fingerpicking styles for folk music

[ericengel]

Hey im 24 and ive been playing guitar for about 8 and a half years. I started playing beatles and zeppelin the whole thing. But for the past 5 years ive been really into folk music. Ive ventured off to the mandolin and what not but id like to get more in depth with fingerpicking styles on the acoustic to accompany songwriting. anyone out there that can help me with different patterns or techniques that are good in the style of folk music? I really appreciate the help im brand new to this forum! Also please feel free to check my music at www.youtube.com/geetarlust00

[Bern]

Not sure specifically what folk music you're after, but, generally speaking, look into Travis picking, which lends itself to all kinds of music.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by ericengel

...id like to get more in depth with fingerpicking styles on the acoustic to accompany songwriting.

Hi ericengel...

First of all, Hello and Welcome to the forum! Glad you joined and jumped in with a post.

Here's a link to a short video I made for students, and beginning fingerstyle players. All 4 basic patterns are listed in the text below the video.

Simple Fingerstyle Patterns - CliCK

I do not start students with Travis Picking, but rather folk fingerstyle because it's a more universal style which can be easily re-tasked. It is a good accompaniment to simple folk tunes and other songs as well.

In addition alternating bass in folk fingerstyle is at half the speed of Travis Picking (Travis style forces a bass note on every beat). This means folk style fingerstyle playing is more relaxed sounding and better suited to gentle songs, as well as to quicker ones (less driven).

Travis is a one trick pony which really has more of a single flavor (and I play some Travis Style pieces). I like it when it's appropriate, just not for everything.

I start students with the 4 patterns listed below the video, and we expand to Chord melody playing from there (I teach intermediate and advanced fingerstyle guitar). I am an all-flesh fingerstyle player.

Pete Huttlinger has a great intermediate/advanced level DVD titled "Essential Exercises for Fingerstyle Guitar" I'd shade it toward the advanced end of the scale, but at $30 it's the price of a single lesson for months of homework.

Hope this helps...

[ericengel]

Thanks lj deffinately look into iy. Im not really a beginner tho been playing for about 8 and a half years I know alot of fingerpicking styles just wondering whats typical for folk music and if theres any I dont know about. Thanks again for ur help!

[Westy]

Great video Larry thanks for posting that , something else to add to my practice schedule.

Cheers

[frankhond]

Just go directly to the sources. Both Homespun and Stefan Grossman have excellent lessons with the people themselves teaching their stuff. Check out Jody Stechers fingerstyle lesson, Docs Guitar which has Doc both finger and flatpicking, and if you are up to it, Ernie Hawkins lessons on Reverend Gary Davis which is a lifetime of amazing material. Mike Seeger has a huge lesson on "folk playing styles". Tom Feldmanns acoustic blues lessons are fantastic. Etc etc.

[Bern]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

(Travis style forces a bass note on every beat).

No style forces you to do anything, Larry.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi ericengel...

First of all, Hello and Welcome to the forum! Glad you joined and jumped in with a post.

Here's a link to a short video I made for students, and beginning fingerstyle players. All 4 basic patterns are listed in the text below the video.

Simple Fingerstyle Patterns - CliCK

Nice lessons!

Originally Posted by ljguitar

I do not start students with Travis Picking, but rather folk fingerstyle because it's a more universal style which can be easily re-tasked. It is a good accompaniment to simple folk tunes and other songs as well.

In addition alternating bass in folk fingerstyle is at half the speed of Travis Picking (Travis style forces a bass note on every beat). This means folk style fingerstyle playing is more relaxed sounding and better suited to gentle songs, as well as to quicker ones (less driven).

Travis is a one trick pony which really has more of a single flavor (and I play some Travis Style pieces). I like it when it's appropriate, just not for everything.

That's an interesting distinction, as I've always regarded Travis picking as the same as alternating bass. (The only difference being maybe more damping of the bass strings in Travis picking.)

IOW, I've always played what I call "alternating bass" with the thumb playing every beat - "alternating" between two bass strings. (That's the same as Travis picking, right?)
I was doing this before I ever heard of "Travis picking", and always heard it called "alternating bass" (at least as a technique; as a style it was usually called "ragtime" guitar, although that's not strictly accurate). I got it originally from 60s folkies like Donovan (who taught it to the Beatles), but later from Mississippi John Hurt, Stefan Grossman, Blind Blake, etc.

Could you perhaps explain more how you see the difference? Eg, in that video, do you have examples of both? If so, could you give specific timings?

(I teach these styles, so I'd like to be sure I'm using generally agreed terminology! )

[AX17609]

One note about fingers on strings. LJ recommends thumb and three fingers, and this is the method I use. However, many prominent players (including Stefan Grossman) vigorously object to this and recommend only thumb and two fingers. The principle reason seems to be for that for Travis picking, Piedmont and Delta styles, it's hard to get the right bounce to the rhythm. In fact, Grossman goes so far as to say that the thumb and three fingers approach doesn't work for those styles. Personally, I don't agree, but I just thought you'd like to know that a controversy exists.

In Grossman's defense, I will say that modern players seem to eschew driving rhythm in favor of snazzy chord voicings. Whether this is related to the number of right hand fingers being employed is an open question.

[JanVigne]

"Folk Music" is a broad category with no real boundaries to its style. Many of us here of the forum are old enough to remember the folk revival of the 50's and 60's. That period included many of the roots blues player who had drifted into near obscurity until the college age listeners brought them back for another hurrah. Just looking at that small segment of playing you would need to distinguish between the playing of the Delta artists vs the Piedmont players vs the Texas and California stylists. Probably a few important stylists that I've neglected in just that short list.

Soon players like Pete Seeger were playing people's music - freed from the inhibitions of black listing and prepared to return to the labor/social organizing oriented songs of the 30's along with the pure folk music of earlier days. "Traditional" is seen more than a few times as the author of many, many "folk" songs. Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan had their own styles as did the plentiful number of folk groups such as the Kingston Trio. James Taylor and CSN brought even further intricacies to their playing of what became folk rock. Doc Watson and John Hartford offered yet another take on folk styles peculiar to their own experiences. None of these players were without their own influences and picking patterns were mixed and matched to the song - not the generic style of "folk" music.

IMO doing some listening to the many styles which fall under the umbrella of "folk" would be your start. James Taylor's style is quite a wide stretch away from Lightnin' Hopkins though either will provide you with enough material for several years worth of work. Approach a Blind Blake tune without first fully preparing yourself and you will be brought to your knees in shame. Familiarize yourself with the many variations on the theme and acquaint yourself with the players and the influences they drew from. Even at 24 you could spend the rest of your life studying folk styles and players.

The Stephan Grossman and the Homespun Tapes sites offer a broad variety of styles to choose from if you're impatient. Look through their sites and listen to a few of the samples offered. In the end, listening is a player's best teacher.

[AX17609]

Like JanVigne, I don't know what people mean by "folk" music. If it makes you feel any better, in Dave Van Ronk's autobiography he says that in the '60s, nobody knew what it meant either. I'm embarrassed to admit that my first fingerstyle tune in 1964 was "Puff the Magic Dragon", which for me at the time represented the height of technical mastery. I didn't understand how derivative that guitar style was until many years later when I started to familiarize myself with the 'dead guys'. I have since dedicated myself to American roots music, particularly in the Piedmont style. If that's what you mean by "folk" music, then there is no better place to start than Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop. Mr. Grossman's library of DVDs are an absolute gift to the world and a total bargain at the price.

[JanVigne]

" ... in Dave Van Ronk's autobiography he says that in the '60s, nobody knew what it meant either."


I would think the best description of "folk music" is the people's music. It began with the music the immigrants brought with them when they travelled to the Americas. So think of every civilized society on Earth from the middle 1600's to the present and then throw them all into a mixing pot and you'll have folk music. Last Saturday I attended a presentation of the 508 Project - a restoration of the Dallas studio where R. Johnson made his recordings in 1937. It was pointed out that the very same studio, on the very same day, recorded music from Latino groups, Blues and Gospel groups, French Louisiana Cajun bands, Bob Wills and his Texas Swing band, Country roots music and Czeck musicians. All of that in one day in one studio! Italian and Irish, German and British music all pervaded the folk music with their own flavors.

Forget tabs and even written music scores. The music was passed down from musician to musician and each added their own style to what they had learned. Music went where the work existed and where the crops and animals could be raised. The great migration out of the Delta brought a style of music to Memphis, St. Louis and Chicago which had already experienced a melding of musical styles.

Another point made in last Saturday's presentation was the commonality of musicians who, after a day in the studio or on stage, would gather at a local juke joint or a hotel room and, basically, jam for the entire night. Much of this collaboration was literally illegal and the musicians risked arrest if they were caught on the wrong side of the tracks. But it was the music which mattered and he musicians swapped licks and riffs and played with a desire to stretch their experience. Folk music was the music of the common man and much of it was about the struggles each group experienced in their day to day life. Folk music was Studs Terkel before Studs began to write about the common man. All that really mattered was that the music made you feel something.



"I know alot of fingerpicking styles just wondering whats typical for folk music and if theres any I dont know about."



Folk music is a topic which definitely has the ability, as you learn more and more about it, to make you realize how little you actually know about it. You could do worse than learn about Leadbelly and his style of play.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by JonPR

[SIZE=2]I've always played what I call "alternating bass" with the thumb playing every beat - "alternating" between two bass strings. (That's the same as Travis picking, right?)

Hi Jon,

It's not alternating bass that distinguishes Travis Picking. It's not the only style which alternates the bass, or mutes/damps the bass. Alternating bass was around for centuries in classical relm before Merle Travis started doubling the speed of it and damping/muting it.

Travis picking is a combination of muted, alternating bass on every 1/2 beat as opposed to every beat (in 4/4). Folk plays bass notes half as often, which means a folk pattern finishes before repeating with the alternate bass note.

Merle Travis played Thumb-n-one finger; True Travis is not thumb-n-two or thumb-n- three. Thom Bresh (Merle Travis's son and thumb-n-three player extroidinaire) has a DVD on this topic (Like Father Like Son) where he discusses it a length and gives a lot of examples doing it both ways.

He claims you could have taped Merle's hand minus the index finger to the top of the guitar. Thom can play the thumb-n-one style when he focuses, but when he quits concentrating, it's back to thumb-n-three using whichever notes are needed to maintain the rhythm.

Grossman is opinionated about it, but Bresh plays true Travis thumb-n-three fingered and it sounds just like his daddy.

I teach thumb-n-three rather than thumb-n-two because it's more versitile, and easier to scale back on total notes played than up. When you play thumb-n-two, it makes chord melody harder when you are plucking/playing 4 note clusters.

Elizabeth Cotten was also a two digit player, but since she just flipped the guitar upside down, she played the bass with her index finger and the notes with her thumb. Her early college campus/hootenanny appearances were one-n-thumb with the ring planted, and two extra fingers hanging out of the way (sometimes the middle and ring touched the top).

As she got older, she'd build chords involving several fingers and thumb, still playing the bass note with a finger.

It's an interesting study to see all the ways fingerstyle is accomplished.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by AX17609

One note about fingers on strings. LJ recommends thumb and three fingers, and this is the method I use. However, many prominent players (including Stefan Grossman) vigorously object to this and recommend only thumb and two fingers. The principle reason seems to be for that for Travis picking, Piedmont and Delta styles, it's hard to get the right bounce to the rhythm. In fact, Grossman goes so far as to say that the thumb and three fingers approach doesn't work for those styles. Personally, I don't agree, but I just thought you'd like to know that a controversy exists.

Thanks. First time I've heard of such a controversy .
My instinct would be to agree with Grossman. That is, I can see that thumb and 3 fingers can be made to work for those styles (thumb presumably alternating with index for the bass), but for me the thumb on every beat has always felt too natural to consider anything else. If that's how the old guys did it, why consider any aternative?

I don't remember too clearly how I learned it myself, but nobody taught me, and I think it got it all from records (Donovan, Bert Jansch, Dylan's Freewheelin'), without seeing anybody actually do it. But thumb playing 1-2-3-4 felt natural; it just worked, it didn't seem difficult. (That would have been supported by tunes like Angie, where the thumb plays every beat - 2 on each note on the same string, obviously thumb alone - and Broonzy tunes where he plays thumb on each beat on the same string.)

I suspect that most of those going for thumb-and-3-fingers do it from a classical perspective, maybe after some classical tuition (p-i-m-a). I did play classical tunes myself (from books) around the same time I was developing my alternating bass, but - again due to lack of lessons - I was more likely to apply thumb-dominant picking to classical tunes than classical p-i-m-a to folk tunes. Eg, I might find it easier, more natural, to play p-p-i-m, or even p-p-m-a. Especially if a pattern went p-m-i-a, I probably find it easier to play p-m-p-a, or even p-m-p-m. (Middle is my dominant finger, not index.)

Purely lack of training of course!

Originally Posted by AX17609

In Grossman's defense, I will say that modern players seem to eschew driving rhythm in favor of snazzy chord voicings. Whether this is related to the number of right hand fingers being employed is an open question.

Well, the more the thumb does, the more the fingers (index anyway) are free to do. I certainly use p-i-m-a together when picking chords, or arpeggiating quickly.

What made Merle Travis stand out (IMO) was that he used thumb and index alone (at least in all the videos I've seen). I don't suppose even Grossman recommends that as a general technique!

[AX17609]

Originally Posted by JonPR

What made Merle Travis stand out (IMO) was that he used thumb and index alone (at least in all the videos I've seen). I don't suppose even Grossman recommends that as a general technique!

I listened to Merle Travis long before I ever saw him, and when I did see him I was astonished to see him using only his thumb and one finger. I'm still amazed. I doubt Grossman recommends it, but Ernie Hawkins does, at least for Rev Gary Davis material. I think he feels that that you can't dig in with the thumb properly if you've got more than one finger working.

Me, I learned to use thumb and three fingers from a Kansas City guitarist named Danny Cox, who I idolized in the 60s. I thought he got better natural syncopation with it, and I still do. The only thing I can say against it, is that it's harder to do any right hand dampening when you position your hand to accommodate the ring finger. So my bass strings ring out more than your average blues/ragtime player.