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Introductory Fingerpicking Guitar Video

Welcome! This short introductory email and video will introduce you to some basic principles and techniques and give you a helping hand as you master the guitar.

Most of the guitarists visiting my site are keen to learn my arrangements of classic songs such as Over the Rainbow, Moon River and Cry Me a River. The arrangements for these songs are broken down in detail on the website however going back to some of the fundamentals of guitar playing will help you get more out of the arrangements, speed up the learning process and hopefully give you the confidence and the ideas to go on and create arrangements for yourself!

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Notes to Introductory Fingerpicking Guitar Video

Sitting Position / Right Hand Fingering / Left hand technique

• Sitting Position: In the video I explain how I approach holding the guitar. Whilst being comfortable is very important there are few other things that you want to be thinking about.

• Right Hand Fingering: Within the video I demonstrate the correct shape of the right hand and the actual movements that the right hand fingers make to produce a note.

• Left Hand Technique: Starting off with a good left hand technique will help you tackle future technique challenges. In the video I demonstrate the correct positioning of the left hand.

Exercises for the Right and Left Hands

Approaching learning a song
In the website my approach to learning songs is one of learning the melody, learning the chords and then learning a chord melody arrangement. By taking these elements step by step, you will begin to hear where a song’s harmony is going, how the harmony of the song relates to its melody, while at the same time developing technical “on the job” skills to physically play the songs. Having taught for many years I know all of this is easier said than done!

Often what happens for many players is that they try to run before they can walk. Some of the arrangements on the website – especially the chord melody arrangements – are really quite difficult to play well. However, with perseverance and little bit of help along the way, they are not beyond you. If you’re struggling then I would suggest doing a little bit of work on your technique. In the videos above I talked through some principles of good technique in relation to both the right hand and the left hand. Often it is the dexterity of our hands that will hold us back. So, if you think that’s you, then you should concentrate on your right and left hand technique. I can guarantee if you put in a little bit of work into your technique then you’ll feel the benefits when you go back to learning the arrangements.

Right Hand and left hand Exercises
The exercises in the video use the chord progression of C Am Dm G7.

• Left Hand Exercise: In this exercise we are concentrating on the left hand. The object here is to firstly, get the left hand holding down the strings while achieving a nice clear sound with no buzzes and secondly, to develop the ability to fluently move from one chord to the next. Take this exercise as slow as is necessary to keep your chord changes in time.

• Right Hand Exercises The object here is to get your right hand fingers repeating different patterns over and over therefore making the action of right hand fingerpicking feel more comfortable while at the same time creating some muscle memory for the task. By practising exercises like this over and over we begin to develop fine motor skills. The result is that our right hand fingerpicking patterns become more instinctive enabling us to focus more attention on other elements of our playing. As a variation on all of these exercises choose a different chord progression while at the same time keeping the same right hand picking patterns. 

Learning Songs

So, back to where we started. How did you find yourself to be on my website?…… probably because you want to play some of the classic songs such as Over the Rainbow, Moon River and Cry Me a River. As I’ve described, working on elements of your technique will help you to this end. My other advice to you when learning song arrangements would be to learn the chords and melodies first before you dive into chord melody arrangements.

As an example of the benefits of learning the chords of a tune first check out these clips form the classic song “What a Wonderful World”

What a Wonderful World Chords Measures 1-4
Throughout most of the song a “p” “i” “m”: “i” picking pattern is used. When you’re playing through the chords try thinking about what I’ve talked about in this short introductory email regarding right hand technique. Try to achieve a nice strong, confident sound from your right hand picking. Also think about your left hand, thumb pressing against the back of the neck, fingers hovering over the frets before pressing down on the frets, don’t press too hard, only needs to be enough to achieve a nice clear sound.

 What a Wonderful World Chord / Melody Arrangement Measures 1-4

Given that you’ve learned the chord progression for measures 1-4 you’ll see that the shapes used by the left hand in this chord melody arrangement are very similar. As I said at the start of the this email, these chord melody arrangements are not easy so we have to try and give ourselves the best possible chance of achieving our goal. Learning the chord progressions, learning the melody, working on our basic technique…..all these things are guaranteed to help you not only play these arrangements but also to play them musically.