Estas Tonne Fingerstyle Lesson

There are very few guitar players that come across as impressive as Estas Tonne. Born in Ukraine in 1975, Estas Tonne’s guitar style has impressed guitar players and many crowds all over the World.

There are three words to describe his guitar playing: Charismatic, expressive, and Gypsy.

Estas Tonne’s fingerstyle guitar has become so popular all over the world that it took him from busking on the streets to sell out arenas where he performs and promotes his music influenced by Flamenco, Gypsy, Latin and modern music.

The Fingerstyle Guitar Lesson

Today I want to try to give you an idea of his guitar playing by sharing a guitar lesson with you based on one of his fingerstyle patterns. Before we get started, let me say that his guitar style is tough to “code,” so don’t expect the same bit of music he usually plays.

This guitar lesson is not a transcription of one of his works, but an attempt to (ethically) steal a piece of his style so that I (and hopefully you) can understand more about this awesome guitar player.

I apologize if what you’ll find doesn’t resonate with you.

Learning from Estas Tonne’s fingerstyle isn’t easy at all.

Enjoy the guitar lesson.

Video Tutorial

In this video tutorial, I will show you one of the famous Estas Tonne fingerstyle patterns that can be used over different chord progressions. You can find a similar pattern in the song Golden Dragon which is the song that inspired this lesson.

Let’s get into details with step by step guitar lesson below.

“Stealing” from Estas.

One thing handy that we can do as guitar players is to analyze and learn from others. Transcribing our favorite players allows you to learn so many different aspects, techniques, and musical ideas that are not part of your guitar playing.

We can ethically “steal” from all these guitar players to learn more techniques and slowly incorporate them into our guitar playing.

The Guitar Tab

Below you will find the guitar tab for the Estas Tonne fingerstyle exercise and few tips on how to approach such a difficult guitar part.

I highly recommend you take it step by step and practice one bar at a time as you will see the guitar part is pretty challenging.

Estas Tonne fingerstyle exercise

The song starts with a super-challenging into which is just one bar long but contains twelve notes. Sorry about that!

The one bar intro serves as a launch for this beautiful melody played on one string.

The whole piece should be played with emphasis and flow, focusing on achieving the right balance between volume, fluidity, and musicality.

I highly recommend that when you first start practicing this fingerstyle exercise, I really understand the left-hand movement with the pull-off technique. This technique is key if you want to be able to play this exercise correctly. I wrote an article a while ago about the legato technique. You can learn more about pull off technique here!

The fingerstyle Pattern

Few words about the fingerstyle pattern used in this short song. As I did my best to reproduce the Estas Tonne fingerstyle technique, I know that there are a ton of different variations of it. Estas himself admitted that all his music and techniques come from “within.” His guitar playing keeps changing and evolving, and the stuff that he plays never sounds the same.

I took this fingerstyle pattern from one of his songs Golden Dragon which you can listen to in this awesome YouTube video. The pattern starts at 1:06.

How to simplify this song

This exercise can be approached in many different ways. Unless you are a skilled guitar player able to play this guitar part straightaway, I would recommend breaking it down into pieces. Slowing it down is definitely a good thing, but you might need to take a different road if you are a beginner.

I will show you how you can effectively simplify this exercise by eliminating one musical element so that you can focus on one musical aspect at a time.

I covered this way of simplifying a song in another post where I show you how to simplify Autumn Leaves. You can check it out here!

Step 1 – Eliminate the Bass note.

We can start simplifying this song by eliminating the bass note. This is usually pretty easy and straightforward and a really effective way to simplify this fingerstyle exercise.

Each pattern is six notes long and the first note is always played with the thumb. The first step is to eliminate the first note and play the remaining five notes as they are.

You will still have to count the first note in your head without playing and starting the second string pattern.

Step 2 – Looping

Once you feel comfortable with the guitar part, you can then start looping one or two bars and practice it separately. Estas Tonne fingerstyle patterns are perfect for looping and can be used to really make an awesome improvement in your guitar technique.

I usually recommend to loop one bar at a time, and as you become more fluent, you can then start combining more bars.

Step 3 – Rhythmic Variations

There is also another way to simplify this guitar part by changing the pattern’s rhythm and making it easy. We will not cover this lesson approach, as steps 1 and 2 are already pretty effective.

Conclusions

I had fun analyzing Estas Tonne fingerstyle playing. I know that there is so much more to discover about him, but I am happy with what we have achieved today.

Transcribing is an awesome tool for us to learn from others and ethically steal their style, knowledge, and musical ideas.

I suggest you transcribe your favorite guitar players as much as you can. Be inspired isn’t enough. You have to know more about them and influence your guitar playing with their music.

It’s an awesome journey that anybody can start right now.

The sooner the better.

Good luck.