Fingerstyle Guitar: Can You Do It?

My current level can probably best be described as "my mind is writing a check my fingers can't cash."

If this is the case, you will probably find Pumping Nylon useful (if possibly gruelling).

Yes about the nails. Just saw guitar player filing his before he went on.

Just got back to my own neighborhood and stopped off to see some Latin Jazz but meanwhile Indian guitar master and composer Prasanna is playing behind singer doing "My Favorite Things."

Sorry wrong thread.

Note that I am not actually familiar with this guitarist except for the brief bit I heard tonight. I just saw those words on the website, probably should have put them in quotes.

Had another book before by an author I usually think is pretty good but in this case I was disappointed. More later.

Don't see "Spoonful" in that book, see "Stormy Monday."

Book I was disappointed in is Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar by Arnie Berle and Mark Galbo. Exercises which take up most of the book are insufficiently bluesy. But there are six transcriptions at the back and the only one I really looked at, because it was the only sing I recognized, "32-20 Blues," is awesome.

Disappointed because I found another Arnie Berle book, Chords and Progressions For Jazz and Popular Guitar, very useful.

Remembered the main thing I've been working on recently is just to get strict mi alteration in the right hand. Previously I had been mixing in one finger stuff and/or raking.

I mean if a fingering was written out I would play that but otherwise sight-reading a melody I would play whatever I wanted.

OK, looking backward through the Berle blues book, I see that the I was being too harsh. The section on playing inversions of the 7th Chord is good, as is Picking-Hand techniques. Book starts to really pick up, as it were, around page 47, when Blue Notes are introduced.

I knew something was missing!

OK, think this PN is just what the doctor ordered. Thanks, Sund4r.

Without seeing your nails in person, or knowing more about what you're looking for, I'm hesitant to give specific advice on shaping them, beyond the general principles that you would find in books like Pumping Nylon. It's a pretty individual thing. Have you talked to a teacher?

You file with a regular nail file from the drugstore (ideally 'diamond dust') and buff with extremely fine sandpaper from the hardware store (no less than 500 grit).

There is some more info here, although I use the opposite thumbnail shape as this guy: http://www.thisisclassicalguitar.com/fingernails-on-classical-guitar/

Artificial nails and the glue that comes with them seem to really weaken my actual nails. I'm not sure why: I didn't have this problem in my early 20s.

Definitely practise scales with strict mi alternation if that's what you need to work on. If you can find the Royal Conservatory technique book, it has scalar exercise after scalar exercise that are designed to progressively build this technique.

Tbh, I don't remember if there were scales in PN. Will check when I get home.

This is useful. Thanks, more later.

(I love Prasanna btw.)

Quick question: two octave scales or three?

Prasanna has been playing recently at that place both as a leader and with some other projects I am interested in. I need to go back and check him out properly the next time.

Think he must have met some of the other musicians at that music school in India, what is it called? Oh, I see, Swarnabhoomi, and I see it says he is the President.

You didn't go to his workshop in Banff a few years back, did you?

Do you really think I need that Royal Conservatory book? Like to think I can figure out my own fingerings at this point- avoiding repeating a finger at all costs, as I've been told- and have some pattern books if I need them.

I was just mentioning it because it's a collection of good technical exercises that I'm familiar with that is readily available where I am. I'm quite sure there are others. Certainly, I can understand if you don't want to spend money on it, especially if it would be an import for you (idk if this is the case). If you want to work on stricter RH fingerings, then working through repetitive scales and patterns with these fingerings, with a metronome, seems like a good way to go about it, whatever source you're using for the material. But, honestly, I can't really say what you need with any certitude: I haven't seen you play.

I've never been to the Banff Centre, actually.

Sorry if the tone was a little snippy in the last reply. But yeah, any good technique book will probably be useful.

Quick question: two octave scales or three?

For practising right-hand technique? Both could work. If you haven't been doing them a lot, it would probably make sense to start with 2-octave scales before working up to the longer ones. Obviously, some scales, e.g. C, will be easier to do as 2-octave scales.

I didn't find your tone particularly snippy, I'm used to you by now:) Your advice in general has been very helpful so far, really, thanks for taking the time. Now that I think about it, I did order a music book from Canada once. The Jazz Bass Line Book, by Mike Downes. Recommended highly by another Canadian bass player, Don Thompson.

Prasanna is no longer associated with that school.

Was assigned one of those Giuliani exercises this week.

Sorry, étude not exercise.

It's Merle Travis's birthday today, so I would like you all to spend an extra half hour at least on your Travis picking.

yes sir!

object lesson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC8LQ1UQO8k

Just came across a discussion this and can't figure out what to make of it: https://www.classicalguitarcorner.com/an-argument-against-memorization/

As someone who cannot read music, after reading that, I now feel even more like a total hack when I pick up a guitar. Cheers.

I dream of being good enough to consider myself a hack.

I've never been to the Banff Centre, actually.

The ever-challenging thing is remembering these classical etudes: which left hand and right hand finger is doing what. Do much better if I figure out what the harmony is and use that to keep track of where I am supposed to be.

Guess I just going to follow Sund4r's advice on the other thread and put the metronome on super slow and then inch it up when possible.

Inch worm
Inch worm
Measuring the marigolds

That's generally good but esp with classical, it can also sometimes help to remember to avoid 'broken record' practising. I'm trying to make sure I apply 'deliberate practice' as described here: https://lifehacker.com/5939374/a-better-way-to-practice . It can make a big difference. It helps to focus on a little bit (e.g. a phrase) at a time, identify specific problem areas, then target those (by slowing down, IDing the block, then inching up after fixing it).

Well, I did for quite a bit until I got fatigued and I stopped :) Thanks for the article. I read the Ericsson book mentioned there and recommend it. I believe Ericsson uses the term "Purposeful Practice."

I used to talk about this stuff at lunch with a guy who plays the cello who would discuss it in terms very similar to those in that article. He also had a really good story about how one Hungarian pianist practiced, György something, Sándor, maybe, but I have to see if I can remember how it went.

I can play "Bron-yr-aur' in glorious CACGCE

cool.

Sund4r, debating whether to email you a link to this piece I am trying to learn and ask whether you have played it or have opinions about the fingering.

Feel free. I can try to get to it on the weekend.

Sent

Must confess I have never been able to sight-read - indeed can't read at all - after decades of periodic attempts of varying seriousness.

That said, I started with a nylon-stringed classical guitar, mainly because my mother had one around the house. She was an old folkie type, and I guess in the 60s it was pretty common to learn guitar that way. Nylon is kinder to fingers. I think I worked clumsily through some books of fingerstyle tab. Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, Clapton, Gilberto.

I still play fingerstyle on my mother's old guitar sometimes. Occasionally I will do something fingerstyley on steel-stringed acoustic. I tend to like guitars with wider nuts, because the spacing accommodates fingerstyle playing better.

But I've never quite gotten the hang of fingerstyle on electric. It's so quiet compared to picking, and accommodating that drop in volume is difficult if I want to do both inside a given song, or even within a given gig.

For a long time I had this weird stubborn thing about not picking with my ring finger, only using the thumb index and middle. Lately I've finally reincorporated the ring finger again and it really opens up a lot of possibilities, not sure what I was on about.

RIP Tony Acosta of Luthier Music: http://classicalguitarmagazine.com/luthier-music-founder-string-maker-tony-acosta-passes-away-at-77/

I posted this upthread but it got ate by the code, just a local braddah doing an excellent arrangement of "Maori Brown Eyes" (cheating a little with the thumb pick):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLeqnEDF7jU

This is still one of my go-to's when I get a chance to play.

Cool.

This guitarist named Jake Reichbart has posted over 400 videos of fingerstyle arrangements of various well-known tunes, watched a few and they are reasonably well done.

I love finger style guitar but infinitely prefer the old strings, mahogany-top, small-bodied sound over the bright, chiming sound that so many finger style players employ

Yeah, know what you mean

I just like Nick Drake is all and early Bruce Cockburn too and although I appreciate a Pierre Bensusan et al I like the intimacy of a parlour guitar or a nylon string!

has there been anyone inspired by michael hedges's innovations that wasn't completely boring and soulless? aerial boundaries moves me but it seems like the only thing people took from him was the surface level slapping and tapping