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Acoustic Guitar Finger Picking

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Acoustic guitar finger picking is often taken up by guitarists who have been playing the guitar for a year or three who want to find out what finger picking can do for their playing. Sometimes a guitar player will make up his own finger picking techniques as an ad hoc measure to get a solo or accompaniment to sound good, but there’s always the need to know the basic principles behind finger picking guitar styles.

There are many different finger picking techniques like classical, Travis Picking, chord melody and flamenco. One way to get into finger picking is to get hold of a book or DVD by one of the authorities on the subject. Mark Hanson is always mentioned as a great fingerstyle guitar player and teacher, as is Al Petteway. Pete Huttlinger has put out a info-packed DVD called Essential Exercises for Fingerstyle Guitar

Some guitarists who have played using a plectrum are discouraged by the difficulty of trying to coordinate the thumb and fingers. The key to getting the fingers and thumb working as independent units is slow practice. Really slow. Put your metronome on a very low setting and play the bass notes of the chords, only adding an incidental note with the first finger when you are feeling confident.

Another question guitar players have about beginning finger picking guitar is on the choice of songs to learn. My advice is that there is no need to be too ambitious. Choose a song that is maybe a little below your technical standard and start with strumming the chords until you have the feel of playing along to the lyrics.

Once you have the general rhythm of the song, grab a finger picking pattern in the correct time signature from a guitar tutor or a free guitar lesson website and apply it to your song. The House Of The Rising Sun as played by The Animals is a good song for a beginner finger picking guitar player as is Tears In Heaven by Eric Clapton. More Than Words by Extreme is another good, simple song, and when you are feeling more ambitious, go onto Stairway To Heaven. To give you a challenge for your left hand, look for tabs and YouTube video lessons on a classical guitar piece called The Anonymous Romance or Spanish Romance.

Railroad Bill is a simple beginner’s finger picking piece. This lessons by Happy Traum shows you how to play it and also gives a great lesson in the way to learn ANY new material.


Related posts:

  1. Finger Picking Acoustic Guitar
  2. Finger Picking Guitar – Assigning Fingers To Strings
  3. Travis Picking Guitar
  4. Classical Guitar Technique – Scale Picking
  5. Learn Guitar Picking
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Comments

3 Responses to “Acoustic Guitar Finger Picking”

  1. Ken
    July 22nd, 2009 @ 3:43 pm

    How can I learn that first guitar lick or riff that is in the first video block on:

    http://www.blogcatalog.com/search.frame.php?term=finger+picking+acoustic+guitar&id=81071b696b4ac38c530bcaf13d781370

    It’s the one where the guy say’s “sure do!” after he is asked if he knows how to play the guitar. I just want to learn that first lick that he does up on the 12th fret. Is there a video file that I can download that has it on it? Please !!!
    Thank You,
    Ken

  2. Ricky
    July 23rd, 2009 @ 6:01 pm

    Other than joining Guitar Tricks, I can’t make any suggestions. You could start with doodling around in the E minor pentatonic scale to get the feel of blues playing.

  3. Beginner Fingerpicking Guitar – Some Fingerstyle Guitar Tutorials
    May 4th, 2011 @ 2:23 pm

    [...] more beginner guitar songs or tutorials on how to play acoustic guitar you will find what you need at [...]

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