Starting to play fingerstyle guitar

At some point you may feel the urge to put your pick down in favour of getting all ‘earthy and pure’ with Fingerstyle guitar. There’s no question that a purity does exist when it’s all about acoustic guitar wood, strings and fingers, it takes practice but it’s really worth it as you’ll be rewarded with some beautiful guitar sounds. In fact, you may never go back to using a pick again.

If you’ve never tried to play fingerstyle acoustic guitar before or your technique for doing so is horrible then it’s well worth while starting from scratch and learning properly. In the future, having a correct fingerstyle technique will make things a lot easier.

Take the time to learn your fingerstyle technique correctly. Later on it will pay big dividends.

The first step is to program your fingers so that each one is assigned to it’s own particular string. Normally the thumb is responsible for the bass parts happening across the 4th, 5th and 6th strings. The index finger is assigned to the 3rd string, your 2nd finger to the 2nd string and the 3rd finger to the first string.

Try to maintain that system throughout all your fingerstyle playing so that eventually it will be become just as automatic as your strumming. It’s really important to begin with very simple plucking patterns and easy chord changes, remember to go slowly too. The point here is all about programming your mind and you can only do that by playing very slowly.

It’s a bad idea to try to learn fingerstyle songs until you are comfortable with your basic technique. The technical side of things comes first, only then is it all about the music. The best thing is that once you have it, you have it for life and it’s really going to open you up as a guitar player and deepen your enjoyment of the instrument.