Classical versus fingerpicking guitar,
which is better for a beginner to start on? Over the years I've had students
tell me they want to learn classical guitar when after a little questioning revealed
they really want to learn either fingerpicking guitar or something totally different.
In this video, I'm going to talk about some of the more
widely accepted definitions but more importantly I want to help you navigate
the world of guitar playing and to help you get what you want on playing guitar.
Before I get into the terms fingerpicking or classical guitar,
I want to talk a little bit about the term fingerstyle guitar. Now I've read lots of
different opinions on what fingerstyle guitar means. Here's a definition from wikipedia.
The technique of playing the guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips,
fingernails or picks attached to the fingers, as opposed to flatpicking
which is plucking individual notes with a single plectrum commonly known as a pick.
I use the word fingerstyle guitar to mean any style of guitar playing where you pluck the
strings with your right hand using your fingers as opposed to using a pick. In this sense it includes
both classical guitar and fingerpicking guitar as well as guitar playing like flamenco guitar,
bossa nova, fingerpicking blues, fingerpicking jazz and many other styles
Classical guitar is normally played on a nylon string guitar like this one. This
one's actually a flamenco guitar but for our purposes it looks exactly the same so
we'll call it a classical guitar for this video. Studying classical guitar tends to be a
more formal study. When you're learning classical guitar there's an emphasis on reading traditional
music notation and playing a piece the way it was actually written. My instructor never talked about
things like improvising or what the chord changes are or any of that kind of stuff.
We spent a lot of time getting the details just right. The first couple of lessons
were about me shaping my nails to get the right sound when I hit the string then
we went on to make sure I had the right posture if classical guitar tends to be
a little different sitting posture than when you're playing finger picking guitar. We also
spend time on the hand, wrist position, exactly how to strike the string to get different sounds.
There's two different ways of picking the string. One kind of picking up so it's a thinner sound
and something called apoyando which is where your finger's a little more stiff and it gets a rounder
fuller sound for melodies. While you can learn classical technique to play many styles of music,
the emphasis at least in my lessons was generally on playing classical type music all the way from
early stuff baroque to modern classical and even some fairly avantgarde stuff. Oh and
I shouldn't forget spanish guitar stuff by popular authors like Tarrega and Kareli and so on.
I think that's fairly typical for a course in classical guitar. Now I use the term
fingerpicking guitar to describe a style playing where you're playing fingerpicking patterns.
Generally it's a kind of an accompaniment in place
of strumming the guitar. Here's a short sample of what I call fingerpicking.
Now that doesn't mean I would play the exact same pattern throughout the song.
I might vary up the pattern a little bit and also add some embellishments like
bass runs and little licks, melody type licks as well as hammer ons, pull off things like that. If
I were to describe a song where the melody was kind of included in that finger picking pattern
I would call that a fingerstyle solo song. Solo meaning it has the melody and
the harmony all built into one thing. Here's a short sample of a fingerstyle solo.
Usually fingerpicking implies playing on an acoustic guitar like this one
but I could play pretty much everything I do on the acoustic guitar on the nylon if I wanted to
just wouldn't quite sound the same specifically to the style.
Fingerpicking is a common style in full country pop, pop rock and you know the
acoustic guitar is sort of the guitar for that style of music. Learning fingerpicking
is usually a less structured approach at least in classical guitar. A lot of people even learn
patterns just by ear. When writing patterns, it's very common to just write them down in either some
kind of tablature though when I usually write it I do add the traditional music notation as well.
So between classical and fingerpicking guitar which is better for beginners? It probably comes
as no surprise, there is no absolute right or wrong and it depends on what you want to do with
your guitar playing the kind of music you like. If you're really a strong classical guitar aficionado
might as well just bite the bullet and start learning classical guitar. Learn to read the
music, start from the very beginning but if you're more interested in pop rock playing
with other people maybe even improvising fingerpicking might be a good way to start.
I will say that if everything being equal, learning classical guitar is going to be a
little more tedious. What I mean by that is you're going to pay a lot more attention to details
and you're going to take a while to actually get anything that sounds like music. Fingerpicking
might look complicated on the surface but it's not too hard to get some decent fingerpicking patterns
going and memorize them and play them with a variety of songs. I think they're both great
and I enjoy playing both. I will say that my study of classical guitar has really forced me to pay
attention to details to get more disciplined to actually sound better and it's actually improved
all of my guitar playing in all styles. Deciding which one to start out on is a personal decision
and I hope it's made it a little easier having more information on kind of what to expect.
At this point it would be good to get clear on the differences in the actual guitar
itself - the classical guitar and the acoustic guitar. I've made a short video that explains
that and why some of those differences are important. You can go ahead and watch that now.