Originally Posted by: romaine1What I need to plan is a beginner to as good as possible route to finger picking acoustic playing. I am a little confused at how to put this together now the section has run out. Any suggestions Guys and Gals?

Your goal is clear: you want to be able to play acoustic fingerpicking asap. That's the immediate goal. To work towards it:

-watch Christopher's tutorial on how to learn chords. I believe its just one tutorial. You don't need to learn a bunch of chords, you just need to know the correct approach for how to learn new chords. I'm not talking about chord theory or anything like that. Just simply that you learn and memorize the chord shape, then be able to play that cleanly, and ultimately be able to remove your hand from the fretboard, then fret the chord again instantly so that it sounds cleanly when you strum or pick the strings.

-Now go through Lisa McCormicks fingerpicking course. Its excellent. She'll start you off with very easy picking patterns, and work you right up to being able to play the theme song. For each song, you will see that there are specific chords played in a specific order. You need to learn these chords and be able to make the changes between them smoothly before learning the song. Avoid the temptation to fudge your way through the tune making tons of mistakes. Instead, learn the chord (you can learn and slowly practice the fingerpicking pattern at the same time) and then when you feel ready, play through the chord changes very slowly, so that you make hardly any mistakes.

How many mistakes you make will dictate the tempo. If you try to play faster, but start making a bunch of mistakes, slow it back down. Think "Tai-Chi" for guitar. Practicing correctly at a slow pace is the fastest way to being able to play at full speed. Rather than making tiny improvements, you'll probably find that at some point you can play much faster and still play it cleanly.