation and timing.
In Part 2 of “The Learning Curve of Various Styles of Guitar,” Jamie Andreas looks at the skills needed to become a “strum and sing” guitar player.
Since our next Topic of the Month is Finger Picking it seemed like a good idea to show how you can add simple techniques you already know from single note playing and strumming to spice up your finger picking playing as well.
This is our fingerstyle / chord melody take on I’ll Be Home for Christmas, a song from the 1940′s that’s been sung by almost everyone.
Our arrangement of this Bob Dylan favorite from Nashville Skyline can be played very easily with the use of a capo, plus a very simple picking pattern.
Peter Simms has written a little ditty that shows us how to make your single guitar sound like a small combo band. We’re going to focus on fingerstyle with a melody, bassline and chords.
Here’s a song arrangement that no one has to sing! Take aspects of “chord melody” arranging and mix them in with fingerstyle playing and you’ve got yourself a version of one of George Harrison’s terrific songs to perform. It’s not all that hard to learn and you can easily adapt it with your own embellishments and style.
If you’re going to play an emotionally charged song, you can’t hide behind a single strumming pattern. Comfortably Numb is one of the highlight songs from Pink Floyd’s The Wall and we have arranged it for a single guitar, using many strumming and crosspicking techniques we’ve gone over in our Guitar Noise Podcast series.
This is another one of those songs that could easily have gotten onto the “Easy Songs for Beginners” page, especially if you’ve already worked on the two Guitar Noise Lessons on Travis style finger picking. While you’ll have to work at this one a bit, it’s not beyond the grasp of a beginner who’s ready to practice!
If you’ve read Part 1 of this tutorial, you’re probably amazed at how easy basic finger style guitar can be. Now, by simply changing one small thing that we learned last time out, even beginners will be able to find themselves playing a little Dust in the Wind…
Finger style guitar is easier than you think! In this lesson we’ll start with the very basics and get you going on some very cool (and very simple) finger picking patterns. Plus, we’ll toss in Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind as an incentive to help you practice more!
Guitar Noise favorite Gilbert Isbin brings us a second lesson in finger-style guitar. In this piece, we use the first phrase of Jimi Hendrix’s classic Little Wing to learn about finger positioning and developing improvisational skills.
Improvising is basically composing on the fly. To do this you will need a fairly deep understanding of harmony and compositional techniques.
Both hands are equally important when playing guitar. This beginner lesson looks at developing the basic techniques needed for your strumming hand.
