acoustic fingerpicking (1 Viewer)

[damien]

i want to learn to play my acoustic with my fingers.

anyone got any hints, links to lessons or good stuff to practice to develop independence in the picking fingers?

 

[therealjohnny]

loads of stuff on youtube about this


look up stuff like Merle Travis, Tommy Emmanuel + fingerstyle guitar lessons

 

[Froog]

start with some simple fingerpicking patterns, stuff like holding a chord and using each finger of the other hand to pick out the individual strings. then practice this over and over again till it becomes second nature. repeat this with every chord you know and move from one chord to the next. then add in stuff like the odd hammer on or pull off in the middle of a chord. I used to be well into this stuff, love fingerpicking, you can get so much more out of a chord pattern than just strumming like a madman.

 

[ann post]

i sort of specialise taching this with my students. in the early stages your fingers can be a bit gimpy as they get used to the patterns. at this point you ca build it up really quickly.

start as froog said with a few chords you know. i usually get the studennts to first use just thumb and one finger, sort of like pinching, then add each finger one at a time, in about 15 mins you should be able to handle the basic standards like everybody hurts (for waltz timing).

i teachh beginners mostly and i find sorta two schools of thought emerging, i dont have gimmicky names for them but basically theres the everybody hurts style thing where its a rigid pattern on the treble end and alternating bass in the top three strings. once your fingers are getting comfortable with the treble end start alternating your thumb around a bit.
the other school of thought would be classical style, where the fingers are less tied to individual strings and repetitive melody lines, they act to follow melody rather then the physicality of the guitar. for this a good starting point would be blackbird by the beatles or many of the arrangments of greensleeves for solo acoustic.

and try as quick as you can not to look at your right hand.

and emerging style thats sorta breaking into is the precussive style which is pretty much mastered presently by a guy called don ross, he mostly blends blues standards and similar with flamenco/spanish style percussion. done well its amazing, done badly its pain.

 

[ann post]

oh, and stairway.

 

[potlatch]

I can vouch for the gut-gurning frustration at gimpy-fingeritis. There are so many YouTube videos, but most are shit. It also depends what fingerstyles you want to do.

I decided I wanted to learn Travis picking because I wanted to play John Fahey/Leo Kottke type stuff. So search YouTube for 'Travis picking lesson' and use the links at the side to find stuff you want to play.

After 6 months, I'm getting somewhere. The frustration never goes away because you want to keep improving.

After getting the patterns, I found a few songs I really wanted to play, so I just got the tab, loads of videos of dudes playing the tune and just started breaking the riffs down into the basic components to build them up again. It's weird because I might not get a bit, leave it literally for 3 week and suddenly I can play it.

 

[Pantone247]

as said, all about building up the muscles in your right hand, just pick and pick and pick away, try get into the habit of using the thumb to alternate bass strings

Play an E chord so you'd, pluck the low E, play the G, B, E strings, pluck the A string (sounding a B, the 5th of the chord) and play G, B, E, do this back and forth, then add the D string (sounding an E, an octave up from low E) in with the thumb as well, this will get you used to the idea of playing a seperate bass with the thumb to your fingers melody lines. Do this all the time, night and day, when ever you sit down, get your fingers working.

I'd pick some old folk standards, just C, F and G stuff and get around them with the above patterns just to get things moving, you'll find tricks like thumbing a walking bass down from the C chord to the G or from F back up to C, while keeping your fingers rolling away on the high strings

For listening, John Fahy is a great start, a lot of the basics of his standard tuning songs are quite basic early Paul Simon, Bert Jansch, Davey Graham, Nick Drake and Richard Thompson and Bad Timing by Jim O'Rourke. As with most things immersing yourself in the style of music is as important as the learning

 

[potlatch]

I'm obsessed with Last Steam Engine Train and Angi right now. Pantone's right about following up those names.

For videos specifically to do with Jansch and Graham, if you search YouTube for 'Blues Run the Game' (Jansch version of Jackson C. Frank song), you'll find a really good lesson by some Liverpudlian lad. He mainly does Delta Blues lessons, though, which are all great.

There's also a great lesson by some dude for Angi (Davey Graham), but not for the Jansch version.

Very few, if any, lessons for Fahey, but loads of videos of him playing.

 

[therealjohnny]

This site has loads of tips and advice and a handy online tuner

well worth a look through


http://www.howtotuneaguitar.org/lessons/strumming-and-picking/travis-picking/

http://www.howtotuneaguitar.org/lessons/strumming-and-picking/finger-picking1/

 

[damien]

big thanks to all

 

[rotten tropics]

theres some videos of john fahey lessons on youtube.trying to get into this as well and found some of them quite do-able.
think adding in fingers one by one as someone else mentioned is very helpful.
but from sitting in front of youtube for months i've decided i'll try find someone whos good at it and convince them to sit down with me for a few hours as i find it fairly inefficient and time consuming to learn from videos.

 

[ann post]

thats a thing about video learning, try and get your eyes out of the equation, its a hindrance. all you need is fingers and ears. i'm always telling my students to practice blindfolded and they think i'm mental, and i think thier all going to get an rsi craning thier neck over the guitar.

 

[rotten tropics]

i just find the lack of human interaction, constant pausing and rewinding etc to be so frustrating that it makes me spend less time than i should picking up a new skill.
theres a reason people pay a lot of money for private lessons.

 

[ann post]

i've been using online drum lessons lately trying to get to grip with drums, the information is useful but its a bit like this

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you cant really ask questions or know when your fucking up.

 

[damien]

haha, yeah, i've been watching loads of drum ones now too. i think they're deadly, but only because i am way too scabby to pay for real lessons at the moment.

 

[therealjohnny]

I'm obsessed with Last Steam Engine Train and Angi right now.

Here is my version of Anji

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Lately I've taken to working out fingerstyle versions of songs that grab my attention

I have Eurovison loser "L'Amour est Blue" about right so must make a decent recording of it