Guitar finger picking

unclebob123

unclebob123

unclebob123

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I have been inspired to vastly improve my finger picking after watching Mark Knofler in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_7feGF9TA8&feature=related

I particularly like how he picks at about 2min30, with his thumb playing 4 beats per bar and other fingers picking the melody. It really does make the playing sound much richer, as opposed to thumb picking one note per bar.

Now I am having really difficulties doing this. I can obviously do the thumb picking on its own fine, but then when i try and introduce a melody by picking with my other fingers everything goes pear shaped. Much like beginners at piano having the problem of playing the hands interdependently and the hands kinda synchronise to each other(if that makes sense)

So basically I was wondering if there were any tutorials or exersises I could be doing to help me with this?

Thanks
 
The exercise that got me into this style of playing about five years ago, is this one:


EDIT: Skip to 2:30 to avoid the babble. Sorry, make that 4:00.

Two things to bear in mind. First, Tommy is probably the best boomchick guitar player alive today (obviously I don't mean that literally, but he is literally incredible). Second, learning to do this will make you want to kill yourself. It is not easy in any sense of the word, and the only way you're going to get the hang of it is via everybody's least favourite word... Practice. Practice, practice, practice. The exercise above is ideal for it, though. It's the kind of thing you can do when you're watching television, or just lounging around. Just do it as often, and for as long, as you can bear it.

There's no magical secret to learning how to play this style of music, the more you practice, the better you get. It's as simple as that.
 
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Hey, thanks for the link.

I've found some websites as well with 'thumb independence' exercises.

http://www.fingerstyleblues.com/lesson-7-starting-with-the-thumb-independence-exercises/

Spent a few hours learning these so I can do them without thinking about it and whilst changing chords etc.

To be honest I can't believe it's taken me this long to start learning more technical picking. It really should open the doors for a lot of news songs(when I'm any good at it.

Do you know any simple songs that use these techniques so I can begin applying them.
 
unclebob123 said:
Hey, thanks for the link.

I've found some websites as well with 'thumb independence' exercises.

http://www.fingerstyleblues.com/lesson-7-starting-with-the-thumb-independence-exercises/

Spent a few hours learning these so I can do them without thinking about it and whilst changing chords etc.

To be honest I can't believe it's taken me this long to start learning more technical picking. It really should open the doors for a lot of news songs(when I'm any good at it.

Do you know any simple songs that use these techniques so I can begin applying them.
Click to expand...

?
 
unclebob123 said:
Do you know any simple songs that use these techniques so I can begin applying them.
Click to expand...



Song starts about 1:40.

Song starts at about 0:50.

Song starts around 1:50.

Anything by Mississippi John Hurt who has a very swinging picking style (in fact Mark Knofler busts out a little Spike Driver Blues, or maybe Freight Train in your original video) and Elizabeth Cotton. There's a style of finger picking called "Cotton picking" and it's named after Elizabeth and her style. There's also the "claw hammer" which Mark refers to, but I've always considered that more of a banjo picking style, though it works fine on guitar, Roscoe Holcomb is the one I mostly listen to who uses that style on both guitar and banjo.
 
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I reckon Freight Train is a good tune to learn, if you want to play bass, rhythm and melody at once (i.e. whole arrangements for solo guitar):



Though, the first tune I learnt how to play in this style was Windy and Warm:

 
One of the first songs I learnt in this kind of style was Lindsey Buckingham - Landslide you can pick it up quite quickly and although its no where near as advanced as Tommy its a good introduction.
 
Here's one for you. If you can learn and play this like he can then you'd probably be one of the best in the world at it.

 
To embed youtube videos use the youtube tags like [youtube ] and [/MEDIA] and inbetween the tags put the last section of the youtube link the bit after the = sign. So in this case NdKvEiW7cWc


Note she's playing upside down, just for added badassery.
 
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