Is anything other than strumming called fingerstyle?
 

Specifically the jazzy stuff I have learned: the Randy Newman "You've Got a Friend in Me," as done by the dad with his singer, little Claire. And a nice rendition of Lyle Lovett's "She's No Lady," as taught on YouTube by a guy playing a 12-fret hog Martin.

A lot of plucked chords that go thumb then i-m, or i-m-r. This, with some fills.

And some church hymns I've learned from Jim Nailon's YouTube channel. A bunch of thumb then pluck, and fills.

Is this all called fingerstyle?

Originally, the term was for songs specifically where the vocal melody was played simultaneously over the harmony or traditional musical backing.

By that definition, a person cannot sing while playing a fingerstyle song as the point of fingerstyle is to replace the voice with single guitar notes, while also playing the guitar backing part.

As well a song merely plucked with your fingers is not true "fingerstyle" because it is not playing the voice part of the song.

I play with a flat pick and also with just fingers.

When playing with just fingers I use lots of different techniques including Travis picking, various Arpeggio picking, Clawhammer, strumming with my thumb, up/down strumming with my calloused index finger, and various combinations of all of the above (sometimes in a single musical piece).

To me this is both fingerstyle and finger picking.

I call it all "guitar playing."

If you are plucking the strings with the fingers then generally it's called fingerstyle (or fingerpicking). The former sounds like foreplay, the latter like something you do with your nose.

I distinguish between fingerpicking/fingerstyle and flatpicking/plectrum style. There is alos hybrid picking which involves both a plectrum and fingers. Fingerpicking would also include the use thumpicks and thimbles.

No.

Fingerstyle is a very specific musical composition type.

fingerpicking is picking with your fingers.

I think in the broad sense, fingerstyle is generally just accepted as playing with your fingers. I checked Wikipedia and it says the same thing (it also said fingerpicking was a folk style). So it obviously has different meanings.

I gotta go with s0cks on this one. When I think of "fingerpicking" I'm thinking more patterned picking of chords. While my regular repertoire contains several tunes which do in fact include melody, harmony, rhythm, and of course that is "fingerstyle", I don't exclude from the term plucking out jazz chords with my fingers even though I'm not necessarily playing the melody. In some cases within the chords I'll occasionally lay in harmonies to the melody as needed musically. So, am I in one moment doing fingerstyle and the next fingerpicking? If we breakt it down finger style is styling with the fingers. Who cares if there is a melody in there.

Anyway, why argue the semantics of it? It's all good.

I disagree with almost all of the above. “Originally”?
By who’s determination? If you agree with Fazool, you must also accept his “definition”? No thanks.

I’m with Jeff-but I call it “playing guitar”. Lol

Mark

You make a good point....originally I wrote "In my use of the word.......then wrote that" then I erased it to claim it more definitively.

After reading your rebuttal, I questioned my conviction and searched. I can't find many credible references to the etymology of the word but it first appeared in the 1930's and did, in fact, mean just finger-plucking.

hmmmmm......

The ironic thing is I often say I play fingerstyle but then amend that to say fingerpicking. I even wrote that originally.

Whenever I see a fingerstyle solo artist or song they "always" seem to be the way I wrote it (my definition in my own head). Partly because there were different words (finger-pick, finger-pluck, finger-style) so it made sense to me that they should (must?) have different meanings.

I surrender the point and am switching sides. I agree with the majority now that fingerstyle can mean just fingerpicking/plucking/playing.

faz, you may have thought about it more and adjusted your thinking, but your initial perspective is the first and best I’ve read of a potential distinction between fingerpicking and fingerstyle and I will tend to think of it this way from now on. I’m a hybrid strummer/fingerpicker who sings and if my fingerpicking can be considered as fingerstyle, then I’m so far off from those I consider as REAL fingerstylists (and never before considered a distinction that they are also playing the vocal melody because they don’t sing), and will never be, nor do I care to be...I appreciate the technical ability, but the styling is not personally appealing to me for more that a short time. Usually, I want to hear singing as well.

Polyphonic music performed using two or more picking hand digits (flatpick counts as a digit in the case of hybrid picking)
abetted in many cases by fretting hand hammer-ons and pull-offs. Various permutations in idioms have been labeled with
their own names.

When picking only with my fingers with little to no strumming, I always distinguish by calling a song where I am playing the melody, rhythm, and bass lines “solo fingerstyle” and when not playing the melody line just “fingerstyle”.

Do you have a source for this definition? Sounds unnecessarily narrow to me.