Lauren Bateman breaks down a six-note fingerpicking pattern for 6/8 time. The thumb plays the bass note while your index, middle, and ring fingers pick strings 3-2-1-2-3 in sequence. She walks through it with G, Em, F, C, Am, and Fmaj7 chords.
Hey, guitar enthusiasts, I'm going to be showing you one of the most popular finger picking patterns that you can use over songs. But you can only use it in very specific circumstances and I'll show you why.
Now you can only use this pattern under very specific timings and that's going to be a waltz. Now what is a waltz? Unlike counting one and two and three and four and like eighth notes like that, we will be counting in what's called 6, 8 time. It's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 1, 2, 3, 4th, 5, 6. We're going to have this swaying feel. And because of this we're going to be playing six notes for every chord. So before I show you what the pattern is, let me show you what it's going to sound like.
So it's a very, very common pattern that can be easily applied to songs that have that swaying feel. Now this is lesson three in a six part series. So if you're jumping in here from the beginning, you may want to go back to some of those other lessons. And don't forget to scroll down to the link below for grab your free PDF course guide with all of the tabs for this entire series. So let's talk about the individual chords and what we're going to be doing. All right, let's start with that G chord. Now this is a six string chord. So this pattern is going to work for chords like G, E minor, okay. Even bar chords, you know, if you got an F bar chord. All right, any six string chord this pattern would apply to. Now we're going to be moving the thumb depending on what chord we're playing. So for six string chords, our thumb is going to be playing this sixth string and our other fingers, they are owning those bottom three strings, just like in the first exercise I showed you in this series. And we're going to be playing a pattern. So that's going to be strings 3, 2, 1, 2, 3 and that's going to be fingers I, M, A, M, I. Okay, just a quick review. Index finger is I, middle finger is M and the ring finger is A and your thumb is P. That's what those little letters are on the tab. So for a G chord it would be strings 6, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3 or P, I, M, A, M, I. Now as a little note you can say I'm going back to my bad habit of putting my and not that it's a bad habit. There's lots of players who put their pinky down here for support. It's Just how I got comfortable finger picking. If you find that comfortable, go right ahead and do that. So just make sure if you are using your pinky on the body of the guitar for support that you're not landlocking it. It's got to be loose, it's got to be able to move around. I'm not, it's not stuck on the guitar. It's loosely just hanging out there as just a little support mechanism for me to bridge my fingers over the string. So let's play that G chord again starting from the top. I'll count us in. It's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 P I M A M. I.
Remember, don't be afraid to hit the strings. Really pick them.
So that takes care of our six string chords. But what do we do when we have a five string chord or if we have a chord like C major or, or A minor or even a B minor. Okay, what happens when we have these other chords? What we're going to do now is the thumb is going to own the fifth string. All right? But the great thing is nothing changes with the other fingers or strings. So we're still playing P I M a M I. The only thing that's changed is the bass note. Now so we have a C chord playing the fifth string on the bass.
Okay, now our last chord, F major 7. What are we going to do? Well, this is a four string chord. So any guesses as to what note is going to be played by the thumb? It's going to be the fourth string. Okay, so same pattern except we're playing the fourth string with the thumb. P I M a M I.
Okay, so you'll hear this like a song like Everybody hurts by. Remember it's that exact pattern. Or like hallelujah.
That's that pattern. It's very commonly used. Once you start playing it, you're going to start recognizing it. In songs, people ask me all the time, how do you know what someone's playing in a song? Well, when you start learning these patterns, you start learning the technique that someone's doing. So you listen to a song and you hear it and you go, oh, that's that finger picking pattern that Lauren taught me in lesson three. So what we're going to do now that we know what to do over each of these individual chords is we're going to string them together in a chord progression just like we would in a song. So our chord progression is going to be a C chord followed by F major 7 followed by C followed by G. Okay, and we're going to do that twice. We're going to play each chord two times through, all right? And the timing is going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. All right? So I'm going to count us in. Get ready. On that C chord, we're going to play together a couple times through. Remember, each chord, we're going to play it twice. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 1, 2, 3, 4,. 5, 6.
To F major 7.
Back to C.
Already. Sounds really nice.
G.
To c.
F major 7.
To c.
To g.
And C. Now, if you heard on that last C chord, I made a mistake and I'm leaving it in there because I want you guys to know I'm not perfect. I make mistakes, too. But I think it teaches you a very important lesson. Even though I hit the wrong bass note, I kept playing. But it also didn't sound horrible either because I was in time. So a lot of times when you're finger picking, if you hit the wrong string.
As long as you. As long as you're playing the chord and you stay in time, it sounds good. That's the great thing about finger picking and finger picking patterns. You could hit a wrong string, you might hit a bad note, but it doesn't always mean it's going to sound bad. A lot of the times it sounds pretty good. So if you make a mistake, don't stop. Play through the mistake and keep going. Now, Lauren, that's all well and good, but what happens if I'm playing a song that's not in this special six, eight time? Well, that's exactly what I'm going to show you in the next lesson. Right over there. I'm going to show you how to play in a more common time known as 4. 4. Click on that lesson video right now.
