Fingerpicking Part One
This lesson is about the technique known as "fingerpicking" (or sometimes "fingerstyle"), which is when you use the fingers of your picking hand to "pluck" the strings. There are two main types of fingerpicking, one that is mainly used for guitar, and the other that is mainly used for the bass. Here we will concentrate on the guitar technique, which uses all five of your fingers to pluck the strings.
In order to practice this technique, you need to be using the correct muscles in your fingers and hand. For an example of the right muscles to use, hold your picking hand out flat, and then try to move your fingers apart sideways. These are the muscles in your hand, and notice we are not using the lower arm muscles as using those muscles in this way can damage the wrist!
Here is the first exercise:
>The letters about the TAB, "p i m a", refer to the fingers used. We label the picking fingers starting with the thumb and going across to the little finger with the letters P I M A C (for all five fingers)- so the thumb is "p", the middle finger is "m", and the little finger is "c". So as you can see, in this exercise we are using the thumb, first finger, middle finger, and ring finger.
Here is how it sounds:
Exercise 1
You may have noticed that, in this exercise, we miss out the little finger ("c"). This is because when you first start fingerpicking (unless, or course you happen to play the piano or another stringed instrument), the little finger is usualy your weakest finger. If you have trouble using your little finger when you start out, bring it in slowly (if you try and force it to work you may end up tensing your wrist and therefore you risk causing injury!).
The second exercise here includes your little finger:
Here is how it sounds:
Exercise 2
Make sure you practice each of these exercises to a metronome, and start at a slow speed before you speed them up!
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