BEST Fingerpicking Exercises For Beginners - The MOST Important Finger

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, welcome to my finger picking video. Today we're going to be focusing on just moving the thumb around to different strings. The thumb is probably one of the most important fingers that we use in finger picking because it really controls the bass line and the timing of the song. And that's why this entire lesson is dedicated to moving the thumb around, getting comfortable, as well as applying that movement to different chords.

Now this is video two in a six part series. So if you didn't see video one, I highly recommend you go check it out up there. And if you have, make sure you've downloaded the PDF guidebook with all of the tabs and exercises for this entire mini course. The chords we're going to be using for this section is going to be a G chord, a C chord, and an F major 7 chord. Now, if you want to play your G chord with the pinky on the bottom, that's totally fine. And I think that's a great option because then when you go down to the C chord, you just have to move the third and second fingers and you're right there for the C chord. And then to go to F major 7, you keep the first finger in place and you move those other two fingers down. So you could do it that way. G, G, C, F major 7. I personally am just used to playing my G chord like this. It feels like a stronger way for me to play the chord. So you will be seeing me use my third finger. So I will be going G, C and F major 7. So a lot of times in finger picking we have what is called an alternating bass line. We're not just sitting on a single bass note. What does that mean? Let me give you an example. So if I play my G chord, I'm not just going to sit here and go.

Okay. When you think of finger picking, you often think of this sound instead.

And you can see.

My thumb is playing two different notes. Again, we call this an alternating baseline because we are playing alternating notes or playing different notes. So this is what exercise one is going to focus on. So we're going to play a G chord, okay? That's our first chord we're going to be using. And all I want you to do, we're going to work on adjacent notes first before we get to the next part of this video where we're going to work on skipping over and hopping strings. But first, let's just get used to the strings that are next to each other. So I got my G chord and we're just going to alternate it's going to be an eighth note pattern. One and two and three and four and. And it's going to sixth string, fifth string, sixth string, fifth string, all using the thumb. Ready? So 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

One more time.

And again, you can see me using this position. I have my third finger and my pinky kind of perched on that bottom E string. And it's providing me some support to just work on this exercise. Once you do that, we're going to move to our C chord. And now we're going to alternate between the fifth string and the fourth string. So it's going to be 5, 4, 5, 4. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And read.

One more time.

Okay, and now we're going to move to the F major 7. So we're just going to adjust our fingers. Now this is where one of those exceptions to the rule comes. So for four string chords, we kind of have to make an adjustment. Okay, so this would be like a D chord, this F major seven. You know, anything requiring four strings, we. We're actually going to move the thumb down. So the thumb in this instance is not going to be playing strings five or four. It's actually going to be playing one of those treble notes that we talked about before. The treble notes are the bottom three strings. So for this F major seven, we're going to be alternating between four and three.

Okay, so 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

And once again, once you have that down, I would recommend just rotating between the different chords. So you have your G chord. Okay. Then we're going to go to our C chord. Right into it.

Okay, again, 1 and 2 and 3. And now to the f ch.

Okay. And then you would go right back into the G chord and 4 and 1 and 2 and.

Okay, this way you get used to. Because in a song, we're not just gonna sit on one chord, we're going to be changing chords. And that's what I want you guys to start practicing changing between chords and getting used to matching up the third thumb with the correct chord. All right, so we have six string chords, we have five string chords, and we have four string chords. So that's working on adjacent strings. But what happens if you want to hop over a string? Maybe you want to play different bass notes. So we're going to work on exactly that in this second exercise. So this next exercise, we're going to start always on the fifth string. And I'm going to show you what's going to happen here. So we're going to play the G chord and we're going to go 5, 4, 6, 4, 5, 4, 6, 4. Okay? And that's just going to be the pattern. So that's going to sound like this 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And.

Now on the C chord, I'm going to show you a cool little trick that you can use to get additional little bass notes in finger picking. A lot of times what happens is we tend to move other fingers around to get different, what we call voicings, different sounds from our chords. Now, this C chord, we're going to do something cool. We're going to be taking this third finger and we're going to be bouncing it between the third fret on the fifth string and the third fret on the sixth string. So it's going to sound like this.

So you can see I'm just moving this finger up and down and we're going 1 and 2 and 1 and 2. And.

Now where the issue is, and you might have heard this on a couple of times on mine, I didn't have my knuckle bent enough. Sometimes, for those of you who have trouble with the C chord, this third finger lays flat. So this string might sound muted. You might get.

Okay, so if you're having that issue, it's not going to happen on this top string, because if this is laying flat, you're hopping over the string below. The most common point this is going to happen is on this fourth string. If you hear that muting sound, watch your C chord. Make sure this knuckle is bent, okay? And if you're an older learner that has a little bit of trouble with arthritis and you have trouble bending that knuckle, what I would recommend doing is playing your finger a little bit higher. So this finger, if I play it a little bit higher up on the string, I'm still pressing it down. The top of my finger is pretty much touching this top string, and it's giving me a little bit more space on that bottom string so that it won't ring. So, two reminders, bend the knuckle so that you don't mute that string. And if you have trouble bending that knuckle, just play it a little bit higher up on the string.

It'll still work. You'll still play that fifth string, but it might help you get rid of that muting sound on the C chord. Same thing for F major 7. Now, because this is lower on the lower strings, I find that people have an easier time bending the knuckle. But the same thing applies to the F major 7 chord. Now on this one, we're going to be rotating the third finger between the third string and the fourth string. So for this F major 7 chord, we're going to start on the fourth string. I know, I said I think we're starting on the fifth string. We're going to start on the fourth string for this one and it's going to go fourth string, third string, fourth string, fifth string. And our thumb, just like that C chord is going to be going between the fourth string and the fifth string. So it's going to sound like this 1 and 2 and 1 and 2 and.

Again. This is all played by that thumb.

And again, once you learn all of these patterns individually for each chord, string them all together in a loop so that you can start practicing going between different chords chords and changing it up just like you would in a song. Once you feel like you have a grasp on these exercises and feel like you finally have control over your thumb, I highly recommend you go to lesson number three in this series where I'm going to show you one of the most popular finger picking patterns you can use over a song.