Fingerstyle Guitar: Can You Do It?

yeah i am pretty bad at it and wish i was much better

I can play a bunch of Fahey and Elizabeth Cotton songs and stuff like that decently well. I mostly use T, I and M. Used to play a little classical guitar which uses the ring finger as well, and as much as this adds options, I find it easier to play without it on a steel string. I do love bossa nova and samba guitar though, which uses thumb and three fingers.

I can't do flamenco or anything speed-heavy. I've always had slow hands.

• not really
• prefer nylon but most times I've tried this has been on steel strings
• nylon has a greater variation in tone depending on whether you pluck the string with the nail, side of the nail, side of the thumb/finger/etc.
• no opinion, but it reminds me of the argument that the fastest electric players are the 'best' players
• Travis picking: I've tried it a lot, but it's like playing the rhythm to 'No Fun' by The Stooges - it's simple enough, but if you don't get it more or less exactly right it sounds terrible
• I don't bother using my little finger as it isn't long enough
• right handed
• I don't think that being left handed makes much of a difference past the mental effort to remember everything 'backwards'. Fingerstyle is hard whichever way round you play, because of the effort in training your fingers to do what you're telling them.

well left-handed does make classical tricky because its hard as fuck to find a lefty classical guitar

Forgot to ask whether you trim your nails to a specific shape.

fuck that, i pick with my fleshy fingerpads and screw the tone, i'm only amusing myself after all.

yeah i actually avoid the nail thing because im mostly playing electric and i dont want to overemphasize the snappiness i already get because of my fucked up technique

wat is travis picking?

when I was perusing guitar teachers the other day, I ran across a fingerstyle dude who included "nail maintenance" as one of his major areas of instruction, which is honestly not anything that would ever have occurred to me to worry about

guitar style made very popular by the british band "Travis" xpost

And if so how well? - i'm competent. i posted a video up on the other thread of me playing

Nylon string or steel string? Nylon mostly

Is there a difference in technique between nylon and steel? one hurts your fingers more

Do flamenco players have the best technique? don't think so

Do you Travis pick? dunno

Using i, im, ima, ima + e or c whatever they call the pinky? I don't know what this means but I only sometimes use my pinky

wat is travis picking?
Playing a steady bass line with your thumb on the beats and playing everything else with some subset of the other fingers. Named after Merle Travis although of course he didn't invent it.

i also dont worry about nails much because given the nature of the shit i do around the store, im going to fuck up my nails as often as not, and ive known dudes that were basically incapable of playing with a broken nail.

i also suck w/fingerpicks, although ive found that the fred kelly thumbpicks combined with those alaskan fingerpicks are worlds ahead of the usual dunlop/national plastic stuff.

to starting out as a bass player and playing a fair amount of classical for a while
Classical guitar? Did you have a teacher or read a book or just figure it out yourself?

wat is travis picking?
Playing a steady bass line with your thumb on the beats and playing everything else with some subset of the other fingers. Named after Merle Travis although of course he didn't invent it.

― Johnny Too Borad (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, February 28, 2013 12:01 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Travis picking is a misnomer not only for this reason but also because Travis actually only used his thumb and index, which almost no one does.

I've always assumed the style evolved out of an immitation of stride and ragtime piano.

i'm an unbelievably chronic nailbiter which pretty much fucks me as a remotely serious fingerstyle player. on the couple occasions i've been able to grow out those nails it's pretty great tho.

Hah, I knew someone was going to call me on that and say that he only used his index. How many fingers did Elizabeth Cotten use?

i don't play with a pick much anymore but i can't call it "fingerstyle" really. it's all kind of half-assed in a jeff beck/mark knopfler kind of way. but less good.

I think people who are more careful say Travis-picking for thumb plus index, and Atkins-picking for thumb plus index plus middle.

Elizabeth Cotten played upside down with her thumb playing on the high strings. Pretty sure she mainly used three fingers but IDK. Search her on youtube, mind-boggling to watch her left hand.

As for nails, I prefer either bare flesh or fingerpicks

I had never looked at gary davis's fingerings, and out of curiosity I found him on youtube -- whadya know, plays with his thumb and index too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlQZwHcBqyQ

Lenny Breau used the ring finger and eventually started using the pinky as well I think. As as result when he would drop by to see his mentor Chet Atkins and show him some new stuff at some point Chet couldn't play it.

Is everything I've ever read on the Internet about travis picking wrong? I thought it was a specific pattern:

x---x--
--x----
-t---t-
t--t---

(any four strings, t=thumb, x=other finger/s of choice)

Bottom is right, mostly, although you could reverse the order and thumb a higher string first. Top could be anything. Also it is not limited to four strings, you could be using thumb on bottom two or three strings and the fingers on the top three or four.

Yeah was just trying to keep the diagram simple!

The specific pattern is that the thumb never stops playing quarter notes. Maybe we forgot to mention that.

Hm. actually the dashes don't seem right in that diagram even for the thumb.

Just saw a guy playing a six string bass fingerstyle like a guitar.

That lick mark knopfler plays before yelling "ha!" during the "in the gallery" solo is the reason one might want to sound snappy on an electric

Hm. actually the dashes don't seem right in that diagram even for the thumb.

oh yeah i missed a gap, first notes (the pinch) are quarter, the rest are eighths.

x----x--
---x----
--t---t-
t---t---

interested to know what fahey tunes you play, hurting. are they tricky? in alternate tunings?

I play Orinda-Moraga/Poor Boy Long Ways from Home pretty decently (alternate tuning), I can pick my way through Bicycle Built for Two ok (I play in standard but I'm not sure that's how he does it), and also Requiem for John Hurt when I'm in practice (a favorite)

the triplets on Requiem for John Hurt are pretty tricky

Oh and Jesus is a Dying Bedmaker -- one of the best song titles ever

cheers. they mostly sound if not look well beyond my level but it's good to have goals.

not just good, necessary. if i don't have something to work towards i end up treading water or not even playing at all.

The easiest of them would be Orinda-Moraga -- the bend thing is a neat trick that's simple once you get it down

One of my all-time faves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLeqnEDF7jU

Can do it a bit but not very well, too lazy tbh, flatpickers of the world unite!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BqISqpMRo8

^^ James Taylor explains about nails

im starting to play rudimentary fingerstyle travis picking crabclaw whatever. i've just got the basic premise of it and i'm like too in love with this thing that i can make and just play with it all the time, not really progressing. i learnt like wildwood flower and then just played with the scale and chord combinations.

i think my housemates are pretty bored of this sound now

Learn this, it's easier than it sounds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFAsoKHepRI

Plax, can you do "Blackbird" already?

no but lol i hate the beatles. this is ilx!

Boots of Spanish leather is a good starter song. Downside is it'll make you miserable

g-d i wish i could play guitar

I wish I could play a good fingerstyle, but instead I'm all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f51QWBM7IME

Working on that Travis picking, though. I get discouraged easily. I think I listen to Will Ackerman and Leo Kottke and just expect to play like them after twenty minutes of practice.

Sometimes I tune to dadgad and I get 'choon or two going though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOxJeoNFl3E

I have a steel strung and a nylon strung guitar. I find that practicing finger picking on the wider-necked nylon guitar makes chords a lot easier when I switch back to the steel string (almost to the point that I feel like I'm cheating).

I tune down to c# to make everything a bit easier, generally speaking. For some reason, things that need to be in standard tuning are just easier to fret with the capo at three; rather than just tuning up to E (maybe that's a mental thing though and I should get over it).

I was recently told to listen to John Hurt because even though what he's playing isn't that easy, it **SOUNDS** easy and is, therefore, easy to follow.

on top of the difference in tension, i imagine you're getting better action with the capo'd fret vs. the nut.

i've been trying to learn finger style stuff, but life's in the way of that most of the time. i can play most of a skip james song, and the first few parts of "angie" (jansch's version) but uhh that's really hard. i started with a hybrid style but cuz i can't keep track of picks it's turned into a thumb-and-fingers thing. somehow i imagined the solution to this was "buy fingerpicks".

The OP in the Delcamp thread ("Modernising No-Nails Playing") is the same guy who wrote the first piece you linked. This seems to be a hobbyhorse for him, although NB that afaict he often doesn't play modern nylon-stringed classical guitars at concert pitch. (He posted a video of him doing so but the point was that he commonly does play historical instruments, e.g. lutes, gut strings, low tunings).

Tbc, I don't push nails on anyone who isn't planning to play classical guitar at a fairly serious level. I don't think there's really much of a debate within that context, though? xp

Oops. Sorry for not looking more closely.

I've finally started getting my head around fingerpicking and am quietly excited about how much I've progressed in the last six weeks (from utter simpleton to bungling halfwit, but I'll take it). I'm kinda clumsy and, as mentioned upthread, get bored quickly so rarely make it to mastery before moving on but hell I'm enjoying myself. Inveterate nail-biter so flesh over nails but intrigued to try the other way.

Good stuff. Started looking into theory?

anyone have any good resources for self-teaching fingerstyle? i found the nails v flesh stuff itt very interesting b/c i too am an inveterate nail-biter who forced myself to grow some right-hand nails for a while, but found them to be as tricky for developing a good technique as flesh is.

right now i mess around with some bert jansch tunes and have toyed with some of the easier fahey stuff but i'd love to take a more general approach than just learning songs if there were a way to do so.

Hey Sund4r - I think it'll be part of the process. I've got an intuitive (ish) understanding of the neck of the guitar but only slowly re-learning from scratch, making my way around triads and scales etc. It's amazing how much of this business is about engagement; simply practising and being with your instrument and how that leads to leaps of progress and understanding. That book you recommended elsewhere looks great.

Call all destroyer, speaking very much as a beginner, I've been using a fairly scattershot approach to it - finding videos, trying different things. I'd totally appreciate a more 'definitive' approach if anyone has one!

I play very chordally, and tend to think in terms of movable chord shapes and easily located arpeggios.

This approach makes right-handed picking accuracy less important - if all the notes I am fretting are potentially "right" - or, right enough by virtue of being in the appropriate key or chord - then I worry less about accidentally playing a "wrong" note.

(This may be because I am left-handed but play as a righty.)

Although I don't use it consistently, I find the CAGED system is very helpful for opening up the fretboard. When you start with cowboy chords you tend to over-rely on them.

The CAGED concept allows you to say, "welp, I'm already up here on the tenth fret and need to play an Amaj7. There isn't time to go all the way back down to my usual Amaj7, so I will find a voicing for that chord that is bear where I am."

Yr true CAGED-heads can associate the chord forms with scales and modes. The normal book for learning this is Fretboard Logic. Much of it is over my head (and overkill for my style of music), but it's pretty well-regarded.

That is *near* where I am.

Tl;dr: if your fretting hand is doing its job, then you have a bit more leeway in terms of what you pluck.

you might already know this, but using your thumb to fret the top string in barre chords is essential

as for nails vs flesh, i gave up on nails and developed a more percussive style with my fingers. there are also "open" finger picks which are kinda the best of both worlds

Can that thumb-fretiting thing be down with every kind of neck? Don't think so.

maybe not a classical guitar? it was my understanding that fingerstyle generally referred to steel string acoustic

I get bored every once in a while and try playing upside down just to really reformat my brane:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK8emiWabU

So many years of conditioning makes it hard to break routine but it helps rediscover playing by simply turn the instrument over, switching hands and unlearning habits.

I'm just kinda ambidextrous yet not nearly enough to really be able to just let it all come out smoothly and effortlessly.

I pretty much never thumb-fret, partly because I keep hearing that good form requires the thumb to be on the back of the neck, and that the overhanging thimb indicates sloppiness.

I do make exceptions for songs where there is a specific bass run on the low E, and the thumb is most convenient fingering, because reasons.

An example is "Driver 8." I think I have used my thumb for the bass notes of "Driver 8."

Specifically D with an F# in the bass

It is completely possible to play barre chords (xp or inversions) without ever thumb-fretting ftr.

Which songs would you recommend learning as a progression to get to:
https://tommyemmanuel.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/chet-atkins-walk-dont-run2.pdf

Sund4r is correct that thumb-fretting is never a necessity. There are a few situations where it might makes l sense (for me, the D with F# in the bass a la Driver 8). But if pressed I could use a different fingering, no prob

Interesting. If Elizabeth Cotten is playing upside down à la Jimi Hendrix, then she is not thumbing her bass notes.

if a la Jimi Hendrix, she would have reversed the string order though

Oh right. In fact that is what it looks like she was doing.

Do people actually play fully upside down?

a left-handed high school friend exclusively played his epiphone SG fully upside down. it freaked me out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musicians_who_play_left-handed#Left-handed_with_strings_backwards

from Dick Dale to Gruff Rhys

My brain can't do the mirroring properly so I couldn't see that Elizabeth Cotten was playing fully upside down.

Lol, I was going to say something rude to you but I'm happy we're now all on the same page.

From Sufjan's list: Laetitia_Sadier

I had no idea, and I'd seen guitar-era Stereolab more than a few times!

So it seems like she is playing the melody with the thumb, the bass with her index and then the thumb is also doing the comping.

yep, just a "simple" claw with anchor, but both fingers have 4-string range.

There's a pretty interesting music youtube guy called Benn Jordan who plays upside down guitar - he was given a right handed guitar as a left handed child and no-one ever intervened to let him know the strings were the wrong way round. By the time he found out it was too late to change. Watching him fingerpicking made my brain go a bit weird

https://youtu.be/7n5Rdt8cOQk

Which songs would you recommend learning as a progression to get to:
https://tommyemmanuel.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/chet-atkins-walk-dont-run2.pdf

Do you play any bass + melody stuff already? Can you play "Freight Train" (whether upside down, right side up, with or without thumb fretting, etc)?

i used to be able to do a mean Dust in the Wind

Silent Lucidity or gtfo

Been playing since the 80s and I still can't cleanly play a bar 7th chord on the A string or a bar minor chord on the E string worth a chud. I just cannot get that note on the bar between the fretted notes clean.

I'm not ready for 'the claw' or anything, but I can get the picking hand down some now. I can't keep callouses on my picking hand, which is the reason I never got away from playing bass with a pick.

Albert King and Doyle Bramhall II both also did/do the upside town strung guitar. I saw Bramhall up close at a small club in Lexington a few years ago and it was really wild to watch him play.

Since October, I've got my head around Travis picking, have learned* how to play Don't Think Twice and The Boxer and have been messing with some mental Nick Drake tunings - notably BEBEBE - and can do clumsy, ragged impressions of Northern Sky and The Fly.

*learned is always a fairly loose term; mostly I still play like an arthritic rhinoceros.

nice, Don't Think Twice was one of the first I learned and it's got some really pretty chord changes in it

Where's a good place to go from there, man alive?

it's got some really pretty chord changes in it
I love the 'walks' from the Am to F and D7.

Have you ever heard the John Fahey tune Orinda-Moraga? That's a nice one that sounds harder than it is, although the nuances can be tricky. Good intro to fingerpicking in open tuning as well. A lot less left hand action than Don't Think Twice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hHXJXx0-gA

I've been working up a version of Mississippi John Hurt's Let the Mermaids Flirt with me, maybe 75% based on his version but with a few of my own ideas mixed in.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CJmGWLJB3Nn/