Fingerstyle Guitar: Can You Do It?

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

Why are they still called nylon string guitars when the bottom three are metal and the top three are some kind of polymer?

I thought nylon was a polymer, no?

Yeah, but I think they often use fluorocarbon instead. Sorry, should have been more specific.

https://www.gearank.com/guides/nylon-classical-guitar-strings

Most of those still seem to use nylon for the treble strings? I thought the basses are usually made of a nylon core wound with metal. Interestingly, though, Savarez Alliance are probably my favourite and they do seem to use some kind of carbon fibre for the trebles.

Unrelated but I recently switched to guy-based strings on my violin and it sounds amazing (but I have to tune it up a lot more— apparently the strings last linger tho?)

*gut *longer

Wrt fingerstyle, a local know-it-all told me to anchor my pinky instead of “floating” and I cannot, and I also don’t think it’s necessary? Idk.

With fingerstyle guitar?? That is bad advice.

Afaik, classical guitar teachers have been advising against anchoring the little finger of the right hand on the body of the guitar at least since I was an undergraduate. It reduces flexibility and introduces unnecessary strain. I'm more forgiving of it than many, esp considering that many great guitarists of the past did it or something like it, and might occasionally slip into doing it myself (although usually when using a pick). If you need an anchor, just resting the fingers on the strings you are not using works great. If you're looking for pointers on technique, I'll recommend Tennant's Pumping Nylon again.

I can't think of a situation where I'd anchor my pinky on the guitar's body when fingerpicking tbh.

leo kottke's RSI is the argument against anchoring, but I still find it helpful when ploughing through v rhythmic picking-pattern grooves

There are certainly people who do it but it is definitely not a practice that someone needs to be told to do if they have no inclination towards it.

Parkening playing a fast rhythmic picking pattern with no anchor: https://youtu.be/5YdPvM_xZg4

Close-up around 0:25

it's a q of what's easiest/realistic rather than humanly possible

i don't & have never felt the need to.

Fgti finds it easier not to anchor! I'm saying that is not only fine, but probably better. xp

If you want to anchor anything maybe it should be the thumb, like a bass player might

Not if the bass player doesn't want tendonitis.

I've never heard of a fingerpicker anchoring the thumb on the body of the guitar? Ergonomics aside, any fingerpicking style I can think of requires the thumb to be available to play bass lines.
xp

I was more thinking of resting the thumb on a bass string in between bass notes when possible

(xp)
C’mon, lots of bass players anchor. I almost never do so maybe I shouldn’t comment.

Love any story about Christopher Parkening.

Resting the thumb or fingers on unused strings between notes, when there is time, is what I do.

It also helps to mute those strings when they should not ring.

i anchor my pinky sometimes, and always understood it to be a bad habit. I also fret the bass string with my thumb, thanks jimi.

It also helps to mute those strings when they should not ring.

Although didn’t notice G making D ring nearly as strong, or the A making the E.

I use too many tunings. I only have maybe forty guitar-based songs but thirteen tunings all told :(

Sonic Goon - Experimental Flamboyant Tie Included

I haven't fucked with guitar in a while now, but I used to be pretty good at basic fingerstyle stuff. With respect to pinky-resting, if it's good enough for Daniel Bachman, it's good enough for me.
https://glasstire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/daniel-bachman.jpg?x37511

Some people, Lenny Breau comes to mind, actually play with the RH pinky. Think its letter is ‘c’

Apparently he also anchored it so...
https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/28278-how-did-lenny-breau-do-that

Sorry for using a fellow Canadian against you guys

We claim him was he, really?

Born in Maine to Acadian parents, family moved to Canada when he was seven. His dad recorded for the Banff label, and Lenny taught Randy Bachman, how Canadian can you get?

He even had a show on CBC Winnipeg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44PDpwYpSEU

Did I mention that his first professional recording was with members of The Band?

Anchoring is bad news, generally, and lots of professional bassists have problems with their hands and wrists. I touch my thumb on the string lower than the one I am playing or touch the body on my acoustic bass guitar when I play the B string. I have a full-length thumb rest on my main electric which I really like for playing on the B string; something like that would be cool on the acoustic, but it would most assuredly change the sound of the instrument in not-good ways (mine is a luthier-built gorgeous thing I purchased from an estate that, unlike 90% of acoustic bass guitars, actually functions as an acoustic instrument -- it'd be pushing $4000 if I had it built today, and it did not cost me even close to that)).

Check out my bro Jackie's right hand -- she's touching the body (actually the pickguard here -- that's not her guitar, and her guitars don't have floating pickguards) with her ring finger, but there's no pressure on the finger -- the hand is floating and ready to move around as she needs it to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRn75qFWyhE

I'm in the anchor camp... also in the "you only need 2 fingers" camp!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK8emiWabU

So easy but effective (& topical):

(c/p for timestamp): youtu.be/Mu9adyYkIQY?t=123

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu9adyYkIQY

I feel like I suffer from some extreme version of the 80-20 rule, maybe 90-10 or 95-5, where the last 5% of learning any song, where I can play without error most of the time, takes 20 times as long as my entire practice time up till that point. Or it's like a zenoan paradox where perfection (or a reasonable simulation of) is always an infinite number of steps away.

Suggestions for how to get over this are welcome - I have one idea, which is to stop endlessly practising the same songs with diminishing returns, and try new songs, but harder than the ones I already (can't) do. Suggestions for those also welcome, my current level of inability is somewhere around Don't Think Twice It's Alright, or Never Going Back Again.