FingerPicking

https://www.guitarnoise.com/lessons/basic-travis-finger-picking/

https://www.guitarnoise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=33130

I am little to no good at fingerpicking, but it's also something I want to do the most, any suggestions or tips or anythingPractice PRACTICE PRACTICE :)

+1

The lesson which helped me -

http://guitar.about.com/library/weekly/aa020601c.htm

Good Luck !

Yeah, this lesson helped

I feel your pain Ness.

I just started learning to fingerpick 2 weeks ago and am having a hard time with it.
If I concentrate on the picking pattern I blow the chord changes, and vice-versa.

There has been an improvement but it feels like taking a step back struggling with things
that would be easy if I picked up a pick.

I'll stop typing and get back to my practice, practice, practice.

does finger picks make it easier?

does finger picks make it easier?

Not necessarily. Some people take to finger picks right away, while a lot struggle to get used to them. I never could get used to them. (My hands are small, and they always feel like they're going to fall off!) I'd have to say that your best bet would be to get a set and try it yourself, since it's kind of a personal preference thing.

I used to be really good at fingerpicking, I spent several years practicing Ragtime guitar. It is some of the most complex guitar there is. I forget the book I had, but I learned about 10 ragtime classics.

The method I learned, you assigned your thumb to the top three bass strings, the index finger to the G string, middle finger to the B string, and ring finger to the high E string. It becomes a real habit, I still fingerpick this method today. I never used picks whatsoever, never grew my nails out either, just used the fat of my fingers to pluck strings. When there are two or more notes on one string, you play those notes with the assigned finger. You get used to it and your fingers get very quick after much practice.

Ragtime is pretty cool, I can still do some stuff like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg0xbObxhb0

I would look for some good instruction books. Here is a site that offers many.

http://www.ezfolk.com/books/Fingerpicking_Guitar/fingerpicking_guitar.html

The method I learned, you assigned your thumb to the top three bass strings, the index finger to the G string, middle finger to the B string, and ring finger to the high E string. It becomes a real habit, I still fingerpick this method today.

'Cept I left out the "got to be really good at it" part of the quote :roll:

But that was my "eureka!" moment on the guitar, when I realized that the strings had designated fingers. Wonderful! And the strings never move, unlike the left hand chord positions, so you don't even have to look at your right hand most of the time. :D

Plus, fingerstyle only requires that you land a minimum of ONE note so even the trickiest chords can usually be played by starting with ONE string and playing up or down from that string :D :D :D (purists might call that cheating but I call it FINGERSTYLE :lol: )

My breakthru exercise was the basic Em arpeggio, starting with low E and then playing G, B, and high E up and down. You don't even need your left hand on the fretboard. House of the Rising Sun is an easy song often played in simple arpeggio fingerstyle :wink:

The method I learned, you assigned your thumb to the top three bass strings, the index finger to the G string, middle finger to the B string, and ring finger to the high E string. It becomes a real habit, I still fingerpick this method today.

But that was my "eureka!" moment on the guitar, when I realized that the strings had designated fingers. Wonderful! And the strings never move, unlike the left hand chord positions, so you don't even have to look at your right hand most of the time. :D

Not nescessarily true. Yes, in pattern fingerpicking, the thumb and fingers are assigned a specific string. With "fingerstyle" guitar, the thumb and fingers are not assigned strings at all...the thumb may play treble strings and the fingers may play bass strings..it all depends on what the peice requires and what the player decides is the best way to play it. In my own experience, I learned pattern picking first then moved on to more advanced peices that required the thumb and fingers to play any number of different combination of strings. I now find myself playing any string with any finger (or the thumb) without thought, but that skill came with doing right hand finger excercises for more than a year (and still doing them!). Another benefit of thoses excercises is being able to use my pinky finger with some degree of accuracy, which has come in very handy (no pun intended...)

I learned exactly the same way as Wes - thumb for the bottom three strings, treble strings a finger each. It seems neat and logical enough. Idavis, I can see what you're getting at with the fingerstyle method, and what may seem like random right hand finger placement to most people will take time to develop, whereas with the method where you "anchor" your fingers to individual strings it doesn't take as much thought.

The anchor method also comes in handy on ceratin songs where you've got an alternating (for example, root/fifth) bass line and you're paying something like this....root, treble strings, fifth, treble strings, root etc.

I suppose you must have a reason for what seems like the random placement of fingers - but I can't see the logic behind it. Especially in the beginner's forum!

:D :D :D

Vic

Vic,

Point well taken. I only offered my own experience to the post as a way of expanding ones thoughts of fingerstyle guitar. Certainly, as a beginner, the best way to "begin" is with learning pattern picking using your anchor method...as I said, I began my journey down the road of fingerstyle using this method..and it is a good method. However, the deeper I went into the style to more I found that using the thumb and fingers to pick designated strings was rather limiting for me, and I began researching more advanced methods of independent "fingerstyle"...one such method was Mark Hansons "breaking out of pattern picking" and "freeing the thumb" excercises in his excellent "The Art of Solo Fingerpicking". There are many other sources for learning this method. Also, there is nothing random about finger placement, although, from reading my post above, it may seem that way. Yes, it takes some time to develop this method..in my case, it is the style I am most passionate about and attracted to ...for someone who is interested in learning rythm and lead guitar for rock, the time necessary to learn this method would certainly be better spent elsewhere and the anchor method is much more practical.

I think you're both right - it's important to get started and the "thumb on bass / each finger gets a treble string" method is definitely preferable in that it gets all of your fingers involved. But one of the inherent dangers of fingerstyle, though, is to find yourself stuck in a pattern. I know many players who sound great at fingerstyle until you realize that they use the same pattern for every single song.

The sooner you can branch out and even alter your picking patterns, even in the smallest of ways, the quicker you can become fluid and adaptable. Also the sooner you realize that it's your choice as to what strings to play with which fingers.

This is actually part of the "sneaky teacher" plan of the Scarborough Fair lesson on the Songs for Intermediates page - to get you to change gears with your picking in almost every other line of the song. Shhh - don't tell anyone! :wink:

Peace