Oct 24, 2009 The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking deals mainly with playing guitar as an accompanyment, although it has a couple of instrumental pieces. If you want to play mainly in an instrumental style I would recommend moving on next to Beyond Basics: Fingerstyle Guitar, Book & CD With CD and after that to Art of Solo Fingerpicking (Guitar Books).
(Last Updated On: December 13, 2018)Fingerpicking and fingerstyle guitar are basically the same thing. The style is a way of playing your guitar with fingertips, fingernails or finger picks (picks that are attached to your fingers). Fingerpicking is a well established standard technique for classical or nylon string guitars, it is seen as more of a specialized technique on steel string guitars. Fingerpicking or fingerstyle guitar playing can seem almost impossible to do for a person just beginning to learn the guitar. Most beginners have a much easier time with songs that use a strumming style instead of picking. Most feel that there are too many things for their hands to do all at the same time. In an earlier post we touched briefly on this topic but focused primarily on the use of a pick. In this post we will focus on some of the basic fingerpicking patterns and provide you with some guidelines that will help you break the process down into smaller components making it easier for you to practice and memorize. Amazing melodies can be achieved by finger picking the guitar, you just have to get your fingers used to plucking individual strings. It will get easier with time and practice.
Picking hand position
With the exception of your picking fingers, your hand should be as still as possible, not moving out of place.
Your picking hand is positioned right between your pickups (for electric guitars), or over the sound hole (for acoustic guitars). Your wrist is slightly angled downwards, allowing your hand to be perpendicular to the strings. To achieve this, you need to keep your wrist as loose as possible.
Your thumb will be straight, while your other fingers will be curled in a semi knuckle position. Your fingers will be assigned to the strings in their natural order, which means that your thumb will pluck the bass notes (strings 4,5 and 6). Your index, middle and ring fingers will be picking the treble strings, index finger on G string, middle finger on B string and ring finger on E string. (see example at left)
Until you get very proficient, your pinky will just be along for the ride, staying out of the way of the other fingers. Your pinky can provide an anchor and a point of balance resting on the guitar body or pickguard.
Breaking fingerpicking learning process into small components
Let’s take a look at the main reasons that beginning guitar players have difficulty learning and mastering fingerpicking. Once you have an understanding of what some of the problems and their causes are, you will be able to with some fairly simple techniques correct it.
- Beginning guitar players not recognizing that nearly all songs are made up of small repeating parts. There are usually only a small number of parts to learn, including picking patterns.
- Recognizing that these picking patterns are applied to lots of chords within the same song, there is usually a great deal of repetition.
- Often trying to learn too many components at once, such as trying to master both the fret and picking hand parts at the same time. This will result in frustration and can be very overwhelming.
- Beginners do not always understand the best way to practice pick patterns, this lack of understanding adds to the frustration level hindering the learning process.
Now that we understand some of the issues, let’s look at some ways of correcting them. It is important to remember that most complicated techniques on the guitar are usually fairly simple to learn once you know the best way to practice them. The first step is to learn how to break the patterns into small, manageable parts that can be practiced easily. Once broken into smaller components you can learn to practice the parts by themselves, allowing your pick hand to master the motions in the pattern.
This video will give you and idea of one way of breaking your practice up into smaller components. It demonstrates using only the picking hand until you feel comfortable moving on to using your left hand on chords. Make sure you start off slowly and increase your speed once you feel comfortable with it.
The second video will help you coordinate your left hand on chords along with your fingerpicking hand. Again start off slowly and gradually increase your speed.
There are many more fingerpicking exercises that you can find on the internet. The exercises are intended to help your fingers become accustomed to the fingerpicking style. Once you feel comfortable that you have accomplished a good feel for basic fingerpicking, you can move on to some more complicated patterns.
Beyond the basics and understanding arpeggios
Having somewhat of an understanding of arpeggios will be extremely helpful as you progress in your fingerpicking style process. A guitar arpeggio is just the notes of a chord played individually. If you were to play a basic C major chord on the guitar and pick out each note one at a time, you have a C major arpeggio.
When playing a guitar arpeggio, please realize that there is more involved than just taking a basic chord form and picking out the individual notes. Look at a basic D major chord shown at left. Arpeggios can definitely span multiple positions, but you are still playing the notes of a chord in order. You could just play those notes one at a time, and that is done all of the time in thousands of songs. But if you look at the notes that make up a D major chord, and put them in order starting with D, you have the notes D, F#, and A. If you were to just play the notes of that basic D major chord, they are not in order. Starting with the 4th string you have a D, then an A, D, F#. Often when playing an arpeggio on the guitar, you want to play all of the notes in order and not skip any. That means that sometimes you will have two notes on the same string, that is something that isn’t possible if you are playing all of the notes at once.
Here is a basic D major arpeggio on the first four strings. You are not going to fingerpick on more than one note at a time. You are just going to play each note individually and not as a chord. When doing this you are thinking melodically rather than just thinking about arpeggiating the notes in a basic D chord form. So, the best way for you to think of a guitar arpeggio would be that it has all of the note possibilities of a chord played individually in a particular area of the neck. Arpeggios can definitely span multiple positions, but you are still playing the notes of a chord in order.
Here is a D major arpeggio in 2nd position on the guitar. In this arpeggio form you are actually starting on an F# note. Why? Because this is the lowest note possibility of a D chord in this position. Again, a D chord contains the notes D, F#, and A. This is all of the D’s, F#s and A’s in 2nd position.
What is the purpose of a guitar arpeggio
Now that you know what a guitar arpeggio is, you need to know what their purpose is. The answer is that they are going to be very important for improvisation and/or songwriting. When improvising over a D major chord, you will need to know where all of the chord tone possibilities are in a particular position. This will help you create a melody that will sound like a particular chord. You may still play other notes but emphasizing the notes in the arpeggio will help your melody have a strong chord sound.
Summary
Hopefully this article has provided you with a basic introduction and understanding of guitar fingerpicking. You should know that arpeggios are used in pick playing as well as fingerstyle. I wanted to at least introduce you to it because the use of arpeggios can not only help you learn patterns but also provide you with exercises to strengthen your fingers. Here is a very good book containing 120 arpeggios for fingerstyle playing. There are many ways that you can expand your knowledge on the subject of guitar fingerpicking. The internet has many online instructors that can provide you with more in depth video instruction. There are many instructional books and videos available for purchase as well as some online sources that offer free instructions that can be downloaded. I have found an online source that I would recommend. A fellow by the name of Will Fly has put together a pdf booklet that is available for download, it is titled Fingerpicking TheGuitar a basic guide . You can check it out at the link I have included. There are also many printable picking patterns available online.
Happy Picking!
5
Fingerpicking and fingerstyle guitar are basically the same thing. The style is a way of playing your guitar with fingertips, fingernails or finger picks (picks that are attached to your fingers). Fingerpicking is a well established standard technique for classical or nylon string guitars, it is seen as more of a specialized technique on steel string guitars. Fingerpicking or fingerstyle guitar playing can seem almost impossible to do for a person just beginning to learn the guitar. Most beginners have a much easier time with songs that use a strumming style instead of picking. Most feel that there are too many things for their hands to do all at the same time. In an earlier post we touched briefly on this topic but focused primarily on the use of a pick. In this post we will focus on some of the basic fingerpicking patterns and provide you with some guidelines that will help you break the process down into smaller components making it easier for you to practice and memorize. Amazing melodies can be achieved by finger picking the guitar, you just have to get your fingers used to plucking individual strings. It will get easier with time and practice.
Picking hand position
With the exception of your picking fingers, your hand should be as still as possible, not moving out of place.
Your picking hand is positioned right between your pickups (for electric guitars), or over the sound hole (for acoustic guitars). Your wrist is slightly angled downwards, allowing your hand to be perpendicular to the strings. To achieve this, you need to keep your wrist as loose as possible.
Your thumb will be straight, while your other fingers will be curled in a semi knuckle position. Your fingers will be assigned to the strings in their natural order, which means that your thumb will pluck the bass notes (strings 4,5 and 6). Your index, middle and ring fingers will be picking the treble strings, index finger on G string, middle finger on B string and ring finger on E string. (see example at left)
Until you get very proficient, your pinky will just be along for the ride, staying out of the way of the other fingers. Your pinky can provide an anchor and a point of balance resting on the guitar body or pickguard.
Breaking fingerpicking learning process into small components
Let’s take a look at the main reasons that beginning guitar players have difficulty learning and mastering fingerpicking. Once you have an understanding of what some of the problems and their causes are, you will be able to with some fairly simple techniques correct it.
- Beginning guitar players not recognizing that nearly all songs are made up of small repeating parts. There are usually only a small number of parts to learn, including picking patterns.
- Recognizing that these picking patterns are applied to lots of chords within the same song, there is usually a great deal of repetition.
- Often trying to learn too many components at once, such as trying to master both the fret and picking hand parts at the same time. This will result in frustration and can be very overwhelming.
- Beginners do not always understand the best way to practice pick patterns, this lack of understanding adds to the frustration level hindering the learning process.
Now that we understand some of the issues, let’s look at some ways of correcting them. It is important to remember that most complicated techniques on the guitar are usually fairly simple to learn once you know the best way to practice them. The first step is to learn how to break the patterns into small, manageable parts that can be practiced easily. Once broken into smaller components you can learn to practice the parts by themselves, allowing your pick hand to master the motions in the pattern.
This video will give you and idea of one way of breaking your practice up into smaller components. It demonstrates using only the picking hand until you feel comfortable moving on to using your left hand on chords. Make sure you start off slowly and increase your speed once you feel comfortable with it.
The second video will help you coordinate your left hand on chords along with your fingerpicking hand. Again start off slowly and gradually increase your speed.
There are many more fingerpicking exercises that you can find on the internet. The exercises are intended to help your fingers become accustomed to the fingerpicking style. Once you feel comfortable that you have accomplished a good feel for basic fingerpicking, you can move on to some more complicated patterns.
Beyond the basics and understanding arpeggios
Having somewhat of an understanding of arpeggios will be extremely helpful as you progress in your fingerpicking style process. A guitar arpeggio is just the notes of a chord played individually. If you were to play a basic C major chord on the guitar and pick out each note one at a time, you have a C major arpeggio.
When playing a guitar arpeggio, please realize that there is more involved than just taking a basic chord form and picking out the individual notes. Look at a basic D major chord shown at left. Arpeggios can definitely span multiple positions, but you are still playing the notes of a chord in order. You could just play those notes one at a time, and that is done all of the time in thousands of songs. But if you look at the notes that make up a D major chord, and put them in order starting with D, you have the notes D, F#, and A. If you were to just play the notes of that basic D major chord, they are not in order. Starting with the 4th string you have a D, then an A, D, F#. Often when playing an arpeggio on the guitar, you want to play all of the notes in order and not skip any. That means that sometimes you will have two notes on the same string, that is something that isn’t possible if you are playing all of the notes at once.
Here is a basic D major arpeggio on the first four strings. You are not going to fingerpick on more than one note at a time. You are just going to play each note individually and not as a chord. When doing this you are thinking melodically rather than just thinking about arpeggiating the notes in a basic D chord form. So, the best way for you to think of a guitar arpeggio would be that it has all of the note possibilities of a chord played individually in a particular area of the neck. Arpeggios can definitely span multiple positions, but you are still playing the notes of a chord in order.
Here is a D major arpeggio in 2nd position on the guitar. In this arpeggio form you are actually starting on an F# note. Why? Because this is the lowest note possibility of a D chord in this position. Again, a D chord contains the notes D, F#, and A. This is all of the D’s, F#s and A’s in 2nd position.
What is the purpose of a guitar arpeggio
Now that you know what a guitar arpeggio is, you need to know what their purpose is. The answer is that they are going to be very important for improvisation and/or songwriting. When improvising over a D major chord, you will need to know where all of the chord tone possibilities are in a particular position. This will help you create a melody that will sound like a particular chord. You may still play other notes but emphasizing the notes in the arpeggio will help your melody have a strong chord sound.
Summary
Hopefully this article has provided you with a basic introduction and understanding of guitar fingerpicking. You should know that arpeggios are used in pick playing as well as fingerstyle. I wanted to at least introduce you to it because the use of arpeggios can not only help you learn patterns but also provide you with exercises to strengthen your fingers. Here is a very good book containing 120 arpeggios for fingerstyle playing. There are many ways that you can expand your knowledge on the subject of guitar fingerpicking. The internet has many online instructors that can provide you with more in depth video instruction. There are many instructional books and videos available for purchase as well as some online sources that offer free instructions that can be downloaded. I have found an online source that I would recommend. A fellow by the name of Will Fly has put together a pdf booklet that is available for download, it is titled Fingerpicking TheGuitar a basic guide . You can check it out at the link I have included. There are also many printable picking patterns available online.
Happy Picking!
5