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Acoustic Guitar – How To Do Finger Picking

Playing acoustic guitar requires finger picking. Some use other methods but the experienced ones use their fingers.

Learn how to play acoustic guitar with finger picking. You should really master this so you can call yourself a guitar player.

Read this short article I found about Guitar finger picking 

Acoustic guitar finger picking is often taken up by guitarists who have been playing the guitar for a year or three who want to find out what fingerpicking can do for their playing. Sometimes a guitar player will make up his own finger picking techniques as an ad hoc measure to get a solo or accompaniment to sound good, but there’s always the need to know the basic principles behind finger picking guitar styles.

There are many different finger picking techniques like classical, Travis Picking, chord melody and flamenco. One way to get into finger picking is to get hold of a book or DVD by one of the authorities on the subject. Mark Hanson is always mentioned as a great fingerstyle guitar player and teacher, as is Al Petteway. Pete Huttlinger has put out a info-packed DVD called Essential Exercises for Fingerstyle Guitar. Happy Traum also has a great deal of teaching material for fingerpickers on Homespun Tapes.

Unfortunately, no one fingerpicking style will give you a real introduction to all styles. Fortunately, you do not need to know a great range of playing styles to give you a general understanding of playing using the right hand fingers. As an example, a folk guitar player with some experience with finger picking patterns and scales will be able to play some pieces from the classical guitar repertoire but he won’t necessarily sound much like a classical guitarist.

Some guitarists who have played using a plectrum are discouraged by the difficulty of trying to coordinate the thumb and fingers. The key to getting the fingers and thumb working as independent units is slow practice. Really slow. Put your metronome on a very low setting and play the bass notes of the chords, only adding an incidental note with the first finger when you are feeling confident.

Another question guitar players have about beginning finger picking guitar is on the choice of songs to learn. My advice is that there is no need to be too ambitious. Choose a song that is maybe a little below your technical standard and start with strumming the chords until you have the feel of playing along to the lyrics.

Once you have the general rhythm of the song, grab a fingerpicking pattern in the correct time signature from a guitar tutor or a free guitar lesson website and apply it to your song. The House Of The Rising Sun as played by The Animal 1000 s is a good song for a beginner finger picking guitar player as is Tears In Heaven by Eric Clapton. More Than Words by Extreme is another good, simple song, and when you are feeling more ambitious, go onto Stairway To Heaven. To give you a challenge for your left hand, look for tabs and YouTube video lessons on a classical guitar piece called The Anonymous Romance or Spanish Romance.

By: Ricky Sharples

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Watch this short video about how to learn to play the guitar 

I also got for you some posts about guitar finger picking 

How to Use Finger Picking in your Guitar Playing
Learn how to use finger picking in your guitar playing. Finger picking is a great way to add diversity to your guitar playing and to guitar songs!   Read more…

Easy Steps To Guitar Fingerpicking: Demystifying Alternate Thumb
Easy Steps To Guitar Fingerpicking: Demystifying Alternate Thumb Read more…

Finger Picking Basics: Groove Style Slap Percussion
One of the most popular percussive techniques used in playing acoustic guitar is the Right Hand Slap. Usually this technique is used to emulate a backbeat on a drum.   Read more…

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Technorati Tags: acoustic, finger, guitar, learn, picking, play

Tags: acoustic, finger, guitar, learn, picking, play

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Guitar lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.