A beginner-focused YouTube lesson by Lauren Bateman that introduces foundational fingerpicking: finger labels (P, I, M, A), thumb role and bass/treble string assignments, simple thumb-only (strings 6-5-4) and treble-finger (I-M-A on strings 3-2-1) exercises, and guidance on combining them. The instructor also points learners to a downloadable course guide with tabs and lesson links.
Hey, guitar enthusiasts. I've put together a step by step multi series finger picking course here for those of you on YouTube, I'm going to show you how to go from knowing absolutely nothing about finger picking to learning very popular finger picking patterns that you can apply to your favorite songs.
But before we get started, you're going to need the tabs that go along with each section of this miniseries. So what I've done is I've created a course guide that has the tablature and links to all the lesson videos in this series for easy access. To get that, scroll down to the description and click on the link and you'll be taken to a page where you can download your course guide. Right now, I'm going to show you two very specific exercises that's great for an absolute beginner because when we first start to learn finger picking, it's a whole new skill. It's a whole new mechanic for the finger picking hand. All right, so first, before we get into those exercises, I want to talk to you about how we label the fingers in finger picking. Now, in this course, we're going to be focusing on four of our fingers. Our thumb, our index finger, our middle finger, and our ring finger. Okay. We're not really going to be using the pinky in this course at all. Now, if you look at your tabs, you're going to see little letters. And those little letters are associated with a finger. So we have P is your thumb. Okay. I is your index, M is your middle finger, and A is your ring finger. Okay? So it's going to be P, I, M, A. All right? And those letters tell you which finger we are using to play the specific notes. So now that you know the fingers, let's talk about how we're going to start getting some control and dexterity in finger picking. One of the most important fingers is our thumb. Our thumb becomes the timekeeper. And the guitar has what we call bass notes and treble notes. And there are some exceptions to these rules and we'll talk about that when that happens. But for the most part, the thumb owns these top three strings, which would be the E string, the A string and the D string. Those are your low sounding notes. Okay. The bass notes, the really low notes. And then we have what are called the treble notes, the higher notes, the bottom three strings, which would be the G string, the B string and the E string. They have a brighter tone to them. And those are going to be owned by fingers 2, 3, which would be I, M, A. Okay? So there Will be a couple exceptions, but we will talk about that when we get to those specific examples. Now the first exercise focuses just on the thumb. We want to get the thumb used to moving between these bass note strings. So we're not even going to worry about our fretting hand at all. Right now all I want you to do is I want you to use your thumb. And we're kind of playing with the pad of the finger. Some people like to use a thumb pick. I like to use the pad of my finger. And we're going to go strings 6, 5, 4, 6, 5, 4. I just want you to get used to doing that pattern. Six, five, four.
Now you can probably see even though I'm using my thumb, this might be a little form. But you can see my other fingers are already kind of holding on to the other strings here on my picking hand. Alright, we'll get those ones moving soon. But when I'm not using them, they're kind of just hanging out around the strings. You can also see that my palm is not resting on the bridge. There are some people who like to rest their hand on the bridge. I kind of keep mine perched out here and I use that as support. I like to use my pinky sometimes hanging out down here. You will see me do this from time to time. It's kind of a bad habit I have from teaching myself. But I've been working on trying to to get that pinky to hang out on the strings more versus the body of the guitar. So let's try that exercise one more time with the thumb. Just the top three strings. Ready? We're going to go 1, 2, 3. Strings 6, 5, 4. All the thumbs up.
One more time.
Fantastic. Now we're going to work on the actual fingers, the I, M, A and we're going to do the same pattern. We're going to be playing three notes except this time we're going to be changing fingers. So we're going to be going on the bottom three strings. So I owns the G string, M owns the B string and A owns the high E string. So all we're going to be doing is going I, M, a on strings 3, 2, 1 or G, B, E.
Alright, so what am I doing here technique wise? So a lot of people that they're nervous to pluck the strings in the beginning and they're very quiet. They kind of play like this.
You really do have to pluck the strings.
So I almost have like a upward motion with my fingers when I'm finger picking. So when I have this first string. Okay, I did that a little aggressively, but if you go too aggressive, you're going to hit other strings, but you want to pick. You're going to pick the string. It's finger pickings. So, again, I'm using this pad of my fingertip to play the strings.
So my recommendation, once you get these two exercises individually, is just to put them together, one right after the other. So you do the three bass notes.
And the three treble notes.
Okay. Then back to the top. One, two, three. One, two, three. 1, 2, 3.
Again.
Last time.
Once you get the hang of these exercises, I want you to click on the next video in this series where we're going to be focusing primarily on the thumb, moving it around different strings while we're changing chords.
