Guitar Fingerpicking

Fingerpicking is a technique used by guitarist playing allwith your index finger, string B with your middle
styles of music, from classical to rock. You will befinger, string E with your ring finger, than progress
able to make up great sounding music once you learnbackwards and pluck string B with your middle finger,
the correct finger picking technique, so its definitelythan string G with your index finger again.
worthwhile to spend 5-10 minutes of your practice- Keep in mind that each finger is responsible for only
session on improving your fingerpicking technique. It isone string while you are fingerpicking, which means
very important to develop the right technique right inthat they should not be touching any other string
the beginning, read on to find out the basic methodduring the exercise. At first your fingers will not be
of fingerpicking.well coordinated, and touch other strings by accident,
We are going to learn fingerpicking by playingbut don't worry, it gets better with time.
arpeggiated chords, which means that we'll be holding- You need to carry out this finger movement slowly
down chords that we are already familiar with, andat this first, and repeat it over and over. Try to
plucking the chord's individual notes.increase the speed of plucking when your fingers
Lets get started, place your fretting fingers onto theseem coordinated enough, so they are only touching
fretboard and fret an A minor chord.their assigned strings.
- Your picking hand should be positioned right- Do this many times over, than change to an E
between your pickups if you are playing an electricmajor chord. You will keep your treble string fingers
guitar, or on the sound hole if you have an acousticwhere they are, but move your thumb up onto the
guitar. Your thumb will be straight, while your otherlow E string (6th string), since this is the bass note of
fingers will be curled in a semi knuckle.the G major chord. Now repeat the arpeggio here
- Since we are arpeggiating a chord, you will place themany times over as well.
tip of your thumb onto the bass string of the chordKeep in mind that the key to learning how to
(string A, or 5th string), your index finger onto stringfingerpick is repetition. At first your fingers may go all
G (3rd string), middle finger onto string B (2nd string),over the place, hit other strings, etc. But with time
and your ring finger onto the high E string (1st string).and practice, fingerpicking your guitar will become
- Now pluck string A with your thumb, than string Gnatural and instinctive.