Hey guys, the weekend is just about to start, and I want to give you something to work for a couple of days. Today I am going to show you a beautiful melody in D major on acoustic guitar.
The goal is to learn how to play a simple melody with just the bass note of the chord before adding additional notes to make it sound more melodic and exciting to play.
The D major key is perfect to create beautiful sounding chords with just the bass notes as we can benefit from open strings such as the D string, E string, and A string. By playing the bass note with the open string, the melody is easy to play.
We will also explore the melody up and down the neck so that you can start playing in different position of the fretboard.
Take things step-by-step and learn a few chords at a time.
Hey guys, welcome to this awesome fingerpicking guitar lesson. Today I am going to show you the ultimate fingerpicking pattern exercise for control, strength, and speed.
If you want to take your fingerstyle technique to the next level, make sure you try this awesome exercise. The speed is 70 bpm per minute (sextuplet each beat) or 210 bpm (two notes per beat). There are six notes for each pattern, so if you are a beginner, I recommend you start with 150 bpm playing two notes per beat. Then slowly increase to 210 bpm.
I have been using this ultimate fingerpicking pattern for a long time, and I still use it when I want to revamp my technique.
Make sure you practice slowly before increasing the speed.
In this lesson, we are going to repeat the same fingerpicking pattern over and over again on each chord we are playing. By practicing this way, our fingers will become stronger and faster.
There are three things that you will improve with this fingerpicking exercise:
Speed: The ability to pluck the strings faster.
Control: Pluck the strings with the right intensity and dynamics.
Strength: You fingers will get less tired.
The fingerpicking pattern exercise is straightforward and based on six notes, also called sextuplets.
I highly recommend that you spend a little bit of time practicing the pattern alone before adding the different chords and voicing.
About the Chord Progression
The chord progression is very simple and played entirely in the position I; however, each chord is played with a lot of different voicing. The voicing is the singing note of a chord (the highest note of the chord). By changing the voicing, we can create melodies within “within the chords” and beautiful sounding chord progressions.
The chord progression goes as follows: Am – Em – G – Dm the second section, Fmaj7 – C – Dm – G.
How to Pluck the Strings
There are three rules that you should follow to make sure your plucking technique is correct. These three fingerpicking rules can be applied for both acoustic and classical guitar, and they represent the groundwork for the perfect strings plucking.
Rule 1: Thumb in front of the finger.
The thumb is a very busy finger, and it will usually pluck more than one strings. Most of the time, the thumb will pluck the bottom three strings (4th, 5th, and 6th strings) in what we consider to be the bass note or root note of a chord or melody.
The right-hand thumb will also determine the balance and position for the plucking fingers. If you pluck the strings using the wrong thumb position your plucking fingers will suffer too.
Assign a string fro each finger. The thumb will cover the bottom three strings.
Keep the thumb in front of the fingers so that it is easy to pluck downward without clashing with the index.
I suggest you also try to pluck the string with the side of your thumb for better tone.
Fingerpicking Pattern for Control
Fingerpicking guitar sounds excellent, but it can be challenging at first. So many beginner guitar players don’t know how to pluck the strings, which finger should be used and the correct right-hand position to adopt.
On top of all that there are so much information and many fingerpicking exercises to work on that scared even the most determined beginner players. This leads to frustration. I hear a lot of stories of guitar player who avoid fingerstyle guitar altogether for a long time before getting back into it.
In this lesson, I am going to show you what I think is the essential beginner fingerpicking pattern exercise that you should practice. As you will see, we are going to focus on a repetitive pattern that will help you improve control and speed.
As you are working on one exercise only, you focus on exactly what you need to learn how to get started with fingerpicking guitar.
Why I Love Fingerpicking Guitar
Fingerpicking guitar or fingerstyle guitar is a technique of playing guitar in which the right-hand fingers pluck the strings directly with the fingertip, fingernail or finger-picks.
I think that this guitar technique is one of the most creative approaches on guitar with endless possibilities and ways to create, rearrange, and compose beautiful music.
The fingerstyle technique is one of the most versatile technique on guitar, and it is present in several genres and style of music. Fingerstyle and fingerpicking mean the same thing even though fingerpicking refers to specific traditions such as country, blues, and folk. Many famous guitar players became extremely popular fingerpicking players.
The songs and melodies arranged with fingerstyle can include chords, rhythm, melodies, arpeggios, and other techniques combined. Often we can combine a bunch of chords with a very simple melody. Most of the time, the thumb will play the bass notes (bass line) while the fingers play the melody or chords.
With this approach, you can decide to have the melody within the guitar part. Fingerstyle guitar is excellent for singers to because of provides all of the essential music elements such as chords, rhythm, melodies, and in some cases percussive approach.
Fingerstyle Advantage and Disadvantage
Fingerpicking guitar is excellent, but not everything is cool. There are a few disadvantages when you play fingerstyle guitar.
Let’s start with the advantages:
One of the things I love the most about fingerstyle guitar is the fact that you can play multiple non-adjacent strings at the same time. This means you will be able to play a bass note (lower note) with the thumb while playing a higher note with the fingers. You can play intervals such as octaves, sixth, thirds, etc. depending on the type of interval you want to achieve.
Another awesome thing is that you don’t have to carry around a guitar pick. You pluck the strings with your fingernails.
With fingerpicking patterns, you can decide to play chords, melodies, and bass parts simultaneously making the acoustic guitar a polyphonic instrument.
Fingerstyle guitar can be easy to start with if you only play single notes melody along with one bass note.
As you pluck simple melodies, you have the feeling of playing a song because the melody is within the guitar part.
Now some disadvantages:
A lot of guitar players struggle to get started with fingerpicking guitar. The fact that you have to pluck one string at a time could be a real challenge. With a technique such as strumming, you can easily brush the strings up and down with a guitar pick.
If you use fingerpicking technique, you will have to keep your fingernails in good condition and maintain them at the right length.
Playing guitar with heavy gauge can be quite challenging with a fingerstyle technique. Your nails can easily break. With a guitar pick, you will be able to handle heavy strings easily.
Same Chord Progression Played in 20 Different Ways
Playing one thing in many different ways is probably the number one thing I love the most about music. I mean, why would you want to play the same thing over and over!
The truth is, music is one of the most creative things on the planet. There are infinite ways of playing one idea an in this video I am going to show you how to play the same chord progression in 20 different ways using different fingerpicking patterns, percussive techniques, and style.
I hope that with this lesson I can inspire you to try different approaches on things you already play, such as chord progressions and melodies.
The goal is not to try as many approaches as possible but only stuff that you like and enjoy playing. This is not an exercise that you do to improve your technique! Instead is a way to explore different ways of playing guitar and hopefully only things you enjoy playing.
So in this video, you have my “Top 20” guitar approaches … what’s yours?
Hey guys, let me show you this simple chord secret I like to use a lot. In this lesson, I am going to show you how to substitute chords from different keys.
We are going to use a concept called “Modal Interchange” or “Borrowed Chord,” in which a chord borrowed from the parallel key (E minor) is used to create more interesting chord progressions.
Borrowed chords are typically used as “color chords,” providing harmonic variety through contrasting scale forms, which are major scales and the three types of minor scales.
One of the most frequent modal interchanges is the one on the 4th degree of the scale.
Example: In the key of E major, the chord on the 4th degree of the scale is A major. We can borrow the chord from the 4th degree of the E minor scale (Parallel key) which is A minor to give a completely different sound to the progression we are playing.
Today we are going to learn the relationship between the E major chord (I degree) and the A minor chord (IV degree of the E minor scale).
Hey, guys welcome to another awesome lesson. The weekend has just started, so I want to give you something cool to learn. In this fingerpicking guitar lesson, I am going to show you how to add notes to a simple melody in five steps.
Each step will have an additional layer, and it will be more challenging.
Here are the five steps:
Melody only
Melody and bass
Melody and chords
Melody and arpeggio
Melody and rhythmic percussion
Make sure you take it step-by-step and learn one layer at a time before moving on to the next layer.
Hey, guys, I hope you are having a fantastic day. Today I am going to show you a bunch of magical chord shapes that will make your playing interesting.
Let’s get started with the A major magical chord shapes.
One of the awesome thing about the A major chord is the fact that we can play around with opens strings a lot, especially the E and B open string.
In the first example, I am playing a very simple Aadd9 which is played in position I. This chord has the same shape as the A major but with the B string open.
The second chord is an Amaj7 chord played in position VI (index finger on the sixth fret of the neck). The major seventh is performed on the B string fret 9 (G#). This magical chord shape is one of my favorites as it sounds dreamy and melodic.
Moving on to the third A major chord up to position IX. This is another Aadd9. This chord can be challenging and stretchy, so make sure you practice slowly. There are two ways of playing this chord:
Bar chord on fret IX and little finger playing the B string fret 12.
Index finger on the G string fret IX, B string fret XII with the little finger, and E string fret IX with the middle finger.
Start with the first chord shape if you struggle with a finger stretch.
The C major Chord
The second chord I am playing for this magical chord shapes exercise is the C major chord. There are again four different shapes played using fingerpicking technique. For this chord, I am going to add major 6th whenever I can.
The first C major chord start with a Cadd9(6) played in position III (Index on the third fret). I like this chord because the voicing on the E string fret V sounds beautiful and charming. Notice that I will then change the voicing to the open E.
I will then move on to the second chord, which is probably one of my favorite. I will play the Root note of the chord on the low E string fret VIII with the little finger. I will then add the G string fret V and B and E open string. This is a beautiful C major 7th chord. I can also play with different voicing and add the D string fret VII if I feel like adding the Major 6th again.
The third chord is indeed a beautiful way to play the C major chord. It is played in position X (index on the tenth fret). I start with a basic triad before changing the voicing on the B string fret 10 (again another A, Major 6th).
The A Minor Chord
The last chord for this chord progression is an A minor chord played in three different positions.
I will start by playing an Amin9(11) chord in position III. This chord is played with a very interesting magical chord shape with the C note on the G string fret V, D note on the D string fret III, and the D note on the E string fret VII.
I will then switch to the Am6, which is an excellent interesting chord played in position III with the major 6th on the B string fret VII (F# note).
The last chord is a beautiful Am9. This chord can be stretchy, so practice slowly.
Three Steps to Make your Old CHORDS Sound Beautiful … and Bluesy
Hey guys, I hope you are having a fantastic day! In this fingerpicking guitar lesson, I am going to show you three steps to make your old chords sound beautiful and bluesy.
One of the amazing things about music is that we can easily spice up chords with simple tricks to make them sound more bluesy and musical.
The approach I am about to show can be used on acoustic and electric guitar, so make sure you give it a try even if you don’t play acoustic guitar.
There are three steps we are going to use to spice up chords:
Add phrase from the root note
Suspended chords
Add A Major Pentatonic scale
Good luck with this lesson guys 🙂 Tab on my Patreon page.
Hey guys, I hope you are having a fantastic Sunday. In this guitar lesson, I am going to show you three easy percussive technique on the guitar you should know.
I am honestly not a huge fan of percussive guitar, especially when the percussion gets too crazy but I do have three types of percussive technique that I use all the time.
The bass technique: Strike the bass note with the side of the thumb
The thumb slap: Strike the string with the thumb
Thumb slap and strum: Strike the string with the thumb simultaneously with the strumming.
I just wrote a quick instrumental combining those three-technique.
I am going to show you how to use them step by step so that you can then implement this percussive technique into your playing.
