Easy Country Fingerstyle Pattern

I want to share with you a country style fingerpicking pattern that you can apply to any chord progression. It’s a two part pattern that we’ll learn one part at a time before putting both parts together! We can play this pattern over any chord, but let’s learn it using an open G chord as an example!

Here is the chord shape we’ll use:

And here is our two part fingerpicking pattern:

Let’s focus first on the first part. This one part by itself will sound great!

The rhythm of the pattern is  1   2  3+4 (one, two, three and four). On beat 1, we play the 3rd fret of the low E string and the open B string at the same time! Use your thumb to pluck the low E string, and use your middle finger to pluck the B string. On beat 2, use your thumb to pluck the open D string. Then on beat 3, use your thumb on the low E and on the “and” of three use your index finger to pluck the open G string, followed by your thumb again on beat four to play the open D string!

A way to summarize the left hand fingering technique is to use the thumb on the low E and the D string, your index on the G string, and your middle finger on the B string. For even more detail on this technique, try some online guitar lessons.

To use this pattern on any other chord, just make sure you make the starting note the root note of that chord and follow the same pattern!

Once you feel good about this pattern, let’s move on to the second half of the pattern:

The rhythm of this part is 1 2+3+ 4 (one, two and three and four). The first beat is the same as the first part of the pattern. On beat 1, we play the 3rd fret of the low E string and the open B string at the same time! Use your thumb to pluck the low E string, and use your middle finger to pluck the B string. On beat two we start with the open D string using the thumb, and then the index finger on the “and” of two on the open G string. On beat three, play the E string with the thumb again, and then on the “and” of three, play the open B string with the middle finger. For the last beat, play the  D string with the thumb.

Again, we are using the thumb on the low E and D string, the index on the G string, and the middle finger on the B string.

This pattern also works well on its own, but once you’ve got both of them, see if you can play them one after the other as one big pattern!

Either of these patterns can be applied to any chord anywhere on the neck. The most important thing is to play the root note of the chord on the first and third beat of both patterns! You can replace the rest of the strings however you like!

Gary Heimbauer is a writer for Guitar Tricks and 30 Day Singer.