Two SIMPLE Fingerpicking Patterns to Play 1000s of Songs!

In this lesson, I'm going to show you two very distinct finger picking patterns that will allow you to play thousands of songs. I'm not even kidding. By learning two finger picking patterns with distinct timings or feels, you can then go and apply them to almost any song you would want to play on the guitar. And if you don't believe me, watch this lesson to find out how.

So the first thing we're going to start off with is the feels. Before I show you the patterns, we have to talk about the timing. So most songs, I would say 80 to 90% of songs are going to be written in these two timings. And we have what's called a straight feel, which you think of like rock and roll with a drum beat and a snare drum. And then we have waltz feel. Okay. Think of like, you know, almost like classical music, but it's music that has a sway to it. Okay. And straight, straight time is what we call four, four time in music. And waltz feel is what we call three, four time in music. And if you don't know what those are, those are just called time signatures. And to keep it very, very simple for you here, it's how high we're counting. Okay? So the top number, we're either counting to four or we're counting to three. But they have very different feels. Let me show you. So the first finger pattern that I'm going to play for you is four. Four. Okay. And this is what we call our straight feel. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four.

Okay, very simple pattern.

And then our waltz sphere.

You can all of a sudden feel your body starting to do this, right? That's the waltz time. Let's do four, four again.

See you can't all of a sudden your body has to change. You can't sway to this. So this is straigh time. Okay. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. 1 and 2 and 3 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 1and 2 and 3 and. Okay, so the waltz has more of this sway to it and that's how you'll know the difference. If you don't know the difference between timing and signatures. If you're just listening to a music and you feel like you're going to do this, that indicates that you're going to be in this waltz or three, four time. If you're listening to music and you feel like you're really rigid and you can't do that swaying thing, I'm guaranteeing you it's probably in four, four. All right, so now that we understand the difference between the timings. What we're going to do is I'm going to start teaching you the first pattern which is our four, four time. And then I'm going to show you a couple examples of songs that you could use this with. So this pattern is going to require us to use our first. Nope. So this pattern is going to require us to use our thumb, our first finger and our second finger. Now our thumb is going to be playing the bass notes which are the lowest sounding pitch of each of the chords. So I'm going to give you an example of a six string chord, an example of a five string chord and an example of a four string chord so that you know how to apply this to any chord you could want to play on the guitar. So a six string chord example would be a G chord. Okay. A five string chord example would be a C chord and a four string chord example would be a D chord. Okay. So if we take each one of those chords one by one, let's talk about the bass notes. Now the thumb is going to be playing two bass notes on a D chord. It's going to be the fourth string and the third string and just going to play those together. So it's going to be fourth, third, fourth, third.

Okay, so that's our D string. Now we come up to the C chord. We're going to be switching over now to the fifth string and the fourth string. Five, four, five, four. Let's go back to D. So D is four, three, four, three, four, three. And C is going to be five, four, five, four, five, four. Okay, now you're probably saying, well, Lauren, that means the sixth string is going to be 6, 5. Right? You could. But we're actually going to go 6, 4, 6, 4. And the reason for that is because when you get into some other finger picking patterns like Travis picking down the road, it's going to be very useful to know know how to skip over that string. Okay. You could do this and it won't sound horrible, but it sounds better going 6, 4. So let's go through that from the start again. We're going to start on the D chord. 4 and 3, ready? 1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, 4, 3, 4, 3.

Okay, let's hop to the C chord. Now we're going to go four by four.

Okay. Now we're going to hop on over to the G chord. Ready? And G6, four.

Now you may have to watch your finger. All right. Your finger picking finger hand if you need to. We're going to Jump back down to Dino. Okay. Because that's going to be a big jump. All right. Four, three. There it is. Okay, back to C.

And then finally on G.

Okay. So that's what our thumb is doing. And I wanted to emphasize that because the thumb is the most important part of finger picking. Getting those bass notes. So now we know what the bass notes are doing. Now we're going to figure out what the other two fingers are doing. They're going to be playing our treble notes, our higher sounding notes. So they're going to play the other two strings. So if I have a D chord, it's going to be 4, 3. And then my second finger is going to play the B string. Sorry. My first finger is going to play the B string. Second finger is going to play the E string. So it's four, three. And then first finger plays the second string. And then second finger plays the bottom string, that first string.

So it's thumb, thumb, 1, 2. Okay. That's the finger numbers. Number. So thumb, thumb, 1, 2.

Okay. Now, in terms of my hand, Lauren, what am I doing? I'm just kind of perching the fingers right over the strings. I'm not pulling the fingers away from the strings. A lot of students do that when they first start learning finger pickering. Don't pull your fingers away. Now, this is kind of like a bad habit, but I know so many people who do it, and it's very comfortable for me. I like to put my pinky on the guitar as kind of like a perch for my fingers. It's comfortable for me. Some people do not like that. Some people like to keep it free floating. And if you were learning from a classical guitar teacher, they would want you to keep your hand probably free floating. But I think someone like Tommy Emanuel also puts his finger down. So if he can do it, I can do it. But that's just comfortable for me. And I might change it up depending on what I'm doing. But just so you know, my pinky's here. It's not stuck to the guitar, though. It's very loose. There shouldn't be any tension. Okay, so that's our D chord. Now we come to the C chord. We're going to just shift everything up. It's going to be strings 5, 4, 3, 2.

And you can kind of see what happened to my pinky here. I lifted it off the guitar, and now I'm holding on to the high E string with my third finger, just pointing out my little things that I do to make myself comfortable. Okay. And Then the G string. Six, four, three, two. So it's thumb, thumb. It's always thumb, thumb, one, two.

Okay, so let's try the D chord. So we got D. Ready? Thumb, thumb, 1, 2. Thumb, thumb, 1,2.

Now we're going to go to our C chord.

Okay, here comes our G chord.

Now you can hear how that sounds. Really nice. All right, so let's apply this to some songs. So I can show you that I'm not joking when I say you can literally apply this to any song that's M4,4. All right, so I pulled a couple songs. I'm not going to sing them, so I don't get hit with copyright, but I wrote down some progressions. So we have Country Roads, John Denver. Great song. So we'd have something, you know. Ready? 1, 2, 3. Country roads.

Take me home to the.

Where I be.

So you kind of get the idea of this, right? You get the feel for that. It's like, oh, yeah, you could use that on a song like Country Roads. Now, a slower song I wrote down here. Hey Jude by the Beatles. This is a very slow ballad, so you may want to do this progression twice per chord. So in the first example, we were playing quarter notes. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. In this example, I would play it as eighth note. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and 1 and 2 and 3 and four, and 1 and 2 and 3. Remember.

Heart and um.

So there's two examples of where you could apply this to a song written in four, four. Country Roads really is a great song that you can finger pick. And I love putting a finger picking pattern on a slow ballad. But now let's move on to the waltz time and teach you the second pattern. Now the great thing about this one is we're not gonna have to adjust our hand. Basically our first finger owns the third string, our second finger owns the second string. And now we're gonna be using our third finger. And our third finger is going to hone the high E string. And our thumb is only going to be playing one bass note with this pattern. We call these arpeggios. And what an arpeggio is is when you individually, individually pick notes versus strumming all of them at the same time. So an arpeggio is when you pick the notes individually and you let them ring out. It's a very, very nice sound. Think of songs like House of the Rising Sun, Hallelujah. Those are great examples of songs that would use some type of arpeggiated pattern. So what we're going to do here is I'm going to show you again a six string chord, a five string chord and a four string chord. And we already know the bass notes a bit, so I'll go a little bit faster. So the G chord, the thumb is going to be playing the sixth string. On the C chord, the thumb is going to be playing the fifth string. And on the D chord we're going to be playing that fourth string. Now I said these fingers are not going to move. And the count for this is going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and. Okay. 1 and 2 and 3 and. Or I just like to count it in six. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 1, 2, 3, four.

Okay. That's how I like to count. It's easier for me to count to six because we're playing six individual notes. So for G it's going to be six, three, two. One, two, three, six. Three, two. One, two, three. Okay. And then when we move to our C chord, it's going to be five, three, two. One, two, three. Ready? Five, three, two. One, 2, 3, 5, 3, 2. One, 2, 3.

Okay. And then the D chord, you guessed it's four, three, two. One, Two, Three, Four, Three, Two. One, Two, Three.

Which already sounds like our first song. Exactly. Everybody Hurts by R.E.M.

Another great example. Or you could play a song like Amazing Grace. And this one I can actually sing because it's in the public domain. Ready? So we're going to start on a chord.

Amazing grace how sweet, sweet the sound it saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost so such a great sound for that song. And then another example I have here is House of the Rising Sun. This one's going to start on A minor. Ready? So we got. There is.

So if you enjoyed this lesson, you're really going to enjoy my entire finger picking series, which is six lessons to go from absolute beginner to playing your first songs on the guitar with finger picking. Go check out that entire playlist right over there.