Maintain a slight arch in your wrist to isolate the muscles in your fingers. You want to keep your arm and wrist as still as possible while fingerpicking. All the movement comes from your fingers – not your arm or wrist. Some guitarists use their pinky to anchor their hand in position over the strings and restrict their wrist. However, others feel this limits their mobility. Try it and see what works best and feels most comfortable for you.
Check your finger position. You may have to adjust your hand so that your fingers are over the correct strings.
It can help to practice the movement without playing before you start plucking the strings. This will help your fingers learn to move independently of one another and build muscle memory. When you start plucking strings, approach them from the right angle. If you curl them correctly, this shouldn’t be a problem. Ideally, you want to pluck the strings with your fingers at about a 90-degree angle from the strings.
Your thumb will be responsible for fingerpicking the sixth and fifth strings, the lowest notes of any chord. Use a full movement to create a powerful bass drone that lies underneath the higher notes.
For example, you can practice fingerpicking a G chord followed by a C chord. Play the lowest note of the chord with your thumb, the next lowest with your first finger, next with your second finger, and highest note with your third finger. If you want to try some more specific fingerpicking exercises, search online using search terms such as “fingerpicking exercises,” “fingerstyle exercises,” or “fingerpicking practice. " Start out slowly, using a metronome to keep time. As you get the hang of it, you can gradually increase the speed.
Once your thumb is strong, you can start adding in the other notes of the chords with your other fingers. You can also just stick with the bassline, particularly when accompanying a singer or playing with a full band. Experiment until you get a sound that you like. Typically, you want to use a little more power with your thumb than you do with your other fingers. Otherwise, the higher notes in a chord will tend to overpower the root note.
Start with the bass note of the chord, then follow with the other notes. Repeat throughout the song, playing the chords this way. You can also alternate with strumming and fingerpicking to highlight particular chords in an arrangement.
This pattern gets its name from the song “House of the Rising Sun,” but is also used in other folk and rock songs, including “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica. It’s more common to hear it in rock songs that are in 2/4 time.
This pattern can get monotonous if you try to play a whole song with it. However, it can be good for an intro or as an occasional accent. You can also hear it in the intro to “Sound of Silence,” by Simon and Garfunkel.
Which particular fingers you use aren’t all that important, as long as you play the notes on the fifth and sixth strings with your thumbs. If you learned alternating bassline picking you’ll have a leg up, since this pattern incorporates similar movements.
Do exercises with chords to warm up and get your fingers used to playing the basic pattern. Then you can work on some of the more complex patterns. When you’re practicing your fingerpicking technique, play songs you already know how to play really well. That way you won’t be hunting for chords and can focus on your fingerpicking exclusively.
Get in the habit of checking your nails every time you get ready to play your guitar. Keep a set of nail clippers in your guitar bag so you can trim them if necessary.
Practice plucking bass notes with your thumb until you can hit them strong enough that they’ll ring out longer. This will give your playing power and depth. Alternating bassline picking is a good exercise to increase the strength of your bass notes.
It can take some time to adjust to this style of play, as it is more difficult than other fingerpicking techniques. However, if you practice, you’ll learn how to really enhance the melody of the song.
It can help to line up the bass note with the metronome. No matter what you do in the margins, if your bass note is in time, you’ll be in time.
