Fingerstyle Guitar Lessons

What exactly is fingerstyle guitar?  Well it’s just like it sounds.  It is guitar played with the fingers on the strum hand instead of using a pick.  Fingerstyle guitar can be used in many style of music from Classical and Flamenco to Rock and Jazz.  There are several variations on fingerstyle that use slightly different techniques.  Some of these variations include Travis Picking, Classical style, and Slide guitar.

The Advantages to Learning Fingerstyle Guitar

There are many advantages to learning fingerstyle guitar.  The greatest one, and the one I think most people are looking for, is the ability to play solo.  When I say solo here I mean the ability to play without any other musicians.  With fingerstyle, unlike using a pick and strumming, you can play several parts at the same time.  You can play the melody, harmony, and bassline, effectively sounding like a one man band. This is accomplished by plucking specific strings at different times.  With fingerstyle you have the ability to pick strings that are not adjacent unlike strumming with a pick.  It is also easier to play arpeggios.  Dynamically, it also has its advantages.  You can have a wider range of soft and loud playing this style. It is very appealing to guitar players because of these aspects.  Sometimes it is boring to just strum the chords of a song with no one singing the melody or playing along.  Sometimes other listeners can’t even recognize the song you are playing.  With fingerstyle you can play the melody and the chords.

Approach To Learning Fingerstyle

What is the right way to learn fingerstyle guitar?  Well there is no right or wrong way but I will make some suggestions.  First, know that fingerstyle is not easy and will take some hard work.  We have many fingerstyle guitar lessons to help you along the way. Assuming you know all your basic chords and barre chords, which you are going to have to know to play fingerstyle arrangements, we need to now concentrate on the pick hand.  The best way to do this in my opinion is start with a Classical style approach.  If you learn this way it will cover, for the most part, any other variations you want to learn down the road. In our fingerstyle guitar lessons this is the approach we take.  It teaches you to use all the fingers on your pick hand.  It teaches arpeggios as well as plucking chords.  Once you have these basics down and learn some simple patterns you can start learning some songs.  So here is my recommended course of action:

1. Start with the first 7 lessons of Fingerstyle Guitar Lessons category under the Skills section
2. Learn a couple songs from the Fingerstyle Song Lessons or Classical Song Lessons
3. If you want, start focusing on variations such as Travis Picking, Slide, or Flamenco.

If you take this course of action and put in the effort you will be well on your way to playing fingerstyle guitar.

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