Learn Finger Picking Guitar Lesson

Learn Finger Picking

Learning fingerstyle techniques greatly increases your abilities on the guitar. Certain pieces of music cannot be played with a pick. Playing with your fingers also enables you to apply percussive effects to your acoustic playing. In this lesson, David Anthony covers basic fingerstyle technique. He gives you some exercises / pieces that will get you started.

Taught by David Anthony in Basic Guitar with David Anthony seriesLength: 30:09Difficulty: 3.0 of 5

Supplemental Learning Material

Basic Guitar with David Anthony

David Anthony is an acoustic guitar aficionado. In this series you will learn basic concepts that are essential to playing any style of guitar music.

About David Anthony View Full Biography David Anthony was born David Anthony Volckmann, on November 9th, 1982, in the small town of Mount Hope, NY. As a child he absorbed the church flavored musical environment that his parents provided. With this influence he realized at a young age that music would not simply be a passive experience for him. It was not until the age of 15 that he decided to string up his first guitar. Relying solely on his father for his foundational chord knowledge, he quickly became enamored with the possibility of endless melodic structures, and the goal of becoming a fantastic player himself.

His early shredder influences came from Kirk Hammet of Metallica. During his first few years of guitar playing, he developed a very workable knowledge of pentatonic, major and minor scales. Over the years his musical interests swayed from rock to standards, from jazz to classical, and a strong love of the art of flamenco guitar; Spanish finger style. It was not until the age of 18 that he decided to surround himself entirely with the music of Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. This influential exclusivity enabled him to learn more about thinking outside of the musical box. In one year he had learned than in the prior 3 years. Picking up multiple ways to structure melodies, create chords and use different modes, his writing and improvisational abilities grew exponentially. In his senior year of high school, he was responsible for the development of the first Musical Appreciation class in the schools history, and had aided the instructor in the teaching of those classes.

After high school, his focus started to rest mainly in writing. With this he realized that he would need additional, abstract influences to develop a unique style of writing. After a couple more years of playing in a small band, and writing some decent material, he greeted 2004 with a move to Nashville, TN. There he found the exact influence that would change his opinion of the guitar forever. Attempting to weed out a strong foundation in shredding and solo techniques, he began learning finger style guitar, and quickly realized the options that his door would open for him.

As he picked up more complex chord structures and jazz scales, his style became a passion for him that continues to drive him and push him to learn more. He feels strongly about the connection between musical input and the music you write. He notes that his subconscious pool of influence, developed from the music he listens to, is almost directly responsible for the type of music that he writes. He adamantly believes that in order to create a unique, soulful style, the pool must remain unpolluted by substandard music. What's that mean? As David puts it, "If you don't want to play crap, don't listen to crap."

David currently teaches Jazz guitar in Fort Collins, Colorado, with plans to move back to Nashville in the spring to pursue a career in writing.

Additional Lesson Features Available to Members

While we have attempted to provide you with an accurate rendition of our video lesson experience, there are some features which
require a membership with us!

Custom Progress Reporting

At JamPlay, we give you the ability to monitor your own progress for any lesson! If you watch one of our lessons and feel as though you understand around half of it, mark your progress at 50%. This adds the lesson to your customized Progress Report, and gives you an incredible ability to document what you need to work on, and where you left off.

Progressive Bookmarking

With thousands of lessons at your fingertips, JamPlay can be a touch intimidating to a first-time user. With Progressive Bookmarking, we give you the ability to systematically bookmark sections of any lessons you are working on to quickly access later. After all, what is the point of all this content if it isn't easy to use?

Save Your Notes

JamPlay also gives you the ability to leave notes for yourself on any lesson. Just like in any educational system, taking your own notes while learning gives you the ability to highlight the instruction that is important to you. Leave your notes, and we store them in our database for you to reference each and everytime you come back to the lesson.