Getting Started with Fingerpicking

Hello everyone! For mu fourth blog post, I'll be learning how to finger-pick! I have always struggled with finger-picking my guitar, I would have trouble with which finger should pluck a specific string and how to transition quickly between chords and strings.

As I was reading through the chapter of finger-picking, I couldn't understand what it was explaining to me and I couldn't seem to follow with my guitar. Finger-picking the guitar is one of my weaknesses, whenever I'm told to finger-pick I would always have a difficult time.

The first part of the lesson was easy to follow, I was learning a simple and easy finger-picking pattern. This pattern only had the use of 4 strings and 3 basic chords, Em, A, and D. There was only one problem that I had encountered but as i continued to repeat the steps, and I finally got it. This is a cheesy phrase but, practice makes perfect!

With that pattern I was only using two fingers, but as the chapter went on, i had to add more fingers which made it really difficult for me. "We'll use our middle finger to pluck the second string. Let's start by plucking that string by plucking that string once a measure while we fret an E7 chord" (DuBrock 128). The first pattern made me have to use only my thumb and index finger, which i was comfortable with but I had to add the middle finger. I am not used to plucking with the middle finger so it was really hard for me to do the next pattern. I would get confused on where to place my fingers and which string to pluck because of how uncomfortable it was for me. My goal for the next blog post is to be able to finger-pick without having any trouble with my fingers.

Imagine yourself as a guitarist and being a beginner, would you also have trouble fingerpicking your guitar?

DuBrock, Andrew. Play Acoustic Guitar in Minutes. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 2014. Print.