Become a smooth finger style player

[Wooly]

I'm looking for some advise and tips on how to become a smoother finger style player.

My playing seems to be jerky and doesn't flow like I think it should. I speed up, slow down, little hesitations that shouldn't be. I sometimes can't seem to get through a song without making some stupid little mistake although I know the song.

Would a metronome be of help or even go one step farther and hire a teacher?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[macmanmatty]

I have one word for you buddy, Time!! Time is really all the help you need. I used to be like you. But over time once knew the song more and started learning harder songs the speeding up slowing down and the mistakes I was making stopped. Just keep playing and you'll get better.

[rick-slo]

Maybe some people simply have no built in sense of time. Couldn't say for sure. However the reason for what you are describing is most likely due to not knowing the piece of music you are playing well enough, technically or memory wise, or both. When you practice a piece enough to get past those issues is when you can be in the flow (when you are thinking about and mechanically preparing for what is coming beat or more further into the music), and that is when your internal clock is allowed to work the best.

[TomiPaldanius]

Record your playing.
Don't repeat mistakes because muscle memory is usually strong and bad repetitions are very difficult to fix if you repeat them a lot.

I have this little rule:

1. Play mistake once = it is ok because it was probably an accident
2. Play same mistake twice = Spend a lot of time analyzing everything from your diet to believes in this world what went wrong and why.
3. Play same mistake 3 times = stupidity.

If you don't know how to do that 3 step pattern... Find someone who does and hire him as your mentor...


Have a nice day

[TBman]

I practice playing along with GuitarPro if I put the tab into it, adjusting the speed upwards as I get the song under my fingers. Other times I will practice along with the original artist. It can take me a year or so to really get the feel of a song so don't be too impatient with yourself. Nothing good comes fast.

[islandguitar]

I think you've gotten some really good advice here. As Rick stated, it's knowing the piece. For me, knowing the piece technically is just the first part and that may take a long time. From there, I take a step back and try to listen internally for how the piece "wants" to be played now that I have the technical side established. (most often my own compositions). This takes a measure of additional time over and above the technical side of things. Might be weeks, months, or as Barry says.....even years.

[Wooly]

Anyway, yes some good tips. Slow things down and work things out. And no, I don't make the same mistakes 3 times over.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Wooly

I'm looking for some advise and tips on how to become a smoother finger style player.

My playing seems to be jerky and doesn't flow like I think it should. I speed up, slow down, little hesitations that shouldn't be. I sometimes can't seem to get through a song without making some stupid little mistake although I know the song.

Would a metronome be of help or even go one step farther and hire a teacher?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

A metronome could help. You need to be held back on the easy passages - don't play faster there just because you can! You may still have to fake your way through the bits you can't quite play accurately at speed yet, but the idea is to settle into a groove. Think about the beat, feel the beat, and slot your patterns into it.
IOW, it's not about applying a rhythm to the tune, but establishing a rhythm, a tempo, and then applying the tune to it.
Until your internal clock is trained, you need that external clock. But as you get used to the metronome, staying with the click more and more easily, that's when to make it trickier, halving the click rate to force your own clock to take over. The metronome is a guide to begin with, but don't let it become a crutch; it's a trainer.

The tricky bits are the ones you need to go over and over, by themselves (with or without a metronome). And then practice the links into and out of them. It's all about finger memory, muscle memory - training those stupid digits.
As they say: practise until you get it right; and then practise some more until you can't get it wrong.

[SprintBob]

I've been playing for just under 4 years and for 3 of the 4 my main focus has been fingerstyle and specifically solo fingerstyle. It's so cool to be able to play a song where you can carry bass, rhythm, and lead lines simultaneously. That said, it's probably one of the hardest paths in guitar playing to take so exercise patience and don't be hard on yourself when it gets frustrating.

In my own case, structure is important in learning the basics and building slowly with progressively more technical material. I chose to start with Mark Hanson's Contemporary Travis Picking. This is an excellent course that has an accompanying CD. You need to learn and hard wire basic right hand patterns and this book is all about using and applying those patterns with lots of exercises and pretty decent songs. The accompanying audio CD has all of the exercises and songs played at slow and performance speeds. I copied the CD material and use it in Amazing Slow Downer to play at whatever speed (usually slower) I need to master the pattern or song. What's also great about Hanson's approach is that he gives you a lot of detail with tab and music notation that typically offers left and right hand fingering (assuming you are a rightie, but it would be opposite if you are a leftie).

I have a Skype teacher who I got started with about halfway through this book and it really helped a lot. We worked through about 80% and then moved on to Hanson's next book Art of Solo Fingerstyle. In the first book, you are primarily playing accompanying patterns and you get introduced to a couple of solo pieces later in the book. And you also begin to "unlearn" the patterns you learned in the first half of the book. You don't really unlearn, it's more like embellish. The second book is all solo fingerstyle material. We are about 40% of the way through that course and it will probably take me at least 1-2 more years to finish it.

My experience sounds similar to yours in my first two years of the fingerstyle journey. I'd offer/reinforce:

1. Be patient, you will sound inconsistent and jerky for a while because you are training your fingers and hands to operate with independence and they don't really want to operate that way.

2. Correct technique is important and you want to learn fingerings and patterns correctly. That's what I like about Hanson's material in that right and left hand assignments are always noted. This can minimize learning bad habits.

3. Recording yourself is important. I played plenty of music that sounded fine while I played it to myself but sounded mechanical when I recorded and played it back to myself and for the world to hear. This and my teacher's ear (or a spouse or friends') will be helpful. After three years, I am just starting to sound smooth and musical on material I am playing. Patience and persistence.

4. When learning a song, break it down into sections, 1-2 measures at a time. Make it work slow and fast. Many songs have intros and A, B, C, etc sections so also use this structure to break the song down into workable chunks.

5. A metronome is your best friend.

I've committed myself to Hanson's material, I think it's very proven. I've also supplemented Mark's material with exercises from Pete Huttlinger's Essential Exercises for Fingerstyle Guitar DVD (Homespun) which has excellent pattern exercises. Huttlinger stresses 'hard-wiring" the patterns like Hanson does and I use several of his exercises daily.

There are similar courses out there. I think Hanson's Accent on Music and several courses on Truefire and Homespun are the best to chose from and commit to working through. You might also check out Peghead Nation. There looks to be a very good fingerstyle course there. Finally, for inspiration, check out AGF member Eric Skye's 30 Day Guitar Challenge (just Goggle Eric Skye). Tons of inspiring pointers that are very insightful for fingerstyle and other forms of guitar playing. Good luck, have fun!

[Wooly]

Thanks to everyone for the good advise. I appreciate it.

I'm going to bookmark this thread and refer back to it. I realize now that I must change my habits. I guess more "practice" instead of more "play" instead of trying to wing it. Actually I did record myself. I wasn't happy with what I heard, therefore the reason for this thread. I may consider some skype lessons. No one in this town teaches finger style.

I have been playing a long time but just started solo finger style in the last few years. I have a pretty good grasp of it other than the issues I'm having as per original post.

[Mr Fixit eh]

Originally Posted by Wooly

I'm looking for some advise and tips on how to become a smoother finger style player.

Hi Wooly,

You've got some good tips here.

I started learning guitar 10 years ago now. I found strumming to be 'relatively' easy, or at least natural for me. I started singing along with my playing. My goal in learning to play was to lead a small group in singing in hospitals and nursing homes. Within a year, I was able to start doing this (albeit poorly)

Within a few months of starting guitar I tried doing some elementary fingerstyle patterns on a very simple song, 'Morning Has Broken'. Could not do it, at all. I kept moving forward with strumming. Every few months I would come back and try the fingerstyle, but it was like I had a mental block. I couldn't get any degree of fluidity. While the strumming worked pretty well, the finger patterns just wouldn't work. As the years went by, I was finally able to do the first verse of a song fingerstyle, then switch to strumming. The idea was to add some dynamics to the playing, but the fingerstyle was very difficult and un-natural for me- once I switched back to strumming I was comfortable and happy.

Fast-forward to about a year ago. I've always been able to play my guitar at lunch time in my office at work. Then a year ago I moved to an office where I had to be more careful about the volume of my playing. So... I switched to playing fingerstyle exclusively at work. This has truly been a godsend. I am becoming more and more comforable with fingerstyle and have developed a collection of different patterns. I am able to change up patterns within a song. I can perform publicly using fingerstyle and feel really good about it.

So I am sorry for such a long post, but I hope you take heart. If you keep trying, it will eventually grow on you.

One little tip - to start with select songs for fingerstyle where there is only one chord change per measure. You eventually develop the ability to change chords mid-measure, but it is very tricky in the beginning.

Steve

[reeve21]

I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread, it is encouraging. I could have been the OP

I've been playing for a long time and am a fairly decent rhythm player.

My new year's resolution was to finally commit to finger style.

After consulting some older threads, I bought Mark Hansen's 2 learning to Travis Pick/Solo fingerpick books. I am a book learner, not so much with videos. I like his style a lot. I'm almost to the end of the first book and can do all of the exercises, at least at the slow speeds. I keep going back almost to the beginning and doing the exercises, as well as learning the songs. I have a ways to go on the songs near the end of the book, for sure. Then there is the second book. I'm measuring getting these basics down as something that might take me a few years, but when I hear what many of you can do in this style it sure seems worth it.

In some ways this is like learning a whole new instrument for me.

I appreciate the input from all of you.

[Kerbie]

Originally Posted by reeve21

I bought Mark Hansen's 2 learning to Travis Pick/Solo fingerpick books.

I think you'll like those books, Bob. Just my lowly opinion, but I think those are the best books available on the topic. Hope they're very helpful for you.

[reeve21]

So far, so good, Kerbie. Mark's book has taken me from nothing to Dust in the Wind, Landslide, a simple Freight Train, etc. in several weeks. But the main thing is I enjoy his style, and the exercises are musical and fun. When I get bogged down on a particular song I just do the exercises for a while, and that seems to help.

Thanks for the encouragement!

[amyFB]

here's how I get through learning the tricky bits and then stitching them into the rest of the piece.

1. isolate the tricky bit and practice it over and over with a metronome until you have it down cold.;(start slow and don't speed up until it's played correctly).
2. add one measure before the tricky bit and practice the two stitched together bits until you can get into the tricky bit with no bumps. (don't forget the metronome)
3. add the measure following the tricky bit. practice the three stitched together bits until it all flows. (you still need the metronome)
4. play the whole song now.(the metronome is always your friend)

good luck!