Ultimate Fingerstyle Alternate Fingering

Exercise for Beginners

Hey guys, I hope you are having a fantastic Monday. I just came back from a quick break, so I am super excited to get started with new guitar lessons!

Today I will show you what I consider to be the ultimate fingerstyle alternate fingering exercise for beginners. Practice this exercise, and I am sure your alternate fingering technique will improve drastically.

When it comes to fingerstyle guitar, alternate fingering is probably one of the most important developing approaches. So many melodies and patterns are played using alternate fingering, so there is no reason why you shouldn’t be working on this technique.

Many times, beginner guitar players end up plucking the strings with one finger only, which kind of defeat the purpose of playing guitar using plucking technique. If you have to play with one finger, you might as well use a guitar pick!.

My goal is to give you practical exercise that you can use to improve your fingerstyle technique and fluidity, plucking control, and speed.

I also want the exercise to be fun to play so that you can keep coming back playing it and further improve your plucking technique.

As always, take things step by step and learn one bar at a time. You can’t improve in one day, so don’t stress too much about playing the entire exercise quickly.

Focus on the right-hand movement and pluck the strings smoothly.

Let’s get started!

The Video

The Alternate Fingering Movement

The entire exercise is based on one simple right-hand movement: middle – index – middle – index throughout.

The awesome thing about practicing fingerstyle alternate fingering is that you can literally develop any type of musical idea to play with the alternate fingering.

In this exercise, we are working on a melody in E minor key played on one string, which you can learn right now by following the guitar tab below.

How Fingerstyle Alternate Fingering Works

Once you become familiar with the melody, add the additional notes that complete the exercise.

For each note of the melody, you will add three open E. This is a crucial step because it will give you the complete alternate fingering pattern m-i-m-i to improve your plucking technique.

Check the guitar Tab below.