Fingerstyle Guitar: Can You Do It?

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".

I think the sound of fingerpicks is very nice, much nicer than bare finger/nail on steel strings. It's also loud though, and I mostly practice at night, so I stuff a shirt in my guitar and play bare-fingered.

the problem i have with fingerpicks is how clumsey i feel with them. i also have less control tonally with the picks vs my fingers (which fyi for me is the difference between none and very little). and then the volume thing. i can't play loudly with my fingers, but i'm convinced i should figure that out. i was fortunate enough to hear this guy play a guitar i built and i'm always shocked at how much volume and projection the dude gets with just his fingertips (uses a thumbpick tho, iirc):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiQGO1YfEc

have you played with different size/material picks and with bending the metal ones to fit better? I find they're less clumsy with a good fit. I also prefer the metal to the plastic, in part because you can shape them.

yep, i have metal ones. nice low friction cobalt things. i am just clumsey. almost feels like playing with gloves on--probably just a matter of me adjusting to them.

Was supposed to go to a Brazilian guitar seminar today but don't think I can make it. If you are a thrifty/needy nylon string guitar player in NYC I might could donate my spot to you.

You are a nylon-string player, JR&B?

I own a nylon string and have been trying to play for the past two years so I guess the answer is yes, sort of.

I wish I could play with my fingers on guitar more, really just be able to arpeggiate much better in general. I'm pretty decent at some alternate picking, but I haven't even gotten to the point on bass I play with my fingers much. I do pick out some chords pretty well with a pick with alternate picking.

I've been growing and strengthening the nails on my right hand for fingerpicking purposes, but I've found this is impeding my bass playing. Is it possible to do both?

Good question.

You could always glue on fake nails for your guitar gigs and take them off for your bass gigs but I imagine that would grow tiresome.

j/k

Have a good book to recommend to beginners, if anyone is interested.

yeah sure!

Fingerstyle Guitar From Scratch, by Bruce Emery.

I will check it out. I often practice from this. But as the reviews say, you learn from playing the songs with very little instruction.

(Xp) Or Travis-Style Guitar From Scratch, by the same author.

looks intersting, thx

i'm a lefty, play guitar righty, and find it easier to play fingerstyle than with a pick. i played piano for many years before picking up guitar, which may have helped.

Lefty too. Have had a lot of trouble taming right hand since I came over from bass and at some point was playing mostly one finger at slow-medium tempos. And no ring finger obv.

I'll keep that in mind for guitar students, thanks. What are its strengths iyo?

Strengths of being a lefty? For fingerstyle guitar? Not aware of any.

Ha, no argument there! What are the strengths of the Emery book?

Emery books strengths are

• Stresses the need to develop a strong, independent thumb that will keep good time no matter what the other fingers are doing above it

• Helps the learner do this by taking a half-dozen or so old, familiar out-of-copyright tunes and cycling through them gradually adding more and more syncopation to the mix

• has a jokey conversational style, but one that is genuinely engaging and informative, instead of off putting and digressive.

• no staff notation, only tab

• aimed at folk- and country-based popular music styles, no classical études

re: Being a lefty: one might think it would help the left-hand technique but I haven't found it so- still often feels like I am trying to jam some of the fingers into too small a space and stretch the others more than they want to go. Also losing the groove on the right hand is embarrassing, I mean discouraging or can be, bringing the whole thing to grinding halt. Right hand fingers tend to collapse, although my understanding is proper technique is to keep the shape of the finger and do the work from the top knuckle, or something like that. Best way I have found to train my right hand fingers is not to 'prepare' the string but actually to 'bounce' a little, like it was a trampoline.

Pro-tip: in Portuguese common way to refer to a lefty is "canhoto," which can also mean "devil."

One other thing: in those books he says to use your left thumb to fret certain bass notes, like an F. Obviously I've seen people do this and I've seen it recommended elsewhere, in the Arnie Berle book for instance, but I can't physically do it, so end up having to play the F barre, which is my least favorite barre chord.

Since I learned trying to play from an axis bold as love songbook, I use my thumb for practically everything. It often causes trouble for me when playing more complicated finger style stuff bc my other fingers are often not arched enough to produce clear ringing notes. I'd suggest toughing it out with developing a good 6 string barred technique.

I have no idea what kind of students you have, whether they are part of some program at your university or private

I teach guitar lessons privately, from home and at a private music school. I'm pretty much fine for resources to teach classical. (The Royal Conservatory makes that pretty easy up here.) However, I can always use more resources for teaching non-classical students, i.e. the majority of guitar students. I mostly just use popular tunes to teach fingerpicking ("Landslide", "Dust in the Wind", "Freight Train", "Blackbird", etc); a good method book would be very useful.

I found this some time ago: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/product/9781423487432-item.html?s_campaign=goo-PLATest&gclid=CMOOy9Tj9L0CFa5DMgodhj8Akw

It's for intermediate-level players but it's not bad at all, especially for its price.

No classical player frets notes with his or her thumb btw, except maybe as a special technique for some modern piece. I think you're fine without doing this.

I also use some of the Giuliani exercises just to build fingerpicking technique even for non-classical players.

Thanks. The two Amazon reviewers hated that Blues book but I'll take your word. Looked at the Giuliani book-one guy said get Pumping Nylon instead but hate both the title and the cover.

Not fingerstyle but this guy has some good stuff for jazz guitar. Plus he's Canadian. http://www.mattwarnockguitar.com/beginners-guide-to-jazz-guitar
http://www.mattwarnockguitar.com/category/front-page

Pumping Nylon is essential if you're learning classical guitar imo. You get the Giuliani exercises in that book, actually. I wouldn't buy a book that was just the Giuliani exercises.

Are you studying classical guitar? I'd seriously recommend seeing if you can find some of the Royal Conservatory's books (http://bookstore.rcmusic.ca/books.html?cat=14). They provide a gradual, progressive method that is used nearly universally across this country: repertoire, studies, technique. At the very least, the technique book would be useful. (Their theory method is also good if you want to learn the basics of classical theory.)

xpost Btw, I'm not an expert on blues guitar per se so those Amazon reviewers may well be right that there are better books. I liked that book because it's i) cheap and ii) easy to learn from for not-very-advanced players. I also have a book of 'authentic' Robert Johnson transcriptions but those are much harder.

Studying Brazilian/Jazz, so there is lots of overlap with classical.

Recently got a book called 50 Classical Guitar Pieces by Joseph Harris which seems to have a lot of nice intermediate arrangements, although I haven't really made a dent in it. Also, guy seems to think Galileo's father was his son.

Some of the arrangements really pretty easy but they all sound good, at least the ones I've attempted.

there is lots ofsome overlap with classical.

Just got this DVD ¡Guitarra! a documentary with Julian Bream playing everything in sight although in the first episode he just plays the vihuela. Just saw some 16th Century tablature. I guess you can watch this thing on YouTube if you want.

Lenny Breau documentary The Genius of Lenny Breau has gone off of Youtube because of you, but trailer you can still watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeFD1oz4BuY

Forgot to remove the 's' sorry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeFD1oz4BuY

But this Chet Atkins documentary that I was unaware of until just now is up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEJOily0AcA

Maybe documentary is the wrong word. PBS performance.

Version of "Come On In My Kitchen" in that book sounds more like John Lee Hooker than Robert Johnson but still kind of cool.

The book Guitar: An American Life by Tim Brookes, has an alternating chapters structure- I skipped the ones about him getting a guitar built by a luthier- but the historical stuff in the other chapters is very good.

Version of "Come On In My Kitchen" in that book sounds more like John Lee Hooker than Robert Johnson but still kind of cool.

The book I mentioned? Yeah, that's not authentic at all to Johnson's style but that's part of what makes it easier for students to learn from. The version of "Spoonful" is pretty good for getting a feel for the style and playing something that sounds decent.

Anyway, imo Pumping Nylon is great for anyone playing/learning nylon-string guitar.