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Guitar chord forum - chordie → Acoustic → finger picking question ?
First off, have to say love the job your doing. chordie has been helping me get through the hell that is the first year of learning guitar.
My problem, like so many, is i can,t strum properly. (i.e. over and over.)
now, a guitar friend of mine said, maybe i would be better suited to finger style.
my concern is, as i struggle strumming, would going on to finger picking be to bigger jump or should i just persist with it.
Pesky8,
First post and welcome.
Strumming and fingerpicking are 2 different beasts. I would recommend strumming first to get the beat down before proceeding to finger picking. I do both and most people say finger picking sounds better which I agree. But finger picking also opens you up to more susceptible errors that are more noticeable. I 2 finger pick (thumb and index) and it has worked for me for most of the songs that I strummed first and then went to finger picking. Finger picking and singing can be extremely hard and requires even more practice than strumming. If you still want to finger pick, I recommend "Dust in the wind" by the state directly north of Oklahoma. That song was my first venture into finger picking and I'll rotate around finger picking and strumming so I can practice both.
Of course, as others have said, practice is your best friend. Good luck, LD
many new guitarist have a problem with strumming and strumming along with a video helps as you mirror the motion of the person playing, strumming is rhythm,time,beats and accents some can learn this from a book but others need more personal tutoring (guitar teacher) others can pickup the strumming by watching others choose which is best for you, Fingerpicking is different and I learned how by following instructions in a book by Lou Manzi "Fingerpicking" it comes with a CD of each exercise so you can play along with the lesson as you read the notes and it shows which fingers to use on a given note or notes, and tabs are included, you have to start from the beginning and progress slow and keep reviewing back to the first lesson and play as far as you can comfortably and then move to the next and so on,over time you will with practice learn 
I am also trying to learn fingerpicking after all these years. What I tend to do is pick the top three strings with my thumb and the bottom three with my index finger randomly hitting different strings as I play. While singing along, this tends to sound pretty good. At least to me. I am also trying to learn diferent picking styles, which are a definite picking pattern, such as travis picking. It is much harder, but it too, will come to you as you build up the finger memory, which comes with lots of practice.
this may sound wierd , but Victor Wooton has a video on youtube about slap bass and he shows you how to use all your fingers on your picking hand. It worked wonders on my finger picking on guitar!
Have you tried practicing with a metronome? It is maddening to use one, but nothing will help you understand the importance of consistency of beat better than practicing with a metronome.
Good to see you back among the contributing Selso. Thanks for the tip. My basses have been calling out to me.
- Zurf
thanks zurf, its good to be home again
This is one of my videos, its a song i composed and its fingerpicked the guitar is in open D tuning and the patterns are classical style this is not intended as a tutorial, and there is a young man from china Sungha Jung who excels at this the link is on my homepage on youtube (galaxieguard) great player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjoBotwU … annel_page
Welcome Pesky. Don't need to change to finger picking. Just add new practice techniques to the ones you already do. Keep in mind when your fret hand (left) stops making progress, you can still get better when your strum or picking hand improves some. So if you give the left hand a break, the right hand can learn some stuff.
For picking consider the thumb in charge of strings 4,5,6 and first three fingers each are in charge of strings 1,2,& 3. There are exceptions, but this is a general rule. Try Landslide in a Travis pick (thumb, 1, thumb, 2)...where 1 is index finger and 2 is middle finger, etc. Hope that helps.
And take a look at Russell's youtube example to see where it will eventually lead.
Guitar chord forum - chordie → Acoustic → finger picking question ?
