I need some guidance. I’ve played electric guitar for a while, picked up the acoustic a year ago (and got my first Collings last week). I’ve always liked the sound of finger picking but have never learned it. Frankly, it’s always seemed real complicated and has sort of intimidated me. However, I’m older and wiser now and really want to learn this skill.

So, where to start? Should I get some lessons to get me going on learning good habits? How about DVD/CD courses? Books? On line resources?

Please be as specific as possible. My left hand knows its way around a guitar reasonably well and I can use a flatpick. I’d say I’m and advanced beginner/intermediate player, just absolutely brand new to finger picking.

How to start?

I really like this book - and I've checked out a lot of books - though it is blues specific.
Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar (Book and Audio CD)
by Arnie Berle

It is a really hard question to answer. Since as you say you know your way around the guitar, especially the left hand, a beginning fingerstyle book may be too simplistic, yet if you jump in on a more advanced book you may miss some fingerstyle basics.
If you live in an area where there are some good teachers I suggest you seek one out. That could more quickly determine what you should be focusing and working on, even if you stick with a teacher a short time. You can always gets instruction books also. You might check out http://www.acousticfingerstyle.com/ I am not sure this site is kept completely up to date, but it has a lot of info.
Regards, Rick

Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop has good CD and DVD lessons. They have many instructors, including Grossman himself. He is an excellent DVD instructor, but I have only seen his intermediate-level lessons. He has other lessons for beginning fingerpickers. Usually the lessons for beginners are designed to help you get comfortable playing an alternating bass with melody line on top. Their website has a section that includes recommended DVD lessons for beginners. For CD lessons, I like Dave Van Ronk's Folk and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar. I think this one is suitable for advanced beginners.

That said, I agree with the other recommendation. Finding a teacher is the best way to learn a new style of playing. Good luck!

What type of style of fingerpicking are you interested in learning? When I picked up the guitar for the first time at age 16, I wanted to sound like my favorite guitar player, Jorma Kaukonen. I wanted to learn that bouncy, alternating bass style. Someone showed me a pattern pick that they called a "Travis Pick." This allowed me to learn a pattern where while my thumb was doing the alternating bass thing, my index and middle finger were playing a pattern as well. This allowed me to progress to a point where I could do the alternating bass and then use my index and middle finger in a Non-Pattern approach to play a seperate melody line.

I have seen some of the beginning DVD's mentioned and I think you really need a bit of a fingerpicking background to get the most out of them.

http://www.howardbeaver.com/paulkarp_fpr2003/index.html

http://www.howardbeaver.com/paulkarp_fpr2004/index.html

Find a guitar teacher who is classically trained, preferably with a degree in music because there are a lot of people around who claim they're classical players but don't have the training.

The thing about fingerstyle is that picking the strings is a lot easier than stopping them, and classical players are usually the only ones around who know how to do right hand damping. Most fingerpickers can't damp and just let almost everything sustain until the chord changes. You can't play interesting rhythms that way ... if you want the music to swing at all you need to be able to leave space.

BTW I'm not a classical player but I know a bunch of them. I mostly use a pick now myself because it just suits the stuff I like to play better, especially on acoustic. I used to play electric myself and digging in with the fingers works much better there. Acoustic picking is a lot less forgiving ... you have to be concerned with volume, not just tone.

Can't say I agree with Hoser Rob above. I know a ton of fingerstyle players who play "Country Blues/Ragtime style."

Right hand damping is KEY to this style and you have to be able to do it and do it well to get an authentic sound.

If you want to play classical guitar, go with a classical guitar teacher. If you want to play fingerstyle in the Folk, Blues, Country Blues or Ragtime vein.... I would steer clear of a classical guitarist.

Another key component of the "Country Blues" style is that almost ALL of the players in this genre anchor their right hand by resting their pinky and/or their ring finger on the pickguard. To a classical guitarist, this is heresy! ;-)

http://www.howardbeaver.com/paulkarp_fpr2003/index.html


http://www.howardbeaver.com/paulkarp_fpr2004/index.html

There are many techniques to articulate notes when playing the guitar. Some are used by acoustic guitarists, (e.g., heel damping, left hand choking) and some are used by classical guitarists (e.g., rest stroke, preparation).

I would suggest that all of these techniques are valid and the more comfortable one is with all of them, the better one can articulate a broader range of music.

To the OP - since your left hand is farther advanced than your right hand (fingerstyle), you should find a teacher or written or online materials that focus on right hand development exercises. Perhaps 20-30 minutes a day of pure right hand technique exercises will shorten your overall leraning curve.

I'd suggest starting from a classical approach (more or less). It's proven to work efficiently, accurately and completely. Classical technique underpinnings will serve you well as you learn the dozens of isolated right and left hand techniques commonly used with many of the sub-styles in fingerstyle acoustic guitar.

On the other hand, if you start out just learning one of the fingerstyle sub-syles (e.g., Travis picking, country blues), you may limit your future growth into other sub-styles.

FreeBlues,
As I suggested in my earlier post some lessons from a teacher would be helpful. My background is first classical guitar and second fingerstyle guitar. Lessons in both areas are helpful, but unless you have the extra time and money to do both, I would focus on finding a good fingerstyle teacher, since this is the style of music you want to learn (I think - when you start these threads with a question you really should respond back to people who try to help, it is only the polite thing to do).
The fingerstyle lessons will focus more on common fingerstyle picking patterns, may involve getting used to a thumb pick, etc. - things that may be more specific to this style.

Sorry for not replying earlier - my computer connection was down over the weekend.

I got a recommendation for a good teacher from my Collings dealer and connected with him today. Lessons start in a few days. I'm going to pay for 4 weekly lessons up front and see how it goes.

He too asked me what I wanted to play and I'm not sure what I'll tell him. From what I've gathered from these forums I think I want to learn the basic Travis picking style then move on to some sort of blues thing. I guess my goal is to start with the "basics" then branch out depending on what I learn. Does this make sense?

I'm going to hold off on DVD/CD/books for now, waiting to see what the instructor says.

quote:

He too asked me what I wanted to play and I'm not sure what I'll tell him. From what I've gathered from these forums I think I want to learn the basic Travis picking style then move on to some sort of blues thing. I guess my goal is to start with the "basics" then branch out depending on what I learn. Does this make sense?

This leads me to ask the question: what is your goal? Are there fingerstyle performers that you particularly like? I would find it difficult to motivate myself to learn Travis style picking if I didn't enjoy Merle Travis. The reason I wanted to learn fingerstyle in the first place is that I loved the way Gary Davis played the guitar. If you want to learn to knock on a guitar like Gary Davis or Blind Blake, classical training might not be so helpful. After all, these guys are folk artists who never (I assume) had formal training in technique. But if you want to play like Laurence Juber or Tommy Emmanuel, then you would probably benefit from the kind of technical training that a classically-oriented teacher can provide. That's my opinion, for what its worth.

Great suggestions from all. As my handle suggests the only thing I know how to do is fingerpick. Put a flat pick in my hand and I can pretend to know what I'm doing. I play mainly early blues and rag and we just started doing some electric roadhouse blues style stuff with some of my buddies and I play my strat with my fingers not with a pick. I do use a thumbpick however.

The suggestions about goals is a great one. If you kinda know what the end game is then a good teacher will get you there much faster.

In my classical days I used to play 45 mintues or more of scales every day. No, I am NOT suggesting you do THAT however some simple exercises and technigue building scales, runs and arpeggios will get you off to a flying start.

Learing some simple P I M A (thumb, index, middle and third fingers) exercises and learning the free and rest strokes with your fingers will get your brain trained to think of your picking hand as 4 independant picks capable of playing chords, individual notes, double stops and every combination in between. My guess is that your first 2 weeks is going to feel really awkward and then it will click after that.

My guess is that you will be off to the races faster than you think. I'm teaching my 11 year old daughter fingerpicking right now and it's working really well.

I'd really like to know how you are progressing and what your teacher tells you - what works and what doesn't.

Best of luck!