Fingerpicking Tips To Save Years of Guitar Practice

[Music] hey everybody this is justin johnson and i'm here today on my front porch picking a little uh acoustic guitar here and i've been getting a lot of questions online about finger picking techniques some of the techniques that have helped me develop my finger picking style over the years and you know what i've found is you practice something for a while always seems like you hit a dead end somewhere but there's always something that helps you get past that plateau level so i'm going to teach you some of the things that i learned that really got me to the next level each time with finger picking [Music] so before we get started i wanted to let you know i'm in standard tuning and that is a e low e [Music] and then a [Music] d [Music] g b [Music] and a high e [Music] and for this instructional video i also i'm making sure to be in direct daylight because uh what happens on the camera is that the direct sunlight actually exaggerates the string motion so as i'm playing you might be thinking i've got really really wobbly strings but they're actually not loose it's nice you know tight standard tuning nice good tension on it but um i actually did that on purpose so that it would make it more visible and obvious which strings i'm plucking as i'm showing you the different exercises before we start playing anything uh before we start developing any bad habits let's go ahead and learn some good habits as far as how to hold your hands and get the kind of attack and control over your picking hand that you're going to want when you're finger picking so as i'm picking right here um notice one really important thing right off the bat is that my thumb is it's sort of like i'm giving a thumbs up you know if you give a thumbs up and then you move into playing position notice my thumb is separated from the rest of my fingers when i first started playing i played more like this and i noticed a lot of finger pickers when they first start they just kind of put their fingers out and start plucking the problem with that is when you you think about follow-through when i do a full pluck with my thumb my thumb can actually go around my fingers when i pluck with my fingers they're not running into my thumb so if you bring your thumb away from your fingers you actually have good follow through with all of your fingers none of them are getting in each other's way when you're playing if i was playing like this like a lot of beginners do right there i start plucking i immediately hit my index finger right there with my thumb i'll never get good volume good tone good follow through if i'm doing it like that another uh key part of controlling where you're playing is to have some part of your arm anchored on the guitar you want to be able to have a reference point a lot of times again people start picking and their arm is way off of the guitar they kind of come back around and they're they're just kind of plucking wildly at it you want to have some kind of anchor sometimes it might be your palm back here on the bridge you don't want to actually hit the strings when you do this see how my palm is anchoring my hand there sometimes it might be your forearm up here that's anchoring or if you're playing uh with with you know these four fingers or you know these three fingers in your thumb you can actually anchor with your pinky down here which is what i do a lot depending on the style i'm playing [Music] so i always have the something anchoring my hand though that's the key is you want to have some kind of anchor point something controlling you and giving you a framework a good basis for where your hand is at all time a great tip for learning how to keep this good technique when you're first developing it is to play in the mirror like watch your hand in the mirror or on a computer screen if you have a camera and you can actually watch yourself on the screen play whatever's easier for you you want to actually see what you look like from the third person because it's hard to tell sometimes when you're just looking down at the strings what your hands look like a lot of these problems can be solved really quickly if you just observe yourself play from the third person so the first exercise i'm going to teach you is the first exercise i taught myself i just wanted to learn how to use each finger of my hand when i first started finger picking and this is going to be a pattern that takes five strings there's one string for each finger and i'm going to play an e minor chord right there and i'm just going to put my thumb on the low e string and each of my fingers sequentially on the next string up and i'm going to go from low to high and then back to low again so i'll go really slow so you can see it [Music] so again when you're playing this you want to make sure your fingers are out of out of the way of one another so that you can have a good follow through with each pluck and try to do this very slowly at first you want to keep an even tempo which means that each note is being held out just as long as the other notes you don't want to just try to rush through it and play it as fast as you can and also you want to either anchor with your wrist or your forearm up here on the guitar so that you have a good anchor point or you you can be back here with your palm on the bridge not touching the strings here you don't want to palm mute it you don't want your palm touching these strings but you just want to have some kind of anchor point so your hand's not moving around wildly [Music] and then move to an a minor [Music] and do the same pattern but starting on the a string which will be one string down [Music] when you're first starting out you want to practice these patterns over and over again hundreds of times thousands of times until you get a good rhythm down until it's second nature [Music] when you're first learning open chords you can pick a few different open chords and try different chords with those same patterns so there's a different variation on this exercise that i want to teach you also it's going to be the same exact pattern of strings being plucked but this time i'm going to take my pinky out of the equation i'm going to use my pinky to anchor my hand by putting it below the strings down here touching the sound board you know so now i don't have one finger for each string i'm going to have to decide which finger is going to play two strings and so what i'm going to do is on my first two strings i'm going to use my thumb to go on the low e and then notice how when i pluck it my thumb rests it's called a rest stroke rests on the next string down and then i use my fingers my remaining three fingers for the next three strings and then i'm gonna do a rest stroke with my index finger coming back up [Music] so here's my thumb thumb index middle ring middle index index and that's going to be a little tricky at first but just keep practicing it really slowly [Music] thumb thumb index middle ring middle index index thumb thumb index middle ring middle index index [Music] do the same thing on the a minor again with your pinky anchoring down here on the sound board [Music] [Applause] [Music] so the next pattern is going to be back to the e minor chord and what you'll do is uh you're basically using these three fingers your thumb your index and your middle finger you'll start here with the low e [Music] and i'm anchoring down here with my pinky and then move that same pattern down start it on the a string and then start it on the d string play them all together [Music] and now do the same exercise back down again starting on the b string [Music] so it's repeating it's repeating that pattern of three strings and you're moving it down and then moving it back up so i'll play it very slowly for you [Music] play it even slower for you [Music] and the reason this exercise is so helpful is it because is because it helps you learn to transition between positions on those six strings you're doing the same pattern you know thumb index middle on the way down and then middle index thumb on the way back up but you have to transition spots every time you do that locations and just like we did before i'm going to switch to the a minor and we're going to do the same pattern starting on the a string [Music] now just like before we're going to take that exercise the exact same exercise the same picking pattern we're going to take it one step further again and i'm going to play it with only my thumb and index finger we're going to practice that str that same rest stroke we played earlier where instead of using my thumb index middle on the way down i'm going to use thumb thumb index and then the next three thumb thumb index thumb thumb index and then on the way back up i'm going to go index index thumb index index thumb index index thumb and again this is sort of like a tongue twister for your fingers and that's why it's a good way to practice these different picking techniques if you get good at this you're going to realize the whole you know every picking pattern is going to get a whole lot easier not just this one [Music] so we're going to shift that whole pattern down again to the a minor chord and uh start it on the a string this time so again the pattern will be thumb thumb index thumb thumb index thumb thumb index on the way down and then on the way up the pattern is going to be index index thumb index index thumb index index thumb [Music] so the next pattern is a really great pattern for folk music bluegrass rock and roll with like acoustic picking different things like that and it's going to utilize these three fingers your thumb index and middle and basically what the thumb is going to do i'm going to be playing this e minor chord again the thumb is going to play any of the notes that are on the low e or the a string but your index is going to be designated to that d string and your middle finger is going to be designated to that g string and so the pattern is going to be thumb index and then the thumb on the a string thumb middle and uh i'll play that nice and slow so you can see what i'm doing again over the e minor chord thumb index thumb middle [Music] pay attention to which strings i'm plucking would be the e d a g [Music] so i'll play it again over the e minor a little bit faster so you can hear what it sounds like to tempo [Music] if you play the same thing over the a minor chord start on the a string this time it'll sound like this i'll play it nice and slow and then a little bit faster [Music] thumb index thumb middle [Music] now because this pattern only takes place on four strings i can actually go up to a chord like an open d here and i can start on the root note of that chord the d and play the same pattern on these lowest four strings [Music] thumb index thumb middle played a little faster [Music] and this is a great uh picking pattern for doing all kinds of different chord changes especially with you know folk type music i'll give you an example of going from the e minor to the a minor to the d major and then back [Music] well thanks for watching i hope that these uh lessons and exercises are helpful to you uh the main thing is again pay attention to the way that you're holding the guitar the balance of the guitar how comfortable it is watch yourself in the mirror make sure that your hands are in the right position and that you're not fighting yourself in order to make this music sound good it's not going to be something that you pick up right off the bat and just start flying through quickly so it's much better and it's actually you're going to learn it much faster if you start slow and don't develop bad habits these picking patterns can take years to really play quickly and effortlessly but the more you practice them the more they're going to just become second nature and you're going to find that one day it's just going to start falling under your fingers a lot more easily but uh again check out justinjohnsonlive.com for my music for more of my instructional material and keep coming back thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Justin Johnson

Views: 5,447,407

Keywords: fingerpicking, lesson, how to, justin johnson, shovel guitar, fingerstyle, finger, guitar lesson, guitar, acoustic, acoustic guitar, folk, bluegrass, practice, exercise, pattern, slide guitar, anchoring, technique, learn, best, best lesson, guitars, blues, travis picking, doc watson, leadbelly, ted talk, npr, hot licks, homespun, folk guitar, classical

Id: JWSSS7tJ2wQ

Length: 20min 14sec (1214 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 07 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/TheForgetfulMe]

Justin Johnson is amazing. His video on his slide shovel is one of my favorites.

[u/jacknutting]

This popped up in my YouTube feed. Obviously he’s playing guitar, but most of what he’s talking about is relevant to ukulele also.