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Hello all:
practicing one of Brian’s lessons that has some finger style lead guitar. Ive become very interested in playing lead without a pick. I asked Brian, and he said it’s mostly what you’d expect. Thumb for strings 6, 5, 4, and index for 3, middle for 2, and ring for 1. I’ve tried to watch people doing it, and Ive seen lots of different methods. Like just thumb ala Johnny Winter. Thumb and index, PIMA etc. Does anybody play lead with fingers? I’m looking for some discussion on the best methods to do it. -
Yeh Todd, many of us longtime AM members play lead fingerstyle. As for me, I play fingerstyle maybe 80% of the time, and use a pick at other times. If I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about what finger to use for what string. It’s more a case of choosing the finger that’s most handy to the string you want to pick. You should strive to become so dextrous using your fingers that you can pick any string with any finger. Having said that, I only occasionally use my little finger to pick a string, mainly because it’s slower and less accurate. Spare a thought for Mark Knopfler, who uses only his thumb, index, and middle fingers. That would give a classical guitar teacher heartburn, and it looks pretty weird, but he does it and it works. And I just posted a video of Freddie King showing him using mostly his thumb, but then he brings in his middle and index fingers when needed to play dyads and triads. If you want specific rules on what fingers to use for what string, you should study up on how classical guitarists play.
Sunjamr Steve
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Hi,
Yes, I play fingerstyle almost exclusively. In fact, the very reason I joined AM three years ago was to improve my ability to use a pick (and I did, to some extent…).I have a classical guitar background, so the basic rule is what you said: T for the low three strings, and I, M and A for the G, B and high E strings respectively. It is not recommended to use the pinky because that finger is weaker and, more importantly, because it isn’t independent from the ring finger (it is almost impossible to curl the pinky without also curling the ring finger). But flamenco guitarists occasionally use it as well.
For scale runs, classical guitarists typically use alternation between I and M, or I and A or even M and A; however, on a steel stringed instrument I find it easier to use alternation between T and I or T and M. I think this technique is becoming more and more popular in classical academies too.Now, that’s just the starting point and there are many exceptions.
When using PIMA for fingerpicking, there are a few “rules” that you may want to obey. These rules concern the use of the IMA fingers (not the thumb) when playing consecutive notes. They don’t apply for chords. These rules are important if you want to be able to play (very) fast.
1) never use the same finger twice (or more) in a row. For example, if you have to play two melody notes on the high E string, use M+A alternation, or A+M alternation, but not A+A or M+M.
2) when playing two different strings, always use physiologically logical fingers; that is to say, if you are going from high E towards low E, use two consecutive fingers from the pinky side towards the thumb side and not the opposite.
3) it is totally fine to use the thumb on the G, B and E strings when needed.When learning a new fingerstyle piece it is important to spend some time finding the best RH fingering. But there are situations where you can’t avoid breaking one of the rules. That’s life…
Hope this helps.-
Thanks Jean-Michael, great stuff. Most interesting was the rule about Not using the same finger twice in a row. I was actually trying to avoid doing that, but it seems like my fingers naturally want to alternate when playing the same string, kind of like a bass player. Thanks for your time to give a great answer. I’m gonna keep on working, because I’m really falling in love with Fingerstyle lead playing
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Hi Todd, I concur with most of what’s already been said but as an additional piece of advice, I would definitely start learning fingerstyle (lead or otherwise) with the thumb firmly forward of the (half-clenched) fingers on your picking hand. You’ll find you can get much more power striking the strings with both the fingers and thumb that way. Whether you anchor down with the pinky is entirely your choice but a firm and static wrist when playing lead is, I believe essential. All the best …..
Richard
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I agree with everything posted. I can play with a pick but only do so when I feel like it or it works better for the piece. I’ve gotten much better with the pick since joining AM though so mission accomplished there.
I came to realize that since I’m a proficient fingerpicker, and the same piece sounds different than with a pick, I should celebrate that by staying with it to develop my own lead sound. Pinch harmonics, snaps, slaps, rolls and various muting techniques are, for me, much easier using fingers and I feel more connected with the guitar.
Definitely you can pick any string with your thumb, but as we know most non-classical players start out on the bass strings. Learning alternating bass, a.k.a. “A-B”) is the usual early step, sounds like you’re already there on that, so get it real solid but don’t get stuck there.
I realized at some point I had to “deprogram” myself to be able to break out of A-B for playing finger style lead. In fact I found that just attempting more finger style leads broke me out of the robotic thumb groove painlessly. This was a win-win situation, killing two birds with one stone. It gave me a greater degree of “thumb independence”.
Glad to hear we’ve got a lot of fingerpicking lead players on AM! 👍 I was going to make a list of the great electric lead players who primarily use- or used their fingers, then realized it’s a very long list.
I spotted another one the other night at a concert at the Earleville NY opera house, the super talented Carolyn Wonderland with her band. Not only can she rip it on guitar, what an amazing voice she has to go with it. She played fingerstyle lead & rhythm for the whole set. I saw her years ago in Austin TX and she really impressed me at that time. She’s gotten even better since, highly recommended.
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Thanks Mark, lots of great advice there. I’ve been playing 4.5 years now, and have mostly used a pick. I just recently started to fall in love with finger style lead playing. I wanted to pin down specific fingers for specific strings, so I can get the muscle memory working. The ring finger is a tad awkward, but it’s doable the more I practice it. I guess it’s all about Repetition that builds muscle memory. Somebody had an interesting thing to say about never using the same finger on the same string more than once. Like don’t you use your ring finger to play two different notes on the High E string. That kind of makes sense, because I sometimes find myself wanting to alternate the fingers. I guess it’s kind of like a bass player. One of my favorite guitar players is Derek trucks. As you probably knnw he never uses a pick. I’d love to know his method. Thanks again for your response. I will definitely keep working at it.
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I immersed myself in early- and revival era acoustic country blues for many years and that’s how I got really into fingerpicking. Mississippi John Hurt was my earliest A-B hero but there are many others too.
The one whose work was the most help to me transitioning to playing lead fingerstyle was Reverend Gary Davis. This is on account of his magic thumb independence playing syncopated licks all across the fretboard.
I’m not sure you can or should routinely allocate fingers to strings; maybe while practicing? Practicing will eventually lead to intuitive picking hand work, which of course is the ultimate goal of practicing. The only times I broke it down to individual fingers was learning unorthodox Gary Davis licks, then playing them a million times until I didn’t have to think about it.
And I kid you not, you can go a long way using just your thumb and index. I can use more fingers but I get it the cleanest with thumb and index, so that is the backbone of my playing. This applies to both A-B country blues and also with this latest venture into electric lead.
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Yes, it’s an esoteric discussion amongst scratchy old blues fingerpickers studying the ancient and rightfully still famous players of yesteryear. How many fingers did they use?
A good clue for those that used a thumbpick and one or more fingerpicks is how many fingerpicks they were wearing in old photographs and films, should they exist. Reverend Gary Davis used a thumbpick and a single fingerpick, as did Freddy King, so they were definitely thumb and index guys. Mississippi John Hurt didn’t use picks but was an occasional middle finger guy, sneaking it in now and then, but the bulk of it was just thumb and index. I’m the same, I add the middle finger on rolls occasionally.
Electric blues icons who we know fingerpicked would be John Lee Hooker, Magic Sam, Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Winter, more. I need to YouTube them and count fingers, good project. Given Muddy Waters’ delta acoustic roots I’m interested to know how he did it. Muddy’s electric slide playing tends to distract me from studying his picking hand.
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I’ve been playing acoustic fingerstyle for quite a while and I learned the method that Brian described from 2 books by Mark Hanson. Wow!!! I just realized that I worked on those books almost 35 yrs ago! Time flies, huh?
At one point, I started to develop a way of alternate picking when playing electric – I used my thumb for the down stroke and my index finger for an up stroke. It actually works well but I abandoned it when I began hybrid picking.
If I ever work my way back to playing electric guitar again, I may try working on it again.-
Interesting idea GnLguy, I’ll give it a go. Great way to develop more finger-thumb independence, let your ears drive whether you hit a note with your thumb or finger, rather than following the feeling of the groove which is what I’m doing I guess. Great exercise idea, thanks.
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Interesting idea GnLguy, I’ll give it a go. Great way to develop more finger-thumb independence, let your ears drive whether you hit a note with your thumb or finger, rather than following the feeling of the groove which is what I’m doing I guess. Great exercise idea, thanks.
I had been watching Joe Pass at the time – Joe would use thumb, index and middle at times but primarily he used thumb and index to play his single note lines..
For strumming while playing like this, I would use the back of my index finger nail. Its been so long since I’ve played electric, I’ll have try all of this again at some pointI’ve been smitten – to use a Biblical term of sorts – by my Breedlove guitar, I’ve never bonded with a guitar like I have with this one. I’ve all but lost interest in playing electric – hard to explain since I’ve followed electric blues and blues rock as I have over the years. Oh well, enough of my rambling…
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This is a fascinating thread. I’m opposite of most in that I use a pick and one of the reasons I joined AM was to learn finger style.
Joe
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,
Or the strength of an Oak with roots deep in the ground.
--Graeme Edge-
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I don’t know if I will ever get to the Dark Side…finger style is just one of the many things I want to learn! I have very short fingernails and when I try to grow them even a little longer they tend to crack and break. I’ve been trying to strengthen them by taking collagen but it’s only been a couple months. Will see what happens.
When I even try to do hybrid picking my fingers blister very quickly. I suppose in time they would build up callouses but I think the sharp attack of a fingernail can’t be beat.
Joe
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,
Or the strength of an Oak with roots deep in the ground.
--Graeme Edge
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Hi Joe,
There are so many fingerstyle lessons on YT but so many lead nowhere except learning endless patterns without any focus or purpose. The main problem with that is, it’s just so boring to practice.
I would suggest you pick a fingerstyle number you like and home in on that one with the fingerstyle pattern that goes with it.
It would help to answer your question if you perhaps mention which particular fingerstyle you liked most. Travis style, monotonic thumbstyle, or some where in between style?Richard
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I’m not even sure I know the different styles. So I guess I’m open to learning any style. I like to hear the thumb drumming a beat when it alternates on the E and A strings while the index middle and ring are plucking a melody.
But I was hoping Brian had an “introductory” or “beginner” level lesson here on AM. He has a lot of lessons to choose from.
I have never played fingerstyle and when I have tried in the past I quickly gave up thinking the piece I was learning was too difficult. But maybe I’m just not meant to play fingerstyle?!
Joe
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,
Or the strength of an Oak with roots deep in the ground.
--Graeme Edge -
Hi Joe,
As far as I know Brian hasn’t posted a beginners lesson in Travis Picking but he has posted a few ‘simpler’ (I use the word carefully) Alternating Thumb/Travis Picking styles.
Have a look at:- EP202, EP117, EP296.
Iconic numbers in this style are ‘Windy & Warm’ and ‘Deep River Blues’For the Monotonic Thumb style, look at:- EP472, EP511, EP366.
Both styles rely more or less on muted E A D strings with palm of the picking hand near or on the saddle which gives the ‘boom/chick’ sound.The one Travis style beginners lesson I would recommend (I’m sure Brian wouldn’t mind) is:-
I would stress, take this lesson in small parts, a few bars at a time to start with until you’re comfortable with the alternating thumb striking the strings evenly, then move on to the next few bars etc etc. The key here is slow and steady to begin with.
I can remember learning these styles myself and there’s no quick fix, but if you persevere you’ll reap the rewards for a long time afterwards.
Richard
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I am familiar with Paul Davids and that looks like an excellent place to start.
I don’t have much patience but I will try my best on some of the several suggestions you made…I think EP511 is a good one.
Thank you very much.
Joe
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,
Or the strength of an Oak with roots deep in the ground.
--Graeme Edge -
I learned guitar by Travis fingerpicking as a kid but laid it aside for decades. Picked it up again 5 years ago and been a huge fan of Active Melody. The fingerpicking came back real easy to me but the pick is always a challenge. Anyway I’ve tried half dozen other teachers too and just for fingerpicking and not a subscription but pretty affordable I found the guy at sixstringfingerpicking to be pretty good.
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I thought I would revise this thread a bit. There is a free pdf out there all over the web called Giuliani 120 Arpeggios that was published in 1812 for classical guitar but a lot of fingerstyle players use them to just help develop the fingers on the picking hand. The free version is not written in tab but it’s pretty easy to tell what strings they are wanting you to pluck and it’s the same two chords. C and G7 and then ends on a C chord. I did find a guy who is actually made it into a bound book where he did the exercises in tab and I bought that because for me it’s easier and i like books. Only 4 bucks or so. I enjoy doing a few of the exercises a few times a day.
Something I have always wondered though is that you see a lot of time it is recommended as a general rule that the thumb takes care of strings 6 5 and 4 and the other three fingers so strings 3 2 and 1. Of course there are exceptions to that but even on Truefire and even in this book that dates back to 1812 there are many exercises where they break that rule and have you use all fingers anywhere. I am just wondering is that used to learn finger independence? For me at least most of the time it’s more comfortable to stick with the general rule but in all the exercises I see on Truefire and Jamplay just dong exercises they have you break that rule a lot. I just guess its for finger independence??
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The whole key to this subject, is to use whatever you are more comfortable with. Chet Atkins was a very intricate fingerstyle player and used all three fingers, Jerry Reed played with whatever finger got there first but Merle Travis, where most of this style started, played with only the thumb and his index finger.
I play Travis style most of the time with thumb and two fingers and only include the third finger if it’s easier to do so or plucking triads.Richard
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