Acoustic Finger Style Basics – Audio Premium – Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

IIn this week’s Audio Premium content, Toby Pitman continues his series of premium guitar tuts. This week he takes us through the basics of acoustic finger style. The tut includes tabs and notation, and a huge range of exercises and audio examples.

To learn more about what you get as part of Audio Premium, read this. To take a peek inside this tutorial, hit the jump!

Most people assume that guitar playing is all in the left hand, after all that’s the one that does all the fancy stuff moving around the fretboard. The fact is that without solid right hand technique and more importantly coordination between the left and right hands your guitar playing will sound like a washing machine falling down some stairs!

For guitarists there are two starting choices when it comes to the right hand. Plectrum or Fingers! Many players move on to use a combination of the two at once called ‘Hybrid Picking’ which is very common and very efficient.

If your interested in electric guitar you probably use a pick. That’s cool but if you want to become a bit more rounded as a player learning some finger style patterns is essential for acoustic guitar tracks or more interesting electric parts.

There are many types of right hand finger style techniques and styles. Flamenco and Classical are two very traditional and complex styles with many rules which can take years to master even the basics. You then have more Folk and Contemporary styles like Claw Hammer, Travis Picking and Jazz (Chord Melody). While more free these styles still demand practice to build strength and independence. When I say independence I don’t mean this in the sense that a piano player has right and left hand independence it’s actually getting and the fingers and thumb to act independently in just the right hand. You’ll see what I mean later!

What we’re going to cover are two rudimentary patterns that form the basis for more complex styles. Nothing fancy just the basics. If you’ve never tried this it should keep you going for a couple of months to get them under your fingers. Don’t forget this is right hand only, you’ll just hold a static chord. When done right even a simple chord can sound pretty complex. When combined with hammer ons and pull-offs it can get very tricky but that’s for later!

Here’s the kind of music you’ll be able to create once you harness the knowledge inside:

Download audio file (example.mp3)