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So we're going to talk a little bit about some sort of fundamental finger style,
or an approach to a finger style that's based somewhat on classical technique,
but in time, you can sort of change it, or it can evolve to fit your playing style.
For the most part, the thumb, we're going to use our thumb to cover
the three base strings, that's six, five, and four.
Our ring finger, we're going to use to cover the top string
which is our E string number one, our middle finger we're going to use to cover
our B string which is string number two, and our first finger or
index finger we're going to use to cover our G string which is our third.
Now I’m going to teach you a little exercise that'll sort of give you an idea
of of what we can do here.
Let's try this.
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Now again,
the most important thing is there should be no tension at all in your hands.
You should feel pretty relaxed.
And again,
listen to your body because you don't want to wind up with any kind of injury.
Usually, you have to be a little more hyper-vigilant when you're starting a new
regular repetitive motion, just make sure that you feel no tension at all.
My hand is completely relaxed and
I'm just letting my fingers fall on the strings.
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Now I'm going to have my thumb cover these three strings, six, five, and four.
And I'm going to do a little variation on the exercise.
Now see if you can follow this where the thumb is going to actually move up to five
and then four, and then back down to five, and then back to six again.
So it's going to go from your E to your D.
Sorry, it's going to go to from your E to your A to your D, and then it's going to
go back down again while the top strings are being playing with your other fingers.
So let's try that.
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Now I'm going to grab my metronome, again it's always important to.
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Now, if you have any, you might have some questions about nail length.
For the most part, for finger style stuff,
I keep my nails just barely visible if you were to look at the front Of the hand,
you would just barely see a little bit of nail.
And I keep them nicely filed for that reason.
So that's the first, or the fundamental sort of the foundation for what.
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And again work with your metronome so you can actually slowly build it up to a tempo
which, stuff, you might find it useful in the context of real music.
There's another method that you can use where you alternate between your
index finger and your middle finger.
And this, you can use very similar to the way we do alternate picking
where you can use this, both fingers attack the same sting.
[SOUND] So you get an alternating
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Pick attack.
And you can take it through all six strings.
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And in all cases, any of the finger picking exercises that you're doing,
make sure you do them with a metronome that you can actually keep good time.
And then just incrementally, ever so slowly,
just inch the metronome up to a speed that feels comfortable.
It gives you some facility and you get a little workout.
But at the same time, Preserving a lot of the accuracy with which you're playing
them at slower tempos.
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So now we're actually going to incorporate some of the stuff from this
lesson with the last lesson and
the two chords that we learned last week, the A minor chord [SOUND].
And the e major chord [SOUND].
We're going to practice those chords using the finger style techniques that
we've learned in this lesson.
So here's the pattern.
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Now I'm going to break that down a little bit.
Basically for the A minor chord,
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The thumb covers the fifth string.
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And then our index, middle, and ring finger cover the third,
second, and first string consecutively.
So it's going to sound like this.
We do that twice.
Now when we switch to the E major chord, our thumb covers the six string,
which is the E string, and again, our first, second, and
third fingers cover the third, second, and first string consecutively, like this.
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And we do that twice.
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So together it sounds like this.
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And on the A, with a chord that we just play with our thumb.
Very important, use your metronome again.
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Always keep the metronome handy.
So, that's our little finger picking exercise with an A minor and
an E major chord.
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