Guitar Lessons: Fingerpicking

Continuing the series on my guitar technical exercise videos, I wanted to talk a little bit about fingerpicking. Although this type of guitar playing is rarely used by many modern guitar players, I think it is still a valid technique for both acoustic and electric guitar playing- and I use it some of the time myself. If you’ve been reading my posts you may remember that I started out learning fingerstyle before using a pick, therefore it seems only natural that my “beginner guitar lesson” videos should feature this playing style.

Finger Picking

The basic ideas behind fingerstyle and fingerpicking are the same as they are for legato and alternate picking techniques with your fretting hand. That is: economy of motion, finger independence, wrist angle, correct muscles etc,. My philosophy is that your hands are both built to the same design (or evolved to the same shape…but I’m not getting into that one…), therefore your fingers all move in the same way.

If you remember the “fretboard finger trap”, you’ll know that the real secret is moving only the right muscles- and for finger independence this means the muscles in between your fingers (not so much the ones in your arm). You’ll also want to use different combinations of fingers (to avoid having -or developing- favourites).

Spicing Things Up

The most interesting thing about this exercise is that you can add chords with your fretting hand; then you’re not just playing an exercise, but playing a rhythm part to a song (or writing a new song). There are also many combinations (or “orders”) of fingers that you can use- the same as with my alternate picking exercise, 1 2 3 4, 1 3 2 4 etc,.

You can try adding in your little finger for these exercises, and I would encourage the use of your little finger and do use it myself (although it’s rarely really needed). In standard classical guitar technique you wont likely hear anything about picking with the little finger- and it’s not very often used (if ever). Still, it has it’s uses.

I use my little finger for fingerpicking because I use a technique called “hybrid picking”, which allows me to switch between using a pick and using my fingers within the same song (or even the same lick). If I’m holding the pick with my thumb and first finger (“p” and “i” in tab/notation) I would only have my second and third fingers (“m” and “a”) to pick with- and -what can I say?- sometimes that’s not enough for me. So I add my little finger (“c”) to go along with it and get some extra notes.

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Rob.

February 2, 2010 at 3:24 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | No comments