Intro to Fingerpicking
Unlike traditional strumming, fingerpicking guitar uses your fingers to pluck individual strings, giving you more control and versatility. Fingerstyle guitar lets you create intricate melodies and harmonies simultaneously, making your music sound rich and full. Imagine playing a bass line, harmony, and melody all at once – that's the magic of fingerpicking guitar! In this Collection we'll explore the basics and move towards more advanced techniques like Travis picking. We’ll also start you off with some easy fingerstyle guitar songs from greats such as Chet Atkins and Merle Travis. Whether you're a complete beginner or looking to enhance your skills, learning fingerpicking techniques will add a personal touch to your music.
One of the most beloved sounds on the guitar is the sound of finger picking. It sounds great on both electric and acoustic guitar, and it can be used to play an infinite number of songs. It can also be used for solo guitar playing and instrumental arrangements, and it's just a wonderful sound overall.
Anders will introduce a really simple version of a finger picking pattern, and as always it's really important that you take your time and don't rush ahead with this. And if you're lucky enough that this is easy for you, try to use these lessons to zoom in and perfect your right hand technique.
At this point you've hopefully gotten pretty comfortable with using your pick, but for this tutorial we're going to put it down and instead explore all the sounds we can get out of using our right hand fingers instead.
Anders will show you a slightly more elaborate finger picking pattern. It's a little more complicated than the one we used in the previous tutorial, but it is absolutely worth the hard work. This one uses the concept of inside and outside picking.
Anders will show you how to use the basic fingerpicking patterns to weave melodies into your playing and effectively accompany yourself, while also playing the lead.
Anders will show show you a very basic way to strum with your fingers, which is similar to how you hold a pick, but it does have a slightly different sound. This will enable you to switch seamlessly between strumming and fingerpicking, which is good for accompanying a singer, but it'll also enable you to come up with cool hybrid strumming and picking patterns.
Anders will show you how to incorporate alternating bass notes into the basic fingerpicking techniques learned so far. It inherently has a country sound, which is fun, but if that's not your thing, simply consider it an exercise in right hand independence and overall finger picking technique.
Anders will show you a practice tune using the various fingerpicking techniques taught in this chapter.
Anders will show you how to integrate techniques from previous tutorials into your acoustic playing.
Anders will show you some basic examples of how you can add some bass lines to lead between, into and out of your different chords.
Anders will show you how to use a percussive slap technique to create the illusion of your guitar being more than just one instrument, because it sounds like a clap or a snare drum. The combination of the chord plucking and the percussive slaps is an extremely useful sound that can be used for thousands of songs in many different styles of music.
In this set of lessons, Caren Armstrong will teach basic Travis picking technique. We'll start with an overview of Travis picking, then get into basic terminology and orientation. Next up is the important hand position, the we'll detail the basic picking pattern and counting the rhythm. A simple exercise follows; then we'll review some reminders of what not to do. Then we'll play some examples in 3 keys, and end with increasing your speed.
Anders will show you an introduction to the finger picking technique known as Travis Picking.
We've already explored some basic Travis picking on acoustic guitar, but now it's time to explore this great technique on our electric. Everything we did on the acoustic can be transferred directly to the electric guitar, and you'll most likely notice that it's all a lot easier to pull off. That's because most people generally have lighter strings and lower action on electric guitars. This will also mean we can make it slightly more advanced and add a bunch of cool tricks to the basic sound.
In this tutorial we're going to ditch our pick and explore some more advanced finger picking. This will most likely be quite challenging for you, but we will take it all one step at a time and ultimately this will lay the foundation for the incredibly valuable country rhythm tool known as "Travis Picking". There is no limit to how far you can eventually take this concept, but even in its most basic form it's an incredibly useful rhythm guitar tool that any country guitar player should be able to use.
