A short instructional YouTube lesson by Lauren Bateman teaching beginner fingerstyle guitar exercises centered on a G chord. She demonstrates a basic four-note fingerpicking pattern (thumb, index, middle, ring — P I M A) played on strings D, G, B, high E and its reverse (starting on the high E/back down), emphasizes steady timing (keep an even pulse in 4/4), appropriate dynamics (don’t under- or over-attack the thumb), and refers to a PDF showing four measures of each pattern to repeat. She also notes the next example will combine patterns over a chord progression and switch to 6/8 time.
Chapters
In this first exercise we're going to focus on a G chord. So most of the exercises we're going to play around a G chord. So I'm going to show you a pattern and then I'm going to show you how to apply that pattern. So the first thing when finger picking is we want to just get our fingers used to doing this pattern of getting the thumb, the first finger, second finger, that P I, M A, getting that working and getting the fingers used to playing strings as opposed to holding a pick. So if you want, just get a G chord on your fretting hand and we're going to place the thumb on the D string and then the first finger or the I is going to be on the G string. The middle finger will be on the B string and the ring finger is going to be on the bottom E.
So it's going to be D, G, E and then E, D, G, E.
E. And all I want you to do is just practice that pattern over and over again.
P I, M A, P I, M A.
And that's all I want you to do. Now the thing that sometimes happens with people when they're doing this is they sometimes really attack the thumb hard or.
They don't play.
They don't play loud enough.
So I usually have to tell my students like play a little louder. Don't be afraid to, you can dig into these strings. Don't be afraid to dig into them. You can make some noise with them. Usually people play very soft in the beginning and their thumb plays really loud. The other thing to watch out for is not to rush or swing the pattern. So sometimes a lot of people when they first start learning finger picking, especially this first pattern is they go.
They do something where they put a pause between the thumb and the first finger.
1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2.
We want to keep a steady B.
Alright, so it's gonna be thumb.
Thumb.
P I, M a P I, M.
A. Strings 4, 3, 2, 1.
4, 3, 2, 1.
And that is our basic pattern that I want you to focus on. This is gonna help you start building the comfort in this finger picking hand. So let's try it again. So one more time. 1, 2, 3, 4.
P, I, M A P I, M A, P I, M A, P I, M A.
So that's the first exercise I want you to practice. After that we're just going to do the same thing in reverse. So we're going to start at the A finger and it's going to go A and mip. So we're starting at the lowest string.
So a mip. A mip.
So people usually have an easier time going down the guitar than coming up the guitar. Some of my students have an easier time coming back up the strings than they do down the strings. That's why I want you to practice them both separately. So on the PDF, you're going to see four measures of the first pattern and four measures of the second pattern. You can play those as many times as you want. I just put four on the sheet as an example. But you can play it as many times as you need to to get comfortable. So if we go back to the first pattern again, it's going to be from the D string to the E string.
So it's going to be P, I, M a P I M a P I M a P I, M A.
Now from the lowest string, the high E string backwards I or sorry, A.
M, I P a M I P a M I, P, A M I.
P. So there you go. So what we're gonna do in the next part of this video is we're gonna put those together over a short chord progression. And I'm gonna show you how you can play down the strings and up the strings in the next pattern, which we're gonna do in what we call six, eight times. So right now we're playing in four, four, if you remember. Four. Four is one, two, three, four. There's four beats per measure. So in the next example that I'm going to show you, we're going to put the patterns together and we're going to play in six, eight times. So we're going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 1, 2, 3, 4th, 5, 6. So let's go to that next video and I can show you that example.
