Fingerstyle Guitar Lessons

Taking fingerstyle guitar lessons as a raw beginner is probably not the best way to start. Fingerpicking guitar requires you to think about a lot of extra things such as fingerstyle picking patterns and you it’s essential from the outset that you are able to hold all your chords perfectly so that they sound nice and clear.

Most beginners taking guitar lessons are better off learning about chord shapes and strumming only, this will then allow you to lay down a solid foundation in the following key areas…

• That you are able to sound all your chords perfectly with every string working
• That you can change between your chords in progressions with a reasonable amount of fluency
• That you can tune your guitar and have developed a better musical ear for getting a decent tone from your guitar

If you’re at a stage where all of this is already in place then  you’re definitely ready to take the next step foward into learning how to play fingerstyle guitar. You’ll find some free lessons for acoustic fingerstyle guitar online but honestly there should be more – I guess it’s because it’s a bit more specialised in terms of guitar styles and therefore isn’t as well catered for as other more widely practiced styles.

Most fingerpicking guitar lessons will assume that you already know your open acoustic guitar chords and that you’re able to change between those chords quite well. When it comes to learning acoustic fingerstyle guitar you’ll need to devote much of your attention into the finger patterns and practice them so much that they become second nature. It’s only when you don’t have to expend too much metal energy into the technical aspects of guitar playing that it becomes effortless and natural.

The biggest advantage and reward you’ll find from taking fingerstyle guitar lessons is that you’ll learn to play complete sounding song arrangements on guitar. For example, you’ll be able to produce the vocal melody line, the chords and harmony plus the bass line all at once. This makes it a very satisfying style of guitar to learn and one that it much more enjoyable to your audience. It’s a big step up from just strumming chords.

You’ll learn how to use your first, second and third fingers along with your thumb in fingerstyle guitar. The 4th finger is not often used except in advanced styles so you can leave that one out. The most important thing is that you learn how to organize your fingers so that they work together as part of a team with each one knowing which string they are assigned to and therefore responsible for.

You’ll find many books and dvd’s for fingerstyle guitar lessons however it’s always nice to instant online video lessons too, the best way is still to see a local guitar tutor for 1-1 private guitar lessons but learning online comes in at a very close second and it’s so convenient and a lot cheaper too!