Fingerpicking Tips To Save Years of Guitar Practice

Hi everyone, I'm Justin Johnson and today I'm here on my porch playing a little acoustic

guitar

and I've been getting a lot of questions online about finger picking techniques, some of the techniques that have helped me develop my finger picking. . style over the

years

and you know what I have discovered is that when you

practice

something for a while you always seem to hit a dead end somewhere, but there is always something that helps you overcome that level of stagnation, so I'm going to show you some of the things that I learned that really took me to the next level every time with finger picking, so before we start I wanted to let you know that I'm in standard tuning and it's a low E and then a D second and a high e and for In this instructional video I also make sure I'm in direct daylight because, what happens on camera is that direct sunlight actually exaggerates the movement of the strings, so while I'm playing, you could to think I have very, very wobbly strings. but they're not really loose, it's nice, you know, a tight standard tuning, good tension, but I actually did it on purpose so that it would be more visible and obvious which strings I'm playing while I show you the different exercises before I start playing something , before we start developing bad habits, let's go ahead and learn some good habits in terms of how to hold your hands and get the kind of attack and control over your hand that you're going to want. when you're playing with your finger, so while I'm playing here, um, notice that one really important thing from the beginning is that my thumb is like I'm doing a thumbs up, you know, if you put your thumb up and then you move to the position of playing, you notice that my thumb is separated from the rest of my fingers when I started playing, I played more like this and I noticed that a lot of finger pickers when they start, they just stick their fingers out and start ripping their fingers off.

The problem with that is when you think about the tracking when I do a full pluck with my thumb, my thumb can actually go around my fingers when I pluck with my fingers, they don't come into contact with my thumb, so if you remove your thumb from your fingers you actually have good tracking with all your fingers none of them get in the way of each other when you play if i was playing like that like a lot of beginners do there i start plucking immediately i hit my index finger right there with my thumb i will never get a good volume good tone good tracking if I do it like this another key part of controlling where you're playing is having part of your arm anchored to the

guitar

I want to be able to have a reference point a lot of times people start playing and their arm is very far away from the guitar, like who come back and are just picking wildly.

What you want to have. some kind of anchor sometimes it can be your palm here on the bridge, you don't want to hit the strings when you do this look how my palm is anchoring my hand there sometimes it can be your forearm up here that's anchoring or if you're playing with, you know these four fingers or you know these three fingers on your thumb, you can actually anchor with your pinky down here, which is what I do a lot depending on the style that I'm playing, so I always have the something that anchors my hand, although that's the key: you want to have some kind of anchor point, something that controls you and gives you a frame, a good basis for knowing where your hand is at all times, great advice for learning how to maintain this good technique when The first thing we are developing is mirror play, like looking at your hand in the mirror or on a computer screen, if you have a camera and can look at yourself on the screen, play whatever is easiest for you and you want to see what you look at. like in third person because sometimes it's hard to know what your hands look like when you're looking at the strings.

Many of these problems can be solved very quickly if you simply watch yourself play in the third person, so the first exercise I'm going to teach you is the first exercise I taught myself. I just wanted to learn how to use each finger on my hand when I started

fingerpicking

and this will be a pattern that requires five strings, there's one string for each one. finger and I'm going to play an E minor chord right there and I'm just going to put my thumb on the low E string and each of my fingers sequentially on the next string up and I'm going to go from low to high and then back to low so I'm going to go really slow so you can see it again so when you're playing this you want to make sure your fingers are far away from each other so you can have good follow through with each pick and try to do it very slowly at first you want to keep a Even tempo, meaning each note is held for the same length of time as the other notes, you don't want to just try to rush it. and play it as fast as you can and you also want to anchor it with your wrist or your forearm up here on the guitar to have a good anchor point or you can be back here with the palm of your hand on the bridge without touching the strings here, no you want to palm mute them, you don't want your palm to touch these strings, but you just want to have some kind of anchor point so your hand doesn't move violently and then move to the minor and do the same thing. pattern, but starting with a string that will be a down string when you start, you have to

practice

these patterns over and over hundreds of times, thousands of times until you get a good rhythm until it's second nature when you first learn open chords.

At the same time, you can choose a few different open chords and try different chords with those same patterns, so there is a different variation on this exercise that I want to teach you. It's also going to be the exact same plucked string pattern, but this time I'm going to take my pinky out of the equation I'm going to use my pinky to anchor my hand by putting it under the strings down here playing the soundboard, you know, now I don't have a finger for each one. string I'm going to have to decide which finger is going to play two strings, so what I'm going to do is on my first two strings, I'm going to use my thumb to play the low E and then notice how when I pluck it, my thumb rests, it's called rest stroke, rest on the next string down and then I use my fingers, my remaining three fingers for the next three strings and then I'll do a rest stroke with my index finger coming back up. so here's my thumb thumb index finger middle ring index finger middle index finger and it's going to be a little tricky at first, but keep practicing very slowly thumb index finger thumb ring middle index finger middle index finger thumb index finger thumb index finger middle ring index finger half do the same thing on the A minor again with your pinky anchored here on the soundboard, so the next pattern is going to be back to the E minor chord and what you're going to do is basically use these three fingers, your thumb, your index finger. and your environment. finger, you're going to start here on the low e and I'm anchoring down here with my pinky and then you're going to move that same pattern down, start on the a string and then start on the d string, play them all together and now do the same thing.

Exercise it down again starting on the B string, so it repeats, it repeats that three string pattern and you move it down and then you move it up again, so I'm going to play it very slowly for you, I'm going to play it even more slow for you and the The reason this exercise is so useful is because it helps you learn to transition between positions on those six strings. You're doing the same pattern, you know, index thumb in the middle down and then index thumb in the middle on the way back, but you have to transition points every time you do those placements and just like we did before, I'm going to change to A minor and we're going to do the same pattern starting on the rope now, like before I go to do that exercise exactly the same exercise the same pattern selection we're going to go one step further again and I'm going to play it just with the thumb and index finger we're going to practice that sequence that same break stroke We played before where, instead of using the thumb index finger in the middle on the way down, I'm going to use the thumb index finger and then the next three thumbs, thumb index finger, thumb index finger and then on the way back up, I'm going to go to index finger. thumb index thumb index index thumb and again, this is like a tongue twister for your fingers and that's why it's a good way to practice these different picking techniques.

If you're good at this, you'll realize everything you know every time. Selecting the pattern will be much easier, not just this one, so we'll change that whole pattern back to the A minor chord, and this time, we'll start with the A string, so again the pattern will be the index finger. thumb thumb index thumb thumb index thumb on the way down and then up the pattern will be index index thumb index index thumb index index thumb so the next pattern is a really cool pattern for folk music bluegrass rock and roll with similar acoustics picking different things like that and it's going to use these three fingers, the index finger and the middle of the thumb, and basically what the thumb is going to do, I'm going to play this E minor chord again, the thumb is going to play any of the notes that are on the low e string or the string a, but your index finger will be designated for that string d and your middle finger will be designated for that string g, so the pattern will be the index finger and then the thumb on the string. one string thumb in the middle and uh I'll play like this nice and slow so you can see what I'm doing again on the E minor chord thumb index thumb in the middle pay attention to what strings I'm playing would be e d to g so I'll play it again over E minor a little faster so you can hear what the tempo sounds like.

If you play the same thing over the beginning of the A minor chord on the A string, it will sound like this this time. I'll touch it. nice and slow and then a little bit faster thumb index thumb middle now because this pattern only takes place on four strings, I can actually go up to a chord like an open D here and I can start on the root note of that chord, the d and play the same pattern on these four lower strings thumb index thumb middle thumb play a little bit faster and this is a great pick pattern for making all kinds of different chord changes, especially with folk type music.

I will give you an example of how to go from E minor to A minor to D major and then back again, well thanks for watching, I hope these lessons and exercises are useful to you, the main thing is again to pay attention to the way you hold the guitar, the balance. of the guitar how comfortable it is look in the mirror make sure your hands are in the right position and that you're not struggling to make this music sound good it's not going to be something that you immediately learn the bat and just start flying quickly, like this which is much better and in fact you will learn much faster if you start slowly and don't develop bad habits.

These picking patterns can take

years

to play really quickly and effortlessly, but the more you practice them, the more they will become second nature and you will find that one day it will start to fall under your fingers much more easily, but again, visit justinjohnsonlive. com to check out my music and get more information. of my instructional material and keep coming back thanks for watching