Technique Lab Program – Module 1 | Alternate Fingering
Alternate Fingering Lesson 1
Hey guys welcome to the first lesson for the Technique lab program.
In this lesson we are going to work on one of the most important aspect of fingerstyle guitar: The alternate fingering technique.
Alternate fingering is indeed the technique you’ll use the most so developing a good control, finger dexterity and beautiful tone is of paramount importance.
About this Lesson
Key: E Minor
Technique: Alternate fingering.
Alternate Fingering Pattern: m-i throughout (middle – index)
Sections: There is one section with four chords. Each chord will be played as an arpeggio (one note at a time), with each note of the chord played four times. The plucking pattern starts with the middle finger followed by the index. Notice that the we play the notes with the left hand with only one finger, the index.
The goal here is to alternate m-i throughout while playing the notes with fluidity and confidence.
Level: For beginners and intermediate guitar players.
The Most Simple Plucking Pattern with Beautiful Chords
Hey guys, I hope you are having a fantastic Monday.
Today I want to talk to you about the most simple plucking pattern that you can play on guitar. We will play this pattern with beautiful chords, so I am pretty sure you are going to like this lesson.
The reason why I am showing you this lesson is that I want to answer one of the questions that you guys ask a lot, which is “When can we practice more advanced plucking patterns?”.
I understand that many of you feel like it’s time to try something more difficult, but the question I have is “Do we need to learn advanced fingerpicking patterns?” and also “Can we write a beautiful chord progression with the most simple plucking pattern?
In this fingerstyle guitar lesson, I am going to show you a beautiful chord progression played with one of the most simple fingerpicking patterns on guitar.
My goal is to show that you don’t need to learn advanced plucking patterns to play something beautiful.
I am not saying you should never try challenging picking patterns! I am just saying that before you move on to something difficult, you should experiment with simple fingerpicking patterns and get the most out of them.
This is a fingerstyle lesson for beginners who want to learn how to play beautiful chords on acoustic guitar using a simple plucking pattern.
Let me show you the three fingerpicking rules I teach to all of my students. These three rules help you understand how to position the right hand correctly for perfect plucking, beautiful tone and flawless technique.
Rule #1: How to position the thumb for smooth plucking.
Rule #2: The 45-degree angle for the index, middle and ring finger.
Rule #3: How to pluck the strings of your guitar.
Fingerpicking Rule #1 | Thumb Position
Position the thumb in front of the fingers and pluck the strings downwards. Use the side of the fingertip to pluck the strings smoothly. If play with fingernails, use a combination of flesh and nail. I don’t like the sound of the fingernail alone, which is way too bright for my ears. Instead, I prefer the thumb position that the majority of classical and acoustic guitar players use. There is always room for trying your approach, however, if you are a beginner I recommend that you start with this simple rule.
Fingerpicking Rule #2 | Index, Middle and Ring Finger Position
Pluck the strings upwards with index, middle and ring finger. I never use the little finger to pluck the strings even though some guitar players do. Position them at a 45-degree angle for smooth plucking and rounded beautiful tone. If you play with fingernails, you should always use a combination of flesh and nail. Plucking without nails gives you a dull and quiet timbre. Playing just with fingernails will do the opposite, giving you a bright tone way, which sometimes could be too loud.
Fingerpicking Rule #3 | Fingerpicking Articulation and Knuckles Movement
When plucking the strings, the fingers perform two movements: Preparation and plucking.
With the preparation, we bring the finger away from the string to build momentum and power before the plucking, just like a soccer player raises his leg before hitting the ball.
Without the preparation, we can’t generate the power necessary for the finger to pluck the string, just like a soccer player can’t hit the ball without raising his leg.
The preparation ends the moment the finger touches the string and becomes “Plucking.”
The preparation and plucking movement is possible thanks to our knuckles. The knuckles are joints formed by the bones of the fingers, and they are responsible for the fingers movements.
The thumb has two knuckles, the major or 1st knuckle, which is the one that connects the finger to the hand and the minor knuckle or 2nd, which is the one between the major knuckle and the fingertip.
The index, middle, ring and little finger have three knuckles, the major (1st) and two minor (2nd and 3rd).
With the thumb, we perform the preparation and plucking with the major knuckle only. Next time you pluck with the thumb notice how the 2nd knuckle doesn’t move at all.
For the index, middle and ring finger the movement is different.
The movement begins just like the thumb with the finger moving away from the string (preparation with the major knuckle). The plucking though is performed by the 2nd knuckle, which plucks the strings upwards.
2.Practice Simple Fingerpicking Patterns
What is a fingerpicking pattern?
A fingerpicking pattern is a sequence of finger movements that we use to play chords and melodies. This sequence can be smooth or very complex depending on the number of notes the pattern contains.
There are hundreds of different fingerpicking patterns even though guitar players always end up playing the most common ones.
How to name the right-hand fingers.
If you have been checking other fingerpicking lessons chances are that you stumbled upon the word P i m a.
P i m a stands for thumb, index, middle and ring finger. The letters come from the Italian (or Spanish) language Pollice = P, indice = i, medio = m and anulare = a.
The simple fingerpicking pattern we are learning today is the P i m a pattern. Assign the thumb to 6th, 5th and 4th string, the index to the 3rd string, the middle to the 2nd string and ring to the 1st string.
3.Add a Beautiful Chord Progression to the Fingerpicking Patterns.
You learned how to position the right-hand and how to pluck the strings correctly. We also learned how to name the right-hand fingers and how to play the simple fingerpicking pattern in this lesson.
Now you can finally add a beautiful chord progression to the pattern.
The chord progression we are learning today is in E minor key and goes as follows:
Section 1: Em | Dadd9 | Cadd9 | D |
Section 2: Em | Dadd9 | Am |
Section 3: Em | Dadd9 | Cadd9 | D |
Some of the chords, like the Em and Dadd9 will take two P i m a pattern each while the Cadd9 will take three patterns and the Am four. The D major is played with a melody. The
It is fascinating to see how busy this chord progression is despite the simple right-hand pattern.
Hey guys, welcome to another super fingerstyle lesson. I am currently in Italy so I am recording in my basement.
In this guitar lesson I am going to show you how to create beautiful chords with little effort using the pedal tone technique.
The pedal tone is a technique in which a chord is sustained while the bass note changes. There are a lot of different type of examples using the pedal tone but in this lesson we will be focusing on the one explained above.
In this lesson we will be playing the same chord shape throughout while changing the bass note only. This is an awesome technique because allows you to simplify chords and at the same time come up with new possibilities and ideas.
This is a fingerstyle guitar lesson that beginners, as well as intermediate, can use to learn more about the pedal tone technique, experiment with new chords, improve fingers stretch and plucking.
The exercise is in a key of D major but you can literally apply the pedal tone concept on any chord progression.
The first thing we will be learning in this lesson is the chord progression in D major. We will not play any of the basic chords that you probably already know even though you’ll still have to memorize the chord progression of chords.
It goes as follows: D – D/F# – G. D – D/F# – G – A. Bm – A – G
Once you are done with that, you can move on to the next part of the video where I show you the Pedal tone approach.
The Pedal Tone
In the exercise I am about to show you we are going to apply the pedal tone on the top two strings (E and B string).
We will basically play the same two notes throughout and change the bass note only.
Writing musical ideas on the spot is one of the things I love the most about playing guitar.
In this video, I am going to play an emotional solo in D minor key using a combination of chords, melody, and solo.
One thing that I like about this solo is the fact that I recorder a backing track with the accompaniment, which only kicks in in the middle of the solo.
I had to record the whole thing with the click to make sure the accompaniment starts at the right bar. That made the structure pretty simple to follow.
Sixteen bars guitar only, then solo with accompaniment for another 16 bars. After the solo, I am playing a simple melody using basic triads for another 8 bars before going back to the main theme for the last sixteen bars.
Working with a structure is one of the most exciting things you’ll ever experience. I love the feeling of knowing what’s coming so that I don’t have to improvise.
I have a new module for the BlitzGuitar Academy. This time we will be working on a piece called Minuet in G by Johann Sebastian Bach.
This is one of my all time favorite pieces and for this module we will break it down into “Simple melody” and “Melody and Chords”.
In the first video you will learn the simple melody of the piece without bass notes and chords, then on the next video you can learn the original Minuet as I played on the video.
The Minuet can be broken down into eight levels, but rather than have eight different videos this time I decided to put everything in one video. At the beginning there is a list of the eight different levels and where they start within the video.
Today you will learn the “Simple melody” and I will release the “Melody and Chords” in about one week.
This is a lesson available for members only and you’ll have to become a Patron to access the full lesson and tab.
Hello guys, I hope you are having a fantastic day.
In this fingerstyle guitar lesson I am going to show you a very important concept that can change the way you play basic chords called “Guitar voicing”.
A voicing is the singing note of the chord. By changing the singing note, you can easily create beautiful sounding chords without necessarily have to learn more advanced chords.
The awesome thing about using the “Guitar voicing” system is that it can be applied on basic chords such as triads and simple chords with extensions.
We will be working on a chord progression in E minor and I am going to show you how to change the voicing of each chord so that they sound fun to play, interesting and catchy.
This lesson is perfect for any guitar player who want to learn a very simple trick to spice up simple chords.
If you have been playing guitar for a while chances are that you have been playing around with a song called Spanish Romance.
This anonymous piece of music is probably the most famous, most played classical/acoustic piece on guitar and today I am going to show you a very simple way to make it sound “Different”.
We will be playing the original Spanish Romance piece but with a different rhythm. I call that Spanish romance rumba style.
The different rhythmic pattern is very simple and it will not alter the original song except for its rhythm.
I assume you already know the song and in this video we will be focusing more on the different rhythmic pattern than the actual notes but you can download the tab on my Patreon page and learn it at your own pace.
Check the video below to learn how to finally spice up this beautiful piece and make it sound more rhythmic and fun to play.
Today I want to show you how to spice up a chord progression using the min7add9 chords.
I really love these type of jazzy, smooth Latin chords for many reasons.
Easy to learn: As you’ll see in this lesson, the min7add9 chords we are about to learn are very simple to memorize. Because of fingerstyle we can make this chord as simple as a three strings chord.
Beautiful sound: The min7add9 chords sound beautiful. They always add a Lain, jazzy and smooth color to the chords.
Versatile: They can be used in pop, jazz, Latin, Soul, RnB music.
In this guitar lesson we will be working on a chord progression in B minor. We will learn the chords as well as a rhythmic bass line to play along with the chords.
This is a great exercise if you want to improve your rhythmic skills as well as musicality, tone and chords.
I don’t consider these chords to be “beginner friendly”. They can be quite stretchy on the left hand and there can be a lot of buzzing when you first start practice them however I would encourage everyone to give it a try.
Challenging yourself is the only way to really make it to the next level.
Today I had a ton of fun playing these 7 awesome Spanish melodies on my acoustic guitar using a backing track I recorded a while ago.
One of the thing that I like the most about Spanish guitar is the fact that you can create a beautiful solo with only one scale and a bunch of simple chords.
Of course, I am not trying to make it sound like it’s easy to play over a Spanish chord progression. I am just saying that you can create simple, beautiful and awesome Spanish melodies by simply using one scale.
In this fingerstyle video I am going to show you how you can break down a solo into 7 different melodies that you can learn separately.
Each melody is played using a different melodic and rhythmic approach so that you can have a verity of ideas to get inspired from.
The chord progression is very simple: Am – G – F and E. The scale we will be using is the A minor scale (and sometimes the A minor harmonic scale).
You can get hold of the Tab, video tab and backing track on my Patreon page.
We are introducing a new feature called “Video Tab”. In this video the tab is played on the screen so that you can follow the notes with the tempo. I am sure you will find that useful.
