Guitar Basics: Fingerpicking for Beginners

1. Introduction: Finger picking on the guitar adds great variety to your playing, and it opens up a lot of possibilities for your own creative expression. It gives you access to a lot of songs and different styles, and it helps you to level up your guitar playing. Hello, thank you so much for joining me. I'm Jason Rivera, and I'm going to be taking you through this guitar finger picking for beginners class. This is a beginner level course, but it's not for absolute beginners. You'll need to know how to play a C chord, a G chord, and an A minor chord. You'll also need to know how to hold and how to tune your guitar. If you don't already know how to do those things, you can check out some of my beginner guitar classes where I cover those topics. Then you can come back to this class. That being said, this is a beginner's class. We're not going to cover anything too advanced or too tricky in this course. Just make sure that you have the basic background techniques that I mentioned. This class will cover a variety of finger picking exercises, and these exercises are designed to increase your freedom and your dexterity and your finger picking hand. This class is suitable for acoustic or electric guitar players. And the idea with this class is to get you feeling creative and confident with your guitar playing in a very short period of time. We're going to cover all of the essential information that you need to develop correct technique and good foundations for your finger picking. In this class, I'll be covering how to identify and label which fingers to use when you're finger picking. Some differences between acoustic and electric guitars, as it applies to finger picking, how to incorporate a metronome into your guitar practice. Several finger picking exercises, including movable bass note patterns, travis picking, pinch. And Travis picking with a pinch and a whole bunch of tips and tricks along the way. This class will give you plenty of opportunity to watch me demonstrate the techniques that I cover in the class. And you'll be able to jam along with me in dedicated play along video lessons. I'm also going to provide you with downloadable resources for this class. I've been playing and writing music since I was a very small kid, and I've been teaching music to students ages five and up since 2012. Including private guitar lessons. I'm also an award winning composer for films, trailers and e learning courses. And I've played in bands and toured the US since I was a teenager. My goal with this class is to make you feel confident in your guitar playing so that you can go ahead and play your favorite pieces of music and to set you up to continue to develop your guitar playing moving forward. I'm really looking forward to covering these techniques with you. So grab your guitar, and I'll see you in our first lesson. 2. Class Project: Thank you so much for joining me in the class. In this video, I'm going to chat a bit about the project for this class. As we move through the class, we're going to learn different finger picking patterns. And as you work your way through the class and you increase your confidence, I want you to try coming up with your own finger picking pattern. You can choose from different chords and then play your finger picking pattern over them. My suggestion to you is to keep the chord progression simple. Use maybe three or four chords. This way, you can focus on your finger picking technique and not be too worried about playing a super complicated chord progression. Once you've done this, you'll have created your own original song. Might sound a little bit like a tall order, but it's actually a really simple project. Put a few chords together that sound good to you and then combine that with your own finger picking pattern. This project should feel fun and very low pressure for you. Then if you're able to record yourself playing your song, it can be a video or an audio only recording, and you could just record a section of your song or the song in its entirety. That's completely up to you. To record video of yourself playing, just use the built in video camera on your smartphone or your tablet. To record audio, you can use a free such as voice memos on your smartphone. Or you can try recording yourself with music software such as Audacity, garage band, Logic Pro, or Cubase. And by the way, audacity is free. But even if you just use a simple app like voice memos, please record yourself playing. Recording yourself playing and then listening back is such a great tool for hearing your playing objectively. Way you can listen back to your recording and make notes on what things you might need to work on during your guitar practice. Please don't be intimidated by this project. This is meant to be a fun project where you learn some finger picking techniques and then immediately apply them to a fun project. So hopefully, after watching several lessons in this course, you'll feel confident enough in the new skills that you're developing to take a crack at this class project. So that's the intro to our class project. I hope that you're excited about it, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. Labeling (PIMA) and Tips: All right, so a great place to start when it comes to learning finger picking is to get 100% clarity on finger picking notation. And finger picking notation, your thumb and your fingers are notated in a very specific way. Learning this will allow you to decipher a song that's notated or in a tab form. A lot of times when it comes to notating finger picking, you'll see the finger picking tab laid out with something called Pima, PMA. You'll often see these letters in tabs and guitar books. So P is your thumb, I is your index finger. M is your middle finger and A is your ring finger, P I M A. And those are the fingers that are used most in finger picking. Depending on the sheet that you're reading, you might also see your thumb labeled as T, your index finger labeled as one, your middle finger labeled as two, and your ring finger labeled as three. And sometimes your pinky is used in certain intricate patterns. But in this class, we're mostly just going to be using the thumb, the index, the middle, and the ring finger. In this class, I'm going to describe the finger picking patterns, and I'll be switching through describing them using PIMA and thumb one, two, three. It's good to understand both methods of labeling your fingers, and I want you to get used to hearing them and seeing them describe in both of those ways. Now let's talk about finger placement for your strumming hand. For finger picking, you want to use a thumbs up position. Meaning with my thumb up, I can lay my fingers across the strings like this. So let's place our P finger on the low E string. Our I fingers gonna go on the G string. Our M fingers gonna go on the B string. And our A fingers gonna go on the high E string. Okay, so all I want you to do right here is to just get used to plucking with each finger. Your fretting hand could just relax, and we're gonna start with the P finger. Okay. So if you notice the P finger is strumming down towards the ground. Now, the other three fingers, fingers one, two, and three, they strum up. Okay? So let's check out the eye finger. Okay. Now, if you notice when I'm plucking, I'm plucking from this big knuckle here. That's what you want to do. Let's move to the M finger. Okay. And finally, let's pluck the a finger. Mm. Okay. Now, I also want to point out here that your thumb is usually covering the E, the A, and the D strings. Okay? Now, sometimes your thumb will also play the G string. All right. And usually your first three fingers will play G, B, and the high E. Okay. So now let's talk about the position of your picking hand. As a general guideline, when you're finger picking either with an acoustic or a classical guitar, you want to place your hand more or less over the middle of the sound hole. If you're finger picking on an electric guitar, you want your hand to be between the end of the neck and the bridge. These are just general guidelines. I would also suggest to keep your pinky nice and loose here, okay? Nice and relaxed, no tension in it, okay? Some players like to rest their pinky on the body of the guitar. And that's not wrong. It's just a preference or maybe a habit. Okay? And there's also some players that like to rest their picking hand wrist on the bridge down here. But I would recommend keeping your hand relaxed and free off of the guitar, okay? Just floating above the strings here. If you rest your wrist on the bridge, you could wind up muting strings. Now, that kind of sounds cool. And if you're looking for that specific effect, then great. But you want that to be a choice that you make and not just something that you do by default. So again, you want your hand hovering just about right around here, and your wrist is just going to be slightly curved, okay? Nothing extreme, a very slight curve, okay? And again, you just want your hand sitting above the strings. This right here is just going to give your hand the maximum amount of freedom to move around. One other tip here, when you're finger picking, you want to avoid snapping away from the strings too hard. Okay. That's not the motion that you want to go for here. It's very harsh. And honestly, I don't think it's very sustainable either. Instead, you want to practice picking with a nice, gentle, squeeze like motion like this. Gentle, gentle squeeze, okay? So more like this. You can hear the difference in the tone, I hope. Pulling away, snapping, right? As opposed to gentle squeeze like motion. And it's also more efficient that way. A lot of guitar playing has to do with efficiency. You want to try to make the most efficient movements with your strumming hand and with your fretting hand. Okay, so it's just this gentle gentle, flowing squeeze like motion, okay? Now let's talk about growing your fingernails for a minute. Some guitarists like to grow their fingernails on their picking hand because it creates a louder and a brighter sound. There are guitarists that get way into this, especially classical guitarists, and they'll use special grades of sandpaper and files to get their nails in just the perfect length and the perfect shape. For the purposes of this class, I would say you don't need to get carried away with growing your fingernails out in your strumming hand or get way into filing them down with special sandpaper and whatnot. You could just try experimenting with growing them out a little bit, just so you can see what it feels like and so you can hear the difference in tones. That being said, you don't need to grow the nail on your pinky because we're not going to be using that for any of the exercises in this class. From my own experience, what I've noticed is that if I grow up my finger picking nails too long, they start to get caught on the strings and they produce a very gnarly sound that I don't like. So you just have to experiment with growing them out long enough so you can try producing a brighter, louder tone with the fingernails. In terms of the materials in this class, you don't need to get too carried away with growing them out too long or, like I said, filing them down with special sandpaper. And while we're on the subject of fingernails, you're going to want to cut down the fingernails on your fretting hand. As short as possible. I found that even if my fretting hangnails are just a little bit too long, they start to get in the way of being able to fret notes. Remember, as you're working your way through this class, to take your time, don't rush through anything, and really take the exercises slowly. I'll see you in the next video where we're going to look at some differences between acoustic and electric guitars. 4. Acoustic vs. Electric: All right, so in this lesson, we're going to look at some differences between acoustic and electric guitars in the context of finger picking. I think when most people think about finger picking, they associate that with an acoustic guitar. But you can fingerpick an electric guitar as well, and that sounds awesome and that's used a lot in recordings these days. Let's talk about the size of the neck of the acoustic guitar. Acoustic guitar necks tend to be wider, especially if you're playing a classical guitar like this. Your typical acoustic guitar that uses steel strings will usually have a thinner neck than a classical guitar. And electric guitars often have a thinner neck as well, and it's easier for beginners to wrap their hands around the neck to form chords. The strings on a steel string acoustic guitar tend to be thicker than the strings on an electric guitar. They use a thicker gauge of strings. Learning on thicker strings can be more challenging. That being said, after a few years of playing, I started using medium gauge strings on my steel string acoustic guitar. I started using medium gauge strings because I like the way they sound, but also because I like the extra challenge that they provide. The medium gauge strings cause my left hand, my fretting hand to work harder. And build up more strength. But for someone just starting out, it's good to know that the strings on an electric guitar are usually a thinner gauge than acoustic steel strings or the strings on a classical guitar. This could make learning on an electric guitar a little bit easier for you. On your picking hand, the Pima or thumb one, two, three are exactly the same whether you're playing an acoustic or an electric guitar. Sum it all up, you can use an electric or an acoustic or a classical guitar for finger picking. Those are all great options, and they all sound great. They just sound different. Those options are used for finger picking by modern guitarists all the time. I'll see you in our next video where we're going to learn our first two exercises. 5. Fingerpicking Exercises 1 & 2 - Getting Comfortable: Books. Books. Okay, so in this lesson, we're going to learn our first two finger picking exercises. One pattern is going down the strings and one pattern is going up the strings. What we're doing with these first exercises is we're really just starting to get comfortable with finger picking. So don't be alarmed if things feel awkward at first. That's just part of the process. And exercise one, our picking hand is going to be playing P M A, or you can also say thumb, one, two, three. It's the same thing, different ways of describing it. All right? So your thumb is going to be on the sixth string. Your first finger is gonna be on the fourth string. Your second finger is gonna be on the third string. And your third finger is gonna be on the second string. So let's see this in action. P M P So this is the very first exercise for this class. We're just playing quarter notes. I just have my left hand resting down here, just bracing the body of the guitar. You're not going to be using your fretting hand at all for this exercise, so it could just be relaxed. That's all this first exercise is. So a tip here is, I really recommend just trying to stay as relaxed as possible, okay? And your wrists and your shoulders. As just a general tip, the more relaxed you are, the easier finger picking is. Now let's look at our second exercise. For exercise two, we're going to take exercise one, and we're just going to pick that in the opposite direction. So now we're going to play A, M I P. Mm. Oh Okay, so another way you can describe it is fingers, three, two, one thumb, three, two, one thumb, three, two, one thumb. And again, just like with exercise one, we're playing quarter notes. A IP, three, two, one thumb. Simple. All right, so make sure you take the time to get really comfortable with these first two patterns. These first two patterns are going to set us up for all the exercises that are coming in this class. I'll see you in the next video where we're going to play these two exercises together. 6. Exercises 1 & 2 (Play Along): Okay, let's put what we've learned so far together. First, we're gonna play 8 bars of exercise one, and then 8 bars of exercise two. Here is exercise one. Be sure to play along with me, and I'm gonna count this in. Here we go. One, two, three, four. All right. Nice job. Now, here's exercise two. Again, I'm gonna count us in. Here we go. One, two, three, four. All right. Now, I don't know if you could see or hear, but I was tapping my right foot along with the beats. That's something that you can try, and it might help you keep time. Great job with exercises one and two. I hope you have fun playing these first two exercises. And I'll see in the next video, we're going to learn about how to improve our timing. 7. Using a Metronome: H in this video lesson, I'm going to give you a great tip on how to improve the timing of your finger picking. Together, we're going to learn how to use a metronome. Being able to play in time in a variety of tempos is a super important skill for any musician. To practice playing at different tempos, we use a tool called a metronome. A metronome is a timekeeping tool that helps you in practicing your rhythm. It produces short, evenly spaced clicks at a specific and steady rhythm and tempo, and you can adjust the tempo of the metronome depending on whether if you want to practice something slower or faster. So the first thing you need to do is to get yourself a metronome. You can buy a standalone metronome, or if you have a smartphone or a tablet, you can download one. There are loads of metronome apps out there. I like to use an app called Tempo. There's a free version of it called Tempo Light, and there are a couple of different paid versions of it, as well. I use one of the paid ones called Tempo Metronome with Setist. If you have a web browser open, you can also Google the word Metronome, and that'll pull up Google's free Metronome. Google's Metronome is very basic. There aren't many settings that you can play with, but if you're just looking for a basic metronome with clicks that you can adjust the timing, it's perfect. Another free and great option is the metronome inside of the fender Toon App. I'm going to use the fender to App metronome to demonstrate what a metronome looks and sounds like. So once you open up the fender too app, you go down to the bottom of your screen and there's a little fretboard with dots on it and the word tools next to it. Just press on that little icon. Then it'll open up the Tools page, and there's some different tools here, chords, scales, rhythm. In the bottom right corner, there's metronome, click on that, and there's the metronome. Practicing with a metronome is very important because it allows us to hone in on our rhythm, and it allows us to slow things down that might be really challenging if we were to play them up to speed. This allows us to play with more accuracy and with more consistent timing. Metronome clicks mark beats in music. Once you have a metronome open, you'll see that you can adjust the tempo, and the tempo is referenced as BPM or beats per minute. And in most apps, you can also adjust the volume of the metronome. Most metronomes will also allow you to change the time signature. So once you've adjusted those settings and you set up your metronome and you start it, it will then provide a nice steady click for you to play along with. So now I'm going to adjust my metronome to 70 beats per minute. I just click on the number there at the top, and then on this page, you just put your finger down on your phone or tablet and you just pull down until you reach the tempo that you want. Okay, so there we go. 70 beats per minute. Or you can see there on the screen. It says 70 BPM. To start the metronome, you just hit the red rectangle with the white triangle down at the bottom of the screen. So the goal is to play in time with that rhythm or those clicks that we just heard. We can also set the metronome to a higher number, which will increase the speed. Here in the fender tune metronome, I'm going to tap on 70, and that will take me to the BPM screen again. And now I'm going to put my finger down on my tablet, and I'm going to just scroll up on the screen until I get to 120. We're going to see what that sounds like. Hit the little back arrow in the top corner. Now we're set to 120. We can also adjust the metronome to a lower number. So I'm going to tap on 120, and I'm going to scroll down on the screen here, let's try 40 beats per minute. Hit the little white arrow on the top of the window, and let's listen. So hopefully you can hear how much slower 40 beats per minute is compared to 70 and especially compared to 120 BPM. So now let's reset the metronome back up to 70. And now we're going to clap along with the metronome. Clapping rhythms is a great exercise because it isolates the rhythm. It takes away strumming, it takes away forming chords or playing individual notes. You're just simply focused on rhythm and timing. So the goal here is to try to clap along with each click. Here we go. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. What you want to try and do there is to mask the sound of the click with your clapping. The more that you can mask the sound of the click, the more that you're clapping in time. So now let's take exercises one and two, and I'm going to try to play them along with the metronome for you. I'm going to set my metronome to 60 beats per minute. First, let's check out Exercise one. Here we go. Now I'm gonna play exercise too. So now you can see I'm playing in time with a metronome set at 60 beats per minute. As a general guide, when you're using a metronome, you want to start out slowly in terms of the tempo and then work your way up with any particular exercise or song that you're trying to figure out and work on. Then you could always increase the speed gradually. I hope that this lesson is showing you how important a metronome is for any musician. In terms of finger picking, a metronome is going to help you to fingerpick with more clarity. And also more accuracy in terms of your timing and your rhythm. To be completely candid with you here, when I first started playing guitar and first started learning finger picking, I didn't practice with a metronome much. And to be honest, it showed my rhythm and timing really wasn't great. It was kind of all over the place. But what took my finger picking to the next level is when I started practicing my finger picking with a metronome, the metronome is going to help to keep you honest in your practice sessions. And the metronome is going to also help you develop a very solid sense of timing. Which is crucial when you're playing with other musicians. I hope that I've convinced you in this lesson about the importance of playing with a metronome. Try to include a metronome in each of your practice sessions. It's a great tool, along with recording yourself to be able to hear what you need to work on during your practice sessions. I'll see you in our next video where we're going to learn our next exercise. 8. Fingerpicking Exercise 3 - Switching Chords: In this video, we're going to work on finger picking while switching chords. For this exercise, we're going to play the G and the E minor chords. Let's get our picking hand situated. So we're going to set up our thumb on the low E string, and the thumb is going to stay here for this entire exercise. Next, your index finger will be set up on the G string. Your middle finger is going to go onto the B string, and your ring finger is going to go on the high E string. So our pattern here is to start the pattern with the thumb. And then we're gonna go to finger A, the finger and then the I finger. Okay, so that's our pattern. Okay, for our fretting hand, we're gonna form a G cord. And now let's try to play that finger picking pattern on top of the G cord. Now, let's try to grab an E minor chord. Now, we're not going to actually be playing the two strings that we're holding down with our left hand or our fretting hand. But this is good practice to fingerpick while changing chords because we're going to be doing that later in this course. So this is kind of a warm up to that. Alright? Now, let's play our new pattern here while holding down this E minor chord. Alright, so make sure you take some time to get really comfortable with that picking exercise and try playing the pattern while switching from G to E minor. I'll see in the next video where we're gonna play through this chord progression together. 9. Exercise 3 (Play Along): Okay, now let's practice what we learned in our last lesson together. First, we'll play 1 bar of G and then 1 bar of E minor, and then we'll repeat those two measures so that we play the full chord progression four times. Here we go. I'll count us in. One, two, three, four. Great job with exercise three. Finger picking while changing chords is a great skill to develop. And it's an important step to learning finger picking. I'll see you in the next video where we're going to learn another finger picking exercise. 10. Fingerpicking Exercise 4 - Intro to Bass Note Patterns: Books. Books. In this video, we're going to practice a finger picking exercise where we switch strings with our thumb. Usually, when we're finger picking, our P finger or thumb will play the low E string, the A string or the D string. Remember that the thumb is plucking downwards to create the sound. Okay. And for this exercise, the I finger will stay on the G string. The M finger stays on the B string and the A finger will stay on the high Estring. So let's check out a new pattern where we change strings with our thumb. To start out, your P finger will be on the D string. Your I finger will be on the G string. Your M finger will be on the B string, and your A finger will be on the high E. So we're gonna roll through the strings here like this. Okay. So what you're doing there is P A, Pi A P. A. For the next bar, your P finger will switch down to the A string and your other fingers will just stay right where they were from the first measure. So that looks and sounds like this. Again, you're just playing P A, P A. Finally, we're gonna switch our thumb down to the low E string. And again, our other fingers will stay in the same place. And again, we're just playing P M A. Pi A. Okay, so that's our three bar pattern for this exercise. It's simple because we really just want to focus on moving our thumb from the D string to the A string to the low E string. I'll see you in the next video where we're going to play through this three bar pattern together. 11. Exercise 4 (Play Along): Okay, so now let's practice what we learned on our last lesson together. We'll play each bar of this exercise four times before moving on to the next bar. Here we go. I'll count us in. One, two, three, four. Uh Great job with Exercise four. Finger picking while moving your thumb to different strings is a really important skill to learn, and it's going to open up a lot of possibilities when it comes to finger picking. I'll see you in the next video where we're going to learn more about how to play bass notes with our picking hand thumb. 12. Fingerpicking Exercise 5 - Playing the Bass Note: In this video, we're going to build off of what we learned in terms of moving our basse note around, and we're going to combine that with playing a simple chord progression. So our picking hand thumb is going to be changing strings depending on which chord we're playing. But fingers one, two, and three will stay in the same place throughout the whole exercise. And in this exercise, we're going to play a chord progression in 68 time. If you don't know what 68 time is, don't worry about it. I'm almost positive that you've heard at least one song in 68 time, and the rhythm will make sense to you once you hear it. So our first chord here is going to be C. On the C chord, the thumb will be picking the notes C on the A string. And the other three fingers will be on strings, three, two, and one. So if we put that all together in 1 bar, we're playing the fifth string, third string, second string, first string, second string, third string. Another way we can think about this pattern is thumb, one, two, three, two, one. You can also think of it as P, M A M. The next cord is A minor. For the A minor chord, our picking fingers actually don't have to change strings at all. The thumb stays on the fifth string, the A string. The only thing that's different here is now that you're forming an A minor cord in your fretting hand. The next chord is G. And G is a six string cord. So your picking hand thumb is gonna be picking the six string. So we're playing thumb, one, two, three, two. Those are the finger numbers that I'm calling out there. You could also think of it in terms of P, M A. Either way, it's just different ways of describing the same movement and the same fingers. So those are all the chords for this song. I'm going to play through the progression one time, and I'm gonna end on a full bar of C. We're gonna play each chord for 2 bars before we move on to the next chord. Here we go. One, two, three, four, five, six, Now, I'm just going to speed this up just for demonstration purposes, eventually, if you can get it going faster, it sounds really cool. All right. You've probably heard a progression like that before. Super sweet. Okay, so that's our six ba pattern for this exercise. We're starting to get our P finger, our thumb moving around to different strings, and we're also playing something that sounds a little bit more like actual music. I'll see you in the next lesson where we're going to play through this exercise together. 13. Exercise 5 (Play Along): Okay, so now let's take what we learned on our last lesson and let's practice it together. We're gonna play each chord for 2 bars before we move on to the next chord. Here we go. I'll count us in again. One, two, three, four, five, six. Great job with Exercise five. Finger picking while moving your thumb around to different strings is a technique that's used in a lot of songs. And this technique is going to open up a lot of possibilities for you. I'll see you in the next video where we're going to learn about how to move our base notes around to different strings within the same chord. 14. Fingerpicking Exercise 6 - Moving the Bass Note: In this lesson, we're going to build off of our previous exercise. We're going to focus on our base notes, but this time, we're going to be moving the base notes within the same chord. We're going to use a quarter note pattern here, which I'm sure you've heard before. It goes one, two, three, four. Fingers one, two, and three are going to stay in the same spot while you're changing chords and while your finger picking thumb is moving to different base notes. So let's take a look at what we're doing with this exercise. So we're going to start with a C chord. And we're going to start on the fifth string, and we go, P M A. Okay, or thumb, one, two, three. Then in Br two, the thumb is going to move to the fourth string. So now we're going to go Okay, so thumb one, two, three. I'm calling out the finger numbers there. Okay? Then in bar three, the thumb goes back to the fifth string, and we have PI, M A. Then in the fourth bar, the thumb goes back to the fourth string. So let me put those four measures together. Let me do that again and I'm going to call out the strings that the thumb is playing. So we have fifth string. Fourth string. Fifth string. Fourth string. Now we move to an A minor chord. The A minor chord uses the same thumb pattern as the C chord. So we have thumb on the fifth string. Fourth string. Fifth string. Fourth string. So if I put that together in real time, it sounds like this. Next up is our G chord. Now, the G chord is gonna be a little bit different because your thumb is gonna start on the sixth string. Then your thumb moves to the fifth string. Then your thumb moves to the fourth string. And then finally, you're going to go back to the fifth string. So that's kind of fun there. Get a little bit more movement on that G chord. And that's the whole pattern. So let me put it all together for you, and I'll play through one time. And I'm going to call out the base note strings as I play. So on C, we have five, four, five, four, five, four, five, four. Six, five, four, five. And then after playing that whole progression two times, we're gonna end on a C chord. Okay, so that's our pattern for this exercise. Our thumb is starting to move around to different strings within the same chord. And with that, we're really starting to expand our palette of sounds and techniques. I'll see you in the next lesson where we're going to play through this exercise together. 15. Exercise 6 (Play Along): Okay, now let's practice what we learned in our last lesson together. We're gonna play each chord for 4 bars before we switch to the next chord, and we'll play the entire chord progression two times before we end on a nice full bar of C. Here we go. He'll count us in. One, two, three, four. Great job with Exercise six. Finger picking while moving your thumb to different strings while still on the same chord is a technique that's used in a lot of songs. And I'm sure you've heard this technique before. So here we're expanding our possibilities and building up our techniques in terms of finger picking. I'll see you in the next video where we're going to learn a finger picking pattern that focuses on fingers one, two, and three. 16. Fingerpicking Exercise 7 - Strings 1, 2, and 3: In this video, we're going to change it up a bit, and we're going to focus on fingers one, two, and three. And we're going to use an eighth no pattern, so we're going to be counting one and two and three, and four and for each bar. You'll definitely hear a pattern similar to this used in songs. The first time that I can remember hearing a finger picking pattern very similar to this was in the radio head song, Weird fishes. If you've never heard Weird fishes, I recommend checking it. Even if you're not a radio head fan, it's really helpful to hear the techniques that we're learning in this class within the context of actual songs. So the pattern for this exercise is three, two, one, three, two, one, three, two, or AMI, AI AM. So we're not going to be using our picking hand thumb at all for this exercise. So if I play a C chord, I'm just going to focus on the bottom three strings, the high E, the B, and the G string. So it sounds like I'm gonna count off the finger numbers. Three, two, one, three, two, one, three, two, three, two, one, three, two, one, three, two F bar two, we're just playing the exact same thing. If I increase the speed, it sounds like this. Pretty cool. Then we're going to move on to an A minor chord. The only thing that's going to change here is actually the cord. Your fingers will be playing the exact same pattern. Three, two, one, three, two, one, three, two, three, two, one, three, two, one, three, two. So that was 2 bars there. Then we're going to switch to the G chord. Same pattern. And that's the entire pattern. This should be really fun for you, since it's really different from the previous exercises in this class. You might have noticed that my picking hand thumb was just sort of resting in a neutral way. This is the position that I want you to strive for. When you're not using your thumb, just have it hanging out relaxed. And that will help to keep your picking hand nice and free. Some people like to rest their thumbs on the sixth string for leverage. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But as I mentioned earlier in this class, I would always recommend trying to have your thumb just relaxed and hanging out in a neutral position, if you can. This way, your thumb is free, and it's ready to pick any string that you need to. Let me play through this progression one time for you. Then we're gonna end on a nice C cord. Okay, so that's our new pattern for this exercise. Here is a brand new pattern to add to your finger picking tool kit, and it's a really fun pattern to play. I'll see you in the next video, we're going to play through this pattern together. 17. Exercise 7 (Play Along): Okay, now let's practice Exercise seven together. We'll play each chord for 2 bars before moving on to the next chord, and we'll play the entire progression two times before ending on a nice full bar of C. Here we go. I'll count us in. One, two, three, four. Great job with Exercise seven. This finger picking pattern is super cool. This pattern is great to play when you're playing guitar with another guitarist, because you're focused on the higher notes on strings one, two, and three. So that leaves notes in the mid range and the low range of the guitar for another guitarist to play with. I'll see you in the next video where we're going to learn Travis picking. 18. Fingerpicking Exercise 8 - Travis Picking: In this video, we're going to learn a new technique called Travis picking. Travis picking is used in a lot of different styles of music. So it's a really handy technique to have in your toolkit. Travis picking is very similar to alternate bass notes drumming, which we've covered already in previous lessons. You keep a steady beat while you alternate strings. When you're Travis picking, your picking hand thumb is alternating between the lowest two strings in a chord. So let's try this with a C major chord. We're going to alternate our picking hand thumb between the fifth string and the fourth string by playing quarter notes, one beat per string. Now, let's add some of the other notes from the C chord. So our thumb will be playing the fifth string and the fourth strings, and our finger will be playing the second string. Again, we're going to play quarter notes here. So the pattern will go fifth string, second string, fourth string, second string, fifth string, second string, fourth string, second string. D Next, we'll add our eye finger on the third string. So now the pattern will be fifth string, second string, fourth string, third string, fifth string, second string, fourth string, third string. I'll do that again. Once you're comfortable with that pattern, you can try accenting certain notes to give the pattern a little bit more interest so that it's not too rigid. You can hear that there's a little variety in there. Now let's try this same pattern with the A minor chord. So we're gonna play the fifth string, the second string, fourth string, third string. Fifth string, second string, fourth string, third string. I'll play it again. Once you're feeling good with the A minor chord, you can try to put the C and the A minor chords together. Let's listen to that. Alright, so that's our intro to Travis picking. This is a really versatile picking pattern to learn, and it's also very fun to play. I'll see you in the next video where we're gonna play through this exercise together. 19. Exercise 8 (Play Along): All right. So now let's practice exercise A together. We'll play each chord for 2 bars before moving on to the next chord. And we're gonna play the entire progression two times before we end on a nice, beautiful 1 bar of C. Here we go. I'll count us in. One, two, three, four. 30 30 Great job with Exercise eight. This is a really interesting pattern to play, especially if you can play around with adding accents to different beats. Have fun playing this pattern. I'll see you in the next video where we're going to learn the technique of pinching. 20. Fingerpicking Exercise 9 - Pinching: In this video, we're going to learn a great technique called pinching. Pinching kind of emulates the sound of a bass player and a guitar player playing together, and we accomplish this sound by having the thumb play a bass note while one of the other fingers plays a different string at the same time. This technique is called pinching. Let's check out what this looks like up close. I'm going to hold a C chord here, and my thumb is going to pluck the fifth string. And my A finger is going to pluck the first string. Now, when I play these two strings at the same time, it's going to create a pinch. So when we pick a note with our finger at the same time that our thumb is picking a note, that's called pinching. So let's keep holding this C chord, and we're gonna play a pattern of fingers, three, two, one, two, or we can say A. So it's Ai. So on the very first bead of that pattern, we're going to pinch the fifth string with the thumb while picking the first string with the A finger. Let's listen to a measure of that. And if I speed that up, it sounds like this. Now let's apply that same pattern to an A minor chord. So while holding down the A minor, I'm going to use fingers three, two, one, two, or AMM. So on the first beat of this pattern, I'm going to pinch the open fifth string with the thumb, which sounds like this. Now I'm going to apply this pattern that we've learned in this lesson to C and A minor. We're going to play eighth notes, and it'll be 2 bars of C and then 2 bars of A minor. And that sounds like this. Alright, so that is our intro to pinching. Pinching is used in a lot of songs. One song that uses it that you may have heard already is Blackbird by the Beatles. If you haven't heard that song before, please find it somewhere and give it a listen. I'll see you in the next video, where we're going to play through this pinching exercise together. 21. Exercise 9 (Play Along): Okay, so now let's practice Exercise nine together. We're gonna play each chord for 2 bars before we move on to the next chord. And we're gonna play the entire chord progression four times before we end on a nice full measure of C. Here we go. I'll count us in. One, two, three, four. Awesome job with Exercise nine. Pinching is a very useful finger picking technique, and it's gonna allow you to fingerpick lots more songs. I hope you have fun playing this pattern. And then I'll see you in the next video where we're going to learn about Travis picking with a pinch. 22. Fingerpicking Exercise 10 - Travis Picking With a Pinch: In this video, we're going to combine Travis picking with pinching. So adding in a pinch to Travis picking is a very common alteration to the basic travis picking technique. To play this technique, we're going to play our thumb and our middle finger together to create the pinch. And it looks, and it sounds like this. So let's review the basic Travis picking technique. The basic Travis picking pattern consists of all eighth notes. I'm going to demonstrate with the A minor chord, and we're going to be playing strings two through five. So our thumb will play the fifth string. Finger two will play the second string. Then we play the fourth string with our thumb and string three with finger one. So so far, we have one and two n. Then the same pattern repeats, and we have one full bar, one and two, and three and four n. So now let's add in the pinch, and that's gonna sound like this. So we're gonna play the same strings as the basic Travis picking technique, strings two through five. On strings five and two, we'll use the thumb and the middle finger to pinch like this. And that beat will be a quarter note. Then for the rest of the beats in this measure, we're going to play those as eighth notes. So on the next beat, finger P will play the fourth string. Your e finger will play string three. Then on the third beat, your P finger will play the fifth string, and then your finger will play the second string. And on the last beat, that one's going to be the same as beat two. So your P finger will play string four, and your e finger will play string three. So let's listen to that entire measure on A minor. So that right there is the entire picking pattern for this exercise. But now let's try to add an agchord to the progression. So for this progression, we're gonna play A minor for two measures. And then we're gonna play G for two measures. The picking pattern is the same, except when you play the G chord, your P finger is going to move down onto the sixth string. Your M finger is going to stay on string two, and that will produce the pinch. The rest of the pattern is exactly the same as the pattern on the A minor chord. For the progression, we're going to play 2 bars of each chord before we move on to the next chord. Let's try this progression one time through. All right, so that's Travis picking with a pinch. This is a really fun and a beautiful pattern to learn. I'll see you in the next video where we're going to practice this pattern together. 23. Exercise 10 (Play Along): Alright, so let's practice exercise ten together. We're going to practice each chord for 2 bars before we move on to the next chord, and we're going to play the entire progression four times before we end on a nice full bar of A minor. One, two, three, four. Uh, Great job with Exercise ten. Travis picking with a pinch is a really nice variation to standard Travis picking. And it's a beautiful pattern to have in your tool kit. Have fun playing this pattern. And then I'll see you in the next video where we're going to wrap this class. 24. Conclusion: Hello. You made it to the end of this class. Congratulations. And, thank you so much. I've had a really good time putting this class together for you. I love finger picking on the guitar. I think it opens up a whole new world of sounds and possibilities that you can create with your guitar. And I hope that this class has inspired you to come up with your own finger picking patterns. And maybe this class will even inspire you. To create your own finger picking songs. Et's go through a really short recap of this class. You want to have your picking hand positioned over the sound hole on an acoustic guitar. And if you're finger picking on an electric, you want to have your hand in the center of the guitar body. And if possible, you want to have your hand floating freely above the strings. That's going to give you the maximum amount of freedom with your picking hand. Be patient with yourself while you're learning these new techniques. It takes time to build up the muscle memory, the dexterity, the accuracy, and the timing for finger picking. Speaking of timing, please make sure that you work through the exercises in this class slowly, and please incorporate a metronome into your practice routine. All of the sheets that I've created for this class have suggested BPMs at the top of the page. Once you feel comfortable playing the exercises at the suggested BPMs that I provide, then you can try increasing the speed of your metronome little by little. And very small increments, maybe by about two to three beats. Take it slow, and once you feel comfortable with the increase in speed, then you can increase it by another two or three beats per minute. This way, you'll be able to fingerpick faster without sacrificing accuracy. I want you to experiment and make sure that you try playing all of the finger picking patterns that I covered in this class. Also, you should see if you can figure out how to fingerpick some of your favorite songs. These days, it's so easy to go online and to find tabs for different songs. So go ahead and use those resources as well. When it comes to this class, you can always review any particular lesson as many times as you need to until the material in that lesson is really sinking in. And please take advantage of the opportunity to jam along with me and the play along videos in this class. Just do your best and please don't forget to have fun. And don't forget to download the supplemental materials that I provided for this class. I hope you enjoyed this course. I have other classes on guitar, ukulele, and songwriting. And if you enjoyed this class, then I would suggest to please check out my other courses as well. Music is beautiful and life giving. The more that we can learn about playing guitar and writing music, the more we could freely express our creativity and the more that we can connect with other people. And I highly recommend that you jump on the opportunity to create a project for this class. I've covered so many different picking patterns and techniques and given you so many tips, and you can apply any or some or all of those things to your projects. And if you can record your project, that would be amazing. Recording yourself playing and then listening back is one of the most useful tools as a musician. Thank you so much for joining me. Have fun, and I really hope to see you in another class soon.