Its almost like there are two worlds in guitar playing. You have the guitarists
who like to use a flat pick, and then you've got the guitar maestros who use
a strict finger picking technique.

Getting the dexterity down for acoustic guitar finger picking can be a bit
of a hassle, and it almost seems as though the fingers don't want to budge.
With some simple exercises, the obstacle can be removed from the road.

Before we continue to explore finger picking, we first need to establish something. In the classical guitar world, where plucking the strings with the fingers is quite common, there is a labeling of the fingers. The labeling is simple, and knowing it will help you to guide yourself when you start working with these passages.

P = Thumb
I = Index finger
M = Middle finger
A = Ring finger



The abbreviations come from the Spanish words of Pulgar, Indicio, Medio, and Anular, and its a very easy system to work with.

By the way, one of the best beginning guitar books has always been
Frederick Noad's First book for the guitar

I even have it in my collection, and it helped me get started with classical technique.

Now that we know that the fingers are labeled as P,I,M, and A, we can apply this identification tool to simple guitar tab.

For this lesson we're going to simply focus on getting our fingers warmed up
with some simple plucking, using P and M for the chords and I for the single
notes. This is also a similar approach to the Beatles song Black Bird.



A word of advice. The key thing here is to take your time, because you want to
put your focus on syncing up the chord changes with the picking. I know that
seems obvious, but the plucking helps to keep a really good rhythm.

Stay tuned, because in the next lesson I'll show you how to put a little more "pep" in it ;)

So in the last guitar finger picking lesson, we learned about the finger labeling system of PIMA. Remember, it was P = thumb, I = index finger, M = middle finger, and A = Ring finger. If you need to, you might want to check out the last finger picking lesson, because this lesson will be an expansion of the piece that we were working on previously.

In the last lesson we were making use of the thumb and middle finger to pluck simple two note chords with, while using the index finger to insert some single note action, which helped to keep a good rhythm and produce a nice melody.

In this lesson we're taking it a step further, by not really doing much more with
the piece.

We're going to divide our chords up a little differently, and add more single note finger picking. By doing this, it will sound a little fancier and have a better rhythm structure. This produces a more interesting appeal, because the arrangement gives us a bass line as well, creating the effect that there are two different guitar layers happening at once, and yet - oh my gosh! its only one guitar player!!

Oh yeah, notice the last note where I goofed and had to erase it later and replace it with the correct note - sorry about that guys. Enjoy.

Imagine that someone came to me and asked "what is in your opinion the most important guitar lesson on the site of GuitArticles? which of ALL of the lessons should a student pay the most attention to, and think about on a daily basis?". My answer would be THIS guitar lesson. This is not a how to, a step-by-step, nor does it even feature some sort of example by way of video, audio, or tab. No, it is just so important that it can not be summed up so easily with a multi-media file, or me saying "put your 1st finger here, and play this".

This article in particular can be summarized by one word. ATTITUDE. When I say attitude, I'm not talking about feeling "bad ass", or metal or anything like that. Even soulful, gentle, emotional music has attitude. When I say attitude, I'm talking about what you feel inside when you play music on any instrument, or what you can potentially feel inside.

The shear thrill and energy that you get from playing the guitar shapes your decisions in phrasing, note choices, timing, feel, and most importantly - how you produce the notes or chords.

If you've ever seen my videos when I'm improvising, you will notice that there are times when I get quote, unquote - medieval with the notes. In other words, the feeling of immediate alignment causes me to snap the hell out of the strings. Not break them, snap them with so much emotion that I have inside that it can only come out through my hands.

This feeling is similar in intensity to the feeling that you get when you are really angry, but in a good way, and chances are my best playing comes forth after I have been frustrated for a very long time. Its a valve - its a release, and anyone (and many do) can use it in the form of guitar. It doesn't matter whether you consider yourself artistic, creative, beginner, intermediate, advanced, or "skilled" on the guitar, we all are people and we all carry the same emotions - USE THEM.

Intensity is more important than technique or theory. Period. Intensity can even come in the form of playing something quietly or gently, because this requires a focus that is on the same plateau as playing something ridiculously hard and loud.

You should also come to realize that this kind of control of expression over your playing does not happen right away, and it certainly doesn't happen in the first few years of playing guitar. No, first you must create some things for yourself that only you may like, AND a guitar player has to develop a decent sense of coordination and skill. It doesn't take much, but the better you get, the more ideas you can express (because you'll know how to express them), and you will have broadened your mental and physical palette to be able to play with. When I say play - I mean experiment. It would be kind of hard to write these words if there were only two letters in the alphabet - get it?

Below is a video of me jamming over one of my favorite songs. This is not a form of self promotion at all, because I actually consider this to be my worst jam yet (there are lots of mistakes). The point is, pay close attention to how much energy I put into my playing. It is at times intense, because I'm all their - mistakes included. If you listen closely, you can hear just the guitar strings over all of the noise.

Its been a little while now, but roughly a month ago I went to the Alice Cooper Theater Of Death show, and I would have written about it then, except that things have been nuts lately. I must say, if you enjoy Alice Cooper's music and you want to go to the best show that you've ever been to in your life - check him out on tour.

I had seen video of him and his famous, eccentric stage shenanigans before, but seeing the master himself live blows everything else out of the water. There was no shock rock vaudeville stone left unturned as he truly commanded the stage like only a mascara running, self resurrecting, bad boy can.

My brother had always described to me the atmosphere of the show so I did have a little bit to go off of, but then when you are actually witnessing the flow of an Alice Cooper concert, you really don't give an F about any other show. Seriously, everything else is just boring to me now, and the man is in his early sixties now, so now is the time to enjoy what he has to offer, because again - his work is made to be spontaneous, or in other words - live!

Don't let the early sixties part fool - Alice is like a fine wine - he gets better with age.

Check out the Spanish translation of this article here! We recently added Stephen Street‘s Urtext Edition of Bottesini’s Concerto di Bravura to our Sheet Music Store, prompting a common question: Why is Bottesini’s music written down an octave? The issue at hand is that Bottesini wrote all his solo bass music at sounding pitch rather […]

The pedagogical influence of Francois Rabbath on the double bass world has been tremendous. Once seen as a dramatic departure from traditional bass technique, the Rabbath approach has become mainstream and perhaps the most commonly used method for young bassists. The story behind the Rabbath Institute Cielito De Jesus started the Rabbath Institute Los Angeles […]

For years, I’d heard about “rules” that I was supposed to follow when figuring out bass fingerings. Honestly, it was a bit confusing to me. They all seemed to conflict with each other, and I was never sure where to begin. Over time, I figured out how these rules work, when to follow them, and […]

Manufacturing

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 30, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 21, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings