How to Play Fingerstyle Guitar

Transcript With finger style jazz, you’re still using your fingers to play. One of the biggest difference is just, you’re playing more complex chords. So as an intro into playing finger-style in jazz, I’d like to show you how to play a blues using more jazzy chords. So we’re going to start off with a …

Transcript My name’s Adam Smale. I’ve been playing guitar since 7 years old and I’m 45 now, so I’ll let you do the math. And I’ve been playing professionally for around 33 years, since the age of 12. I wrote a book, called “New Approach to Scales” for guitars. Basically, this book really is a …

Transcript I want to take this time right now to show you just a very simple, yet effective lick that you can play intros and outros, or by means to get back to the top of the song again. It’s really, really simple. I’m using my thumb, middle. and index finger in that kind of …

Transcript [playing guitar] Now that technique that I’m doing right there, is called trills. And basically it’s just a series of quick hammer ons and pull offs. So I’ll lead you through what I just played. [playing guitar] If you want something to sound really flashy, and a big flourish of notes, then trills is …

Transcript I’m going to show you some more advanced techniques that come from the flamenco world that maybe, possibly, some of you might not know about. The first one is called Rasgeuado, and what it is, is a raking of the strings or a fast flourish of notes coming from your hand. Basically like that. …

Transcript Now we’re going to talk about a walking bass line. We’re going to add some extra notes to make it sound interesting, kind of more of a jazz approach, jazz walking bass line. So, let’s change the key back to the key G. We’re going to add some chromatic notes. And so what I’m …

Transcript Bluegrass music kind of infuses a lot of different things into it, including some African-American sounds. So you kind of have some blues mixed in with the country feel. One way to do that is to pick out blues notes, as well as using chromatic notes. So, what I’m going to do is I’m …

Transcript Folk finger style basically comes from a lot of the same background. It’s country music, bluegrass music, but it’s a little more subtle. So a lot of the same techniques that we’ve already explored, you can use. But when you think about folk, usually there’s not any flashy playing, you’re not playing super fast, …

Transcript I want to just quickly show you a little cool technique here, called drop D tuning. All that really means is you’re taking your low E string, and you’re simply tuning it down to a D. So, what I’ll do is I’ll quickly match it to the open D string, an octave lower. Wow, …

Transcript Slash chords have two symbols. There’s one on the top, and one on the bottom, usually with a slash separating the two. Sometimes you can have a forward slash, almost like a fraction, or you can have a horizontal slash with a chord symbol on top and another chord symbol on the bottom. The …

Transcript So I’m going to show you how to play funk almost like you would on bass, using your thumb. So a bass player would thump with their thumb like this so you got it, almost like you’re out to hitchhike, and you’re going rotate your thumb towards the string, like that. So I’m taking …

Transcript I’d like to talk to you about the major scale now. The major scale has seven notes. All major scales have seven notes, and we usually number them from one to seven. If you think of the eighth note, you get the repeated note you started with, but an octave higher. So let me …

Transcript Bluegrass music is typically played with a flat pick, but there are a few players around that do play finger style. Even though sometimes you’ll see people using finger picks, and probably they were banjo players at one point. If you ever look at banjo players they actually use metal picks on these two …

Transcript [music] A lot of people might not know this, but you can play some really cool reggae grooves in a finger style manner. Your thumb is going to take care of the bass line. And what you’re going to do is use your pinkie this time, actually. You’re going to use your middle finger, …

Transcript The first thing that I’d like to mention about modes is, is that they don’t really exist, sort of. Really if you already know your major scales, you already know your modes. They’re one and the same. It’s all in how you’re looking at it or hearing it. I’ll try to demonstrate. So I’m …

Transcript I’m going to talk about some Bluegrass runs now. Now, what is a run? A run is basically some bass notes to get from one chord to the next. Instead of just some simple strumming [guitar music], and then you switch to the next chord [guitar music] you can make it a little more …

Transcript If I’m playing a C major scale and I play a C major scale on top of that chord, you hear it as C major or if you want to call it one of the modes, it’s called C Ionian. If I play a D minor chord and I play the same scale, it’s …

Transcript So when you’re playing jazz in a fingerstyle manner, it’s a really good thing to think of each finger as a member of a band or an orchestra. Your thumb is the bass player. Maybe your first finger is part of the trombone section and maybe your second finger is part of the other …

Transcript I’d like to talk to you about some classical techniques. Being able to explore the classical realm is great to bring into your own playing. The whole thing about classical guitar playing is all about tone, expression, and dynamics. Dynamics means loud and soft. So, traditionally, classical guitarists would play their guitar on the …

Transcript One really good way to understand and build a major scale is to play it on one string. So I’m going to stick with the C Major scale again, just to make it simple, and I’m going to start on the second string, first fret, on that C. Now before I do that I …

Transcript Here’s another great little bluegrass run that I’d like to show you. You can come up with your own, but often in bluegrass music they use open strings. So here’s a little lick I’d like to show you involving open strings. I’m going to start with my first finger on the D, on the …

Transcript I’d like to show you now, a classical vibrato. Now, some of you might already be doing a sort of a walk or a blues vibrato that’s very quick. That doesn’t really work so good in classical music. Everything’s a little more subtle. How a classical vibrato came about, I’m assuming, is probably from …

Transcript Golpe technique. The golpe technique, basically you’re tapping the top of your guitar for a percussive sound to add in with your playing. This comes again from the flamenco world. What the flamenco guys might do is something like this. [playing guitar] Just to add little accent spots here and there, it helps to …

Transcript Triad inversions. Let’s first explore strings one, two and three. I’m going to start with, here at the third position, with my finger on C on the third string, E with my fourth finger on the second string fifth fret, and then a G with my first finger on the first string. Now, inversions …

Transcript I would like to show you the flamenco version of tremolo, which is similar to the classical style, but it adds in an extra note. Now the classical tremolo has a grouping of four notes, because I was using my thumb, ring, middle, index fingers. With the flamenco version you’re grouping five notes, so …

Transcript Rock finger-style guitar. Well, there are very few finger-style rock guitar players out there. But there are few. Jeff Beck being one, a famous person. And it’s all similar techniques to blues except you’re using a distorted guitar sound usually. I’ll dial that sound up and well try some different techniques and we’ll get …

Transcript I’m going to show you another technique that’s very useful, from the classical genre. It’s called the tremolo. Now, tremolo is designed to have a busy single note happening while you play kind of melody notes on your bass strings. I’ll show you. The pattern is thumb first, the A finger, M finger, I …

Transcript Finger style blues guitar. Well, finger style blues guitar is a little bit more simpler than the Chet Atkins/Merle Travis. Usually the thumb is playing a drone note underneath. So I’m gonna use the low E string as a drone. I’m just gonna keep the beat, basically, with my thumb. And then on top …

Transcript We’re going to talk about diatonic triads now. If you don’t know what triads are, triads are just the simplest of chords, three notes, thusly the tri. So we’re going to build very simple triads here. And we’re going to start with the fifth string, the fourth string, and the third string. We’re going …

Transcript An easy way into getting yourself playing some bass lines, is arpeggiating the chord. If you don’t know what an arpeggio is, an arpeggio is breaking the notes up in a chord and playing them separately. You can think of an arpeggio as a broken chord, and a chord as a frozen arpeggio, meaning …

Transcript So let’s explore the triad inversions on strings four, three, and two. I’m going to start up here in position, and I’m going to play a C major triad, starting with C at the tenth fret with my third finger, my second finger in E at the ninth fret, and then, with my first …

Transcript There’s something else that I’d like to bring up about classical guitar. That is the fact that they kind of have a little bit more strict rules than just general finger style guitar. Basically each finger is designated to a string. It’s kinda like a little army of fingers that each one has its …

Transcript So when you’re playing funk in a finger style manner, you have to keep in mind the style. Usually you’re playing clean guitar sounds, no distortion, and you’re playing quick muted notes often. Actually, now getting underneath the string, and really plucking it hard works great. [playing guitar] Little things like that, that sound …

Transcript One really way to get your finger picking together is actually start involving chords. Let’s take a nice chord progression here, a very simple chord progression, just to work out your patterns using chords. Let’s pick the key of D for something a little different here today. The 3 chords that I’m going to …

Transcript So root 6, root 5 bar chords. Let me explain that to you. R in the R5 and R6 stands for root. So the 5 or the 6 means which string you’re on. So R6 means I’m going to play a chord that has the root on the sixth string. R5 would be I’m …

Transcript You might have heard of an exercise called the spider exercise. There’s many, many different variations on this exercise, but I’m going to show you at least a couple of different ways of playing the spider exercise. The first thing to do is start off on their sixth string and you’re always going to …

Transcript If you want to learn how to move chord shapes around, let’s go back to our CAGED system that we talked about before. Remember the C, A, G, E, and D chords. Those are your true open chords. And if you know those already, believe it or not, you can move those up and …

Transcript I’m going to show you an exercise to help build your speed up. If that’s something that you’re looking to do, you’re never going to get that fast unless you learn how to sync your right and left hand up together to work at the same time. So what I’m going to do is …

Transcript Open chord shapes. Open chord shapes refers to chord shapes that have open strings in their voicing of them. And really, it only boils down to five different chords. An easy way to remember it is by the word caged, C-A-G-E-D. And those are your five basic open chords. C, A, G, E, And …

Transcript I’d like to talk to you about some basic finger style techniques that I use. I’m going to start off with my thumb, which is letter-P and my index finger, letter-I. I’m going to alternate back and forth. This technique allows you to play fast lines on a single string. If I’m going to …

Transcript Fingerstyle guitar basically means that you’re plucking the strings with your fingers, instead of you using a pick. I do have a pick; I’m using a thumb pick here as opposed to a flat pick. That just suits my style fine. You can use a thumb pick or sometimes people like to use just …

Transcript I’m going to show you some basic right hand finger exercises to help you going with your finger style approach. Let’s start off with your index finger and your middle finger, listed in any instruction book as I and M. What I’m going to do is I’m going to show you two different ways …

Transcript I’d like to show you what pull-offs are now. Pull-offs are the opposite of a hammer-on. Hammer-on was to get to a higher note on your string. A pull-off is to get to a lower note. Again, just like hammer-ons, it’s exactly as the name implies. You’re literally pulling your finger off to get …

Transcript I’m going to show you a great exercise to get your hammer-ons and pull-offs together. So, just briefly, hammer-on means to get to a higher note, pull-off means to get to a lower note. So, on this exercise we’re going to play four notes per string. I’m going to start at the first fret …

Transcript I’d like to give you some tips on shaping your fingernails and what to do with your fingernails if you decide to use your fingernails. If you don’t use your fingernails, then you want to trim your fingernails back far enough that they’re not catching on the strings. You have to remember that you …

Transcript So those patterns that I talked about before were great for playing in four four time. I’m going to show you a pattern for playing in three four time. You can feel the three. One, two, three, one, two, three. Every time my thumb hits the bass note that’s the one count. So that’s …

Transcript A great way to learn finger independence for your right hand is to practice different patterns, so I’m going to show you some different patterns. Let’s start off with the Travis picking pattern with your thumb again. I’m just going to do it on a C chord, just your standard open C chord. And …

Transcript Here’s another version of the spider exercise that I really like to do. I’m putting my first finger on the fifth fret of the third string, on that C, and I’m going to line up all four fingers on the same string one fret apart. What I’m going to do now is plant three …

Transcript I’d like to show you some more finger picking patterns; very, very common in finger-style guitar, coming from the Merle Travis, Chet Adkins way of playing finger-style guitar. First off, we’re going to start off with the thumb. The thumb does an alternating pattern. Let’s do this first. Let’s start; 5, 4, 6, back …

Transcript So, to create some new sounds with your bar chords, we’re going to talk about bar chord inversions. We are going to take our R5 and our R6 chords that we have talked about before, and let’s start with R5, I’m going to take this C major R5 chord shape and I am going …

Transcript Hammer on basically is any time you pluck the string, or actually produce a note I should say, with your left hand or your fretting hand. What you do is you actually, as the name implies, hammering your finger down to produce the note. It’s to get a note that’s higher than a note …

Transcript Although with a flat pick, you can play faster than you can usually with your fingers. At least with a thumb pick, I can revert to a flat pick style by pinching my thumb pick and using it like a flat pick. Because it’s a thumb pick, I don’t have to use up two …

Transcript I’d like to show you some finger picking patterns here. One of the things that I would like to start off with here is what I refer to as planting, and we’re going to plant your fingers on the string. So we’re going to designate your A finger, your ring finger, on the first …