Popularity: 5%

Acoustic guitar finger picking is often taken up by guitarists who have been playing the guitar for a year or three who want to find out what finger picking can do for their playing. Sometimes a guitar player will make up his own finger picking techniques as an ad hoc measure to get a solo or accompaniment to sound good, but there’s always the need to know the basic principles behind finger picking guitar styles. There are many different finger picking techniques like classical, Travis Picking, chord melody and flamenco. One way to get into finger picking is to get hold of a book or DVD by one of the authorities on the subject. Mark Hanson is always mentioned as a great fingerstyle guitar player and teacher, as is Al Petteway. Pete Huttlinger has put out a info-packed DVD called Essential Exercises for Fingerstyle Guitar. Happy Traum also has a great deal of teaching material for fingerpickers on Homespun Tapes. Unfortunately, no one finger picking style will give you a real introduction to all styles. Fortunately, you do not need to know a great range of playing styles to give you a general understanding of playing using the right hand fingers. As an example, a folk guitar player with some experience with finger picking patterns and scales will be able to play some pieces from the classical guitar repertoire but he won’t necessarily sound much like a classical guitarist. Some guitarists who have played using a plectrum are discouraged by the difficulty of trying to coordinate the thumb and fingers. The key to getting the fingers and thumb working as independent units is slow practice. Really slow. Put your metronome on a very low setting and play the bass notes of the chords, only adding an incidental note with the first finger when you are feeling confident. Another question guitar players have about beginning finger picking guitar is on the choice of songs to learn. My advice is that there is no need to be too ambitious. Choose a song that is maybe a little below your technical standard and start with strumming the chords until you have the feel of playing along to the lyrics. Once you have the general rhythm of the song, grab a finger picking pattern in the correct time signature from a guitar tutor or a free guitar lesson website and apply it to your song. The House Of The Rising Sun as played by The Animals is a good song for a beginner finger picking guitar player as is Tears In Heaven by Eric Clapton. More Than Words by Extreme is another good, simple song, and when you are feeling more ambitious, go onto Stairway To Heaven. To give you a challenge for your left hand, look for tabs and YouTube video lessons on a classical guitar piece called The Anonymous Romance or Spanish Romance.

Popularity: 1%

Product Description

Comb-bound country blues fingerstyle guitar instruction book and CD.

Fingerpicking blues guitar music is rooted in the work songs, field hollers and spirituals of rural Southern blacks. Many music historians think that blues music first emerged in the Delta area of northwestern Mississippi in the late 1800s.

With its many cotton plantations, the Delta was home to a concentrated population of black sharecroppers. By 1900, itinerant black musicians were playing blues guitar at fish fries, picnics, saloons, railroad depots and elsewhere for drinks and tips.

This unique book features 101 fingerpicking blues guitar licks in standard tuning in the Southern country blues guitar style. The book is for any acoustic guitarist who already has some basic fingerpicking skills and an interest in traditional styles such as parlor guitar, ragtime guitar, slack key guitar, and similar roots music.

The ideas here are useful for fingerboard orientation, technical study, conceptual absorption, vocabulary development, and application to original arrangements or acoustic blues guitar solos. It is a fun and rewarding book for any guitarist who wants to learn country blues guitar licks.

The licks are similar to what one might hear on traditional race recordings on labels such as Okeh Records and Paramount Records, played by fingerstyle guitar players across a wide spectrum including Mississippi blues, Piedmont blues, jug band blues, Texas country blues, Memphis blues, and related roots guitar and musical styles.

Overall, an excellent blues guitar reference book and an excellent value.

Contents

• Four-beat Fingerpicking Blues Licks (in seven keys)
• Eight-beat Fingerpicking Blues Licks (in seven keys)
• Introductions and Turnarounds (in five keys)
• Guide to Symbols and Notation
• Selected Discography
• All 101 licks included on a 99-track CD

Prerequisite Ability

• Early intermediate or intermediate blues guitar player.

User Profiles

• Serious hobbyist acoustic blues guitar player.
• Gigging country blues guitar player looking for new ideas.
• Folk guitar player who wants to learn traditional blues.
• Flatpicking guitar player who wants to learn some classic blues fingerstyle licks.
• Guitar teachers who teach fingerpicking guitar lessons.

Goals and Purposes

• Learn fingerstyle blues guitar licks in the acoustic country blues style.
• General acoustic guitar instruction.
• Develop fingerstyle technique.
• Greater familiarity with guitar fingerboard.
• Learn acoustic blues fingerpicking turnarounds.
• Learn blues licks to apply to blues arrangements or original songs.

Author Recommendations for Supplemental Listening

Fred McDowell, Bukka White, Charley Jordan, Frank Stokes, Lightning Hopkins, Reverend Gary Davis, Brownie McGhee, Pink Anderson, Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Ishman Bracey, Tommy Johnson, Henry Thomas, Charlie Patton, Robert Wilkins, Bo Carter, Memphis Minnie, Funny Papa Smith, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Etta James, Elizabeth Cotton, Mance Lipscomb, Papa Charlie Jackson, Sleepy John Estes, Skip James, Sam McGee, Big Bill Broonzy, Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly), Tommy McClennan, Willie Brown, Sam Collins, and similar fingerpickers. These vintage guitar players invariably provide unlimited enjoyment and inspiration.

Emerging guitarists who are fans of postwar blues guitarists such as Dave Van Ronk, Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, Ry Cooder, Stefan Grossman, Jorma Kaukonen, Tom Rush, and Rory Block will also find much value here.

101 Mississippi Delta Blues Cotton Picking Guitar Licks

Popularity: 2%

If you want to learn some fast picking guitar will find plenty of tips on the Internet. Search on "seekers of the guitar fast" or "fragmentation of guitar" and you will find exercises and tips in the guitar forums and websites. Collect the guitar fast guitar comes with precise seekers. If you learn to play scales and riffs slowly, giving a good clean sound gradually be able to increase your speed and get to work specifically on your guitar fast picking. It is the most natural thing in the world want to play guitar fast, in terms of technical progress and the collection, but if you do not work on the quality of his first game, the speed does not develop. A bad guitar playing, if practiced daily, can become a habit. We all know that the guy who is always trying to play at lightning speed, but whose game is mostly hollow sound of the notes. If you make a habit of trying to play faster than his body can handle, will develop the habit of playing poorly. The problem is that it is human nature to overlook the errors. If we stop whenever we make a mistake I will never get anywhere. But if we make our mistakes with a view to a constant theme in our practice the guitar, then our body finally accept that this is the way to play the guitar. To enter this type of routine practice for an end to any possibility of picking guitar fast becoming a reality for you. Okay, because the way to learn to play guitar is based on repetition, we must work in a way that ensures not repeat our mistakes. Every time you make a mistake you have to go back and play the scale or exercise a little more slowly, with the goal to be to play more cleanly and precisely. When you are practicing to improve your guitar picking speed, play for about fifteen minutes. At this time his hand picking will start to wish that was somewhere else, to give some rest. The aim is to give your hand picking a boost – to give some kind of talent that did not have before. This kind of practice should be done every day without thinking about when it will be able to stop. When your guitar to a new level, you know you can ease a little. This level of play will surprise you and you suddenly realize that you are now a selector on the guitar, fast course. An important thing here is to remember to practice exercises based on the music you like to play. If you are a jazz, rock, pop or blues, his guitar picking quick guide to practice your favorite style.

Popularity: unranked