Easy Creative Fingerpicking

By Gary Heimbauer for Guitar Tricks and 30 Day Singer

A fun way to start getting into fingerpicking is to create your own fingerpicking patterns!

This is great for people taking beginner guitar lessons. Here’s a couple guidelines to get you started. In general, you want to use the thumb to play the bass notes which are on the E, A and D string.

You then want to use your index finger on the G string, your middle finger on the B string, and your ring finger on the high E string.

Now, when a pattern only uses a few strings, you can deviate from this guideline, but you want to get all of your fingers (besides the little finger) up to speed for when you will inevitably need them.

With this guideline in mind, start with a 6 string open chord like E minor. Now play this pattern in time to a beat:

6,5,4,3,2,1  1,2,3,4,5,6

String 6 is the low E string. String 1 is the high E string.

Play at a tempo where you like how you sound and it feels good, and you can play in time.

Unlike classical musicians that use their thumb nail, in folk, country, pop, jazz, blues and more popular styles, it’s common for a guitarist to use the side of their thumb, so that the thumb is parallel with the strings.

You can use the flesh, or wear a finger pick.

In my video lesson, I’m using the flesh which is just fine. It gives the bass note a boomier sound, like rolling off the tone knob. It has less treble and a softer attack. 

With the index, middle, and ring fingers, load the string right where the flesh meets the nail before you pick it. If you have a nail the string will release off the nail and have a louder more percussive tone. If you don’t have nails it will have a softer and quieter sound.

Both will work. Try to avoid using the pads of your fingers which are too far into your finger tip. You want to use the very tips of your fingers so that they can easily travel from string to string and the string can easily get off your finger without getting stuck!

Once you feel comfortable with this technical foundation, now you can start creating little patterns by changing up the rhythm and skipping strings. Use a guitar chord chart to see what kinds to of chords you can try to fingerpick.

There is no right or wrong here. The only thing you want to make sure of is that it’s a pattern that you can repeat over and over, in time to a beat.

Once you create the pattern see if you can then apply the same pattern to different chords. You might have to modify what strings you place the pattern on since not all chords have the same available strings to use. 

The other thing with fingerpicking is to really make sure you know which note is the root note or lowest note of the chord since you are kind of now a bass player with your thumb! Bassists have to know their root notes! 

Once you feel comfortable creating patterns with one note at a time, then try to add two notes at a time. Maybe you do this just for the first note of the pattern.

Make that first note of the pattern two notes at the same time! Perhaps it’s the lowest and highest note of the chord. This will really make it sound like two separate instruments.

Fingerpicking is a fun and creative skill you can develop while taking your online guitar lessons. You can even work to fingerpick full songs on solo guitar!

Just remember, the challenge of building calluses is the #1 reason why guitarists call it quits.

So keep going! You can work through the callus-building phase and develop into a great guitarist.