AC/DC - Intro to Fingerstyle Guitar Lesson

Chapter 1: (01:12) Intro Music Jim Deeming kicks off his Phase 2 series of lessons with an excellent fingerstyle arrangement. Chapter 2: (06:26) Intro to Fingerstyle Welcome to the first lesson of Jim Deeming's fingerstyle series! Playing fingerstyle will open up a whole new world of possibilities to you. Playing with your fingers enables you to play multiple parts at the same time. Jim frequently incorporates a bass line, chord changes, and a melody line into an arrangement for a single guitar! In this series, Jim demonstrates how you and your guitar can form a powerful one man band.

Fingerstyle History

The guitar was first played with the fingers. The pick didn't come into popularity for hundreds of years. Fingerstyle playing has been applied to countless genres of music over the years. Fingerstyle playing is almost exclusively used in classical guitar playing. This is where fingerstyle techniques and principles originated. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, new forms of music began to evolve that utilize fingerstyle techniques. A large amount of bluegrass, blues, jazz, country, folk, and rock music combines two or more parts into a single guitar arrangement.

Advantages of Fingerstyle

Like Jim mentions, there are many specific benefits to playing with your fingers. Playing fingerstyle allows you to play rapid arpeggios with the right hand. You can play a bass line, or chordal accompaniment in conjunction with a melody. You can also play two songs at the same time!

Fingerstyle Heavyweights

Jim lists several of the guitarists that have pioneered the style that he will teach in this series. The style in which Jim plays was largely pioneered by Merle Travis in Kentucky and Chet Atkins in Nashville. The styles of these players gradually spread throughout the southern United States and eventually the rest of the country. Since then, many amazing guitarists have followed in their footsteps. Players such as Tommy Emmanuel, Buster B. Jones, Laurence Juber, and Doyle Dykes have kept fingerstyle playing alive and flourishing. Check out the music of these players for some inspiration and guidance.

What You Should Already Know

This is not a beginner guitar series. With that in mind, you need to be familiar with several basic guitar concepts in order to receive the full benefit of these fingerstyle lessons. You must be comfortable with basic chords, keys, basic scales, chord progressions, left hand technique, as well basic right hand strumming patterns. Chapter 3: (17:03) Fingerstyle Choices Thumb Pick

Jim will perform the vast majority of musical examples in this series with a thumb pick. These exercises can be played without a thumb pick, but this will not achieve quite the same effect. Playing with a thumb pick enables you to play a bass line with a more forceful sound. It is also much easier to palm mute a bass line when playing with a thumb pick opposed to playing with the thumb nail.

Nail Care

Playing fingerstyle requires that you take proper care of the fingernails on your right hand. The nail in conjunction with the fleshy tip of the finger makes contact with the string and produces a tone. If you are playing a classical guitar with nylon strings, your nails are probably strong enough to withstand the strength of the strings. However, in this series, most of the music is performed on a steel string acoustic. Steel is much stronger than your fingernails. As a result, you must either learn to play without nails, or keep your nails very short when performing fingerstyle music on a steel string guitar. Many fingerstyle players apply nail hardener to keep their nails from breaking. Others glue acrylic nails on top of their natural nails. Regardless of whether you are playing classical or steel string, it is easiest to play accurately and with a solid tone if your nails are kept very short. If you turn your hand so that your palm is facing you, your nails should just barely extend above the fleshy tips of the fingers by about a millimeter.

Guitar Setup

If you intend to play a lot of fingerstyle guitar on a steel string acoustic, you want to play with a fairly light set of strings. Changing the gauge of your strings requires that you perform a new setup. Take your guitar to a trained repairman or luthier and explain what you want done. Explain the different contexts in which you will be playing the guitar. For example, do you intend to tune down, play with a slide, or play with your fingers? Make sure that you discuss your needs thoroughly to ensure that you get the exact result that you are looking for.

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