Finger style study

Hi all. I hope the twangin' is good. It's been groundhog week here at Tamborine Mountain. More of the same.

I've been busy with the little digital camera I bought recently, creating mini lessons and generally having fun learning new stuff. This week's article is about finger style guitar and there's a lesson to go and check out.

First of all, just what is finger style guitar? I've had a few people write and ask, and I always thought it was self-explanatory, but simply put, it means playing the guitar without a plectrum. The most common way of learning by far, and a shame in my opinion, is with a plectrum, or flat pick. It's a shame because I really do believe that guitars were meant to be played with the fingers, and I've always been averse to the sound of a pick scraping the music out of the instrument. Fingers, on the other hand, are naturals at picking and plucking.

To be most effective, you should try and make your hand perpendicular to the strings, so that when you flex the fingers to pluck notes, they attack the string at right angles. This may seem uncomfortable for a while, as you have to bend the wrist to achieve this. It just becomes second nature after a couple of weeks. You'll find it a much cleaner sound and better mechanics. When your hand is attacking at a slant, you lose accuracy, power and it you can hear the sideways scrape.

The thumb handles bass notes. It can move between the 3 thickest strings. Some players use a thumb pick, which projects a blade sideways like a wrap around flat pick. This certainly makes it louder, but I've always liked the idea of needing nothing but the bare finger tips. I use the side of my thumb, and for louder notes I kind of get under the string and twang it. The other fingers attack the strings they're closest to. This may sound a little vague, but there are no hard and fast rules. They naturally take care of the treble strings, but they can come into play any old where as required. I grow my nails on the right hand just enough to show behind the fingertip when I look at the palm of my hand. I file them religiously every couple of days to keep them healthy.

Now, go to http://planetalk.thatllteachyou.com/ygaf_flash.html and have a look at the mini lesson there. It's the intro to James Taylor's You've got a friend. You'll find a Flash movie , midi files and tab. This uses all kinds of finger style techniques: single notes, harmony lines, chord grabbing... You'll notice that there is no pattern other than that imposed by the melody. Playing patterns is a great way to gain dexterity, but to gain independence of finger movement, you need to attack something like this, where all the elements -- bass line, chord fragments, harmony lines and melody -- combine, in time, to become the song.

I did it in dropped D too, so you'll learn two lessons at once!

When you've mastered it, record it, it into mp3 and send it to me. I'll post the results on a special page.

Don't forget to check out all the other free lessons I put together. I have move them all over to a new subdomain. I call Pluck a Lorange. You can find out all about that and a zillion other guitar things at http://planetalk.thatllteachyou.com and also find out about my book PlaneTalk -- The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book which reveals the TRICK to keeping track of all music the whole length of the fretboard.

All the best,

Kirk
http://www.guitarforbeginners.com

http://planetalk.thatllteachyou.com

http://www.bottleneckguitar.com