Sometimes a song demands a different treatment on guitar, certain songs sound better when they are finger picked, generally songs with romantic lyrics benefit from a more gentle, softer, sensitive approach.
Finger style guitar playing has been around for a long time, classical guitar has always been played with the right hand fingers on guitars that are strung with nylon strings. But it’s not only soft, romantic or classical music that lends itself to finger style playing just about any style of music can be play with your fingers.
When you watch a skillful player playing finger style it does look complicated, but what if there was an easy way to master this style, the good news is there’s lots of ways to get into finger picking here is just a few tips to get you started.
Finger picking tip #1: Bass notes – rule of thumb
In the following descriptions I’m presuming you are a right handed player if you are left handed simply substitute left hand whenever I refer to right hand.
Your right hand thumb can play either the fourth, fifth or sixth string depending on what chord you are playing. The idea is for your thumb to play a bass note of the same name as the chord e.g., if you were playing a “D” chord the bass note would be the note “D” therefore your right hand thumb would play the fourth string open.
Here is my “rule of thumb” approach for finger style guitar.
Chord of A, Am or A7 = thumb plays fifth string
Chord of B, Bm or B7 = thumb plays fifth string
Chord of C, Cm or C7 = thumb plays fifth string
Chord of D, Dm or D7 = thumb plays fourth string
Chord of E, Em or E7 = thumb plays sixth string
Chord of F, Fm or F7 = thumb plays fourth string
Chord of G, Gm or G7 = thumb plays sixth string
I’ve listed the most common open string chords for chords played in the first position if you need to play any other bass note e.g., Bb all you have to do is locate a Bb note on either the fourth, fifth or sixth string, in this instance Bb would be located on the first fret, fifth string therefore your right hand thumb would play the fifth string while your left hand fingered the Bb chord shape.
Finger picking tip #2: Right hand fingers
We’ve covered the thumb what do we do with the other right hand fingers?
1st finger plays the third string regardless of the chord being played.
2nd finger plays the second string regardless of the chord being played.
3rd finger plays the first string regardless of the chord being played.
Finger picking tip #3: Finger picking patterns
Most popular songs are either in 4/4 or 3/4 time… here are my favorite picking patterns for both time signatures.
3/4 = finger picking pattern code: T 12321 = 1 bar
Translated this means the T 12321 code is the finger sequence for your right hand e.g., if you were playing a “Em” chord
1. your thumb would play the sixth string,
2. your first finger would play the third sting,
3. the second finger would play the second string,
4. your third finger would play the first string
5. then, your second finger would play the second string
6. next, your first finger would play the third string.
4/4 = picking pattern code T 121 3 121 = 1 bar
another variation in 4/4 is…
T
4/4 = picking pattern code 3 121 3 121 = 1 bar
T
In this example you will notice 3 which means you would play both the bass note and the first string simultaneously.
This pattern works well in 4/4 when there is only one chord per bar e.g., G /// | C ///| etc
In musical situations where there are two chords per bar e.g.,
G / C / | D / C / | etc
I would use this variation…
Two chord to the bar finger picking pattern:
T T
4/4 = picking pattern code 3 121 3 121 = 1 bar
As always experiment and see which pattern(s) suit your style of guitar playing.
And now I’d like to invite you to get free access to my “How To Remember 1,000 Songs” eCourse. You can download the course for free at: http://www.guitarcoaching.com
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From Mike Hayes – The Guitar Coaching Guy & the Express Guitar System
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