Practicing Fingerstyle

[Muffinhead]

Picking hand.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Muffinhead

Picking hand.

I didn't understand the numbers. Could you please interpret them for me?

[Muffinhead]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

I didn't understand the numbers. Could you please interpret them for me?

With the right hand pluck the 5th string, then the 2nd, etc using the appropriate fingers.

[Bern]

Hmm...then it would be a 5243 string pattern.
Playing this particular pattern seems just an exercise for the picking hand, basically, playing inside, leaving out the 1st & 6th. If you're starting out with fingerstyle, it is somewhat important to learn and to control how to pick that. There many other exercises are equally important, though. Try to learn that by playing songs as well. My best teachers many years ago were Donovan and PPM.
I think, the bottom line is for you to make the mental connection between picking and fretting correctly...and in time.

[JanVigne]

Many times the best answer is no answer. Have you ever heard of or read a Zen koan? Here's one of my favorites; 1. A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"



Like a koan, many answers regarding how long, how much, which way, etc are not always a simple cut and dry solution due to individual human nature combined with human failings and human aspirations. A Zen approach to anything first teaches humility towards the subject and would take far too long to work out in the context of your question. However, your expectations as you develop a mastery of an alternating bass line might be somewhat unlike your instructor's opinion of how proficient a student should become before they move to another level. Therefore, first, empty your cup.

Ask the instructor not how long should you practice but rather ask what the goal should be in your practice, where do you need to be to take the next step. Not where did the instructor reach before he moved on or twenty other students but, where should you as an individual student reach? If you are practicing a pattern without having a goal in mind, you are not advancing so much as walking in place. You are learning without knowing the subject. Possibly, the question to ask should be, what should you be hearing which tells you it is time to move forward? If you do not presently know the answer to that question, then you are not wisely spending your time practicing what you are actually doing. Your ultimate goal is to make music with the guitar. How does this exercise do that?

Having what is termed an "independent thumb" would appear to be the goal you should aim for in this exercise. Keeping steady time and the proper emphasis within the measure with your thumb will be a critical component of most fingerstyle playing. You will not move onto synchopation until that skill has become ingrained into your muscle memory. In fingerstyle playing though, synchopation, which adds flavor and interest to your music, is not the end result so much as having a steady beat from your thumb is the goal.

You don't mention your ability to simply play guitar so the answer to your question would somewhat depend on how familiar you are with the basics of making music with this instrument. Certainly, you should be practicing with a metronome to develop the habits of good time keeping. Approaching the exercise then in a Zen way would make the question not how long should you practice this pattern. The metronome will tell you when you should move forward. Leaving the work to the metronome will take much of the burden off your shoulders and will create a memory in your muscles of listening to the steady beat of the metronome. Once you've developed the beat with your thumb, usually your fingers will follow where the thumb leads them. Remember reaching for your cup of tea.

There are many ways to develop an independent thumb, all of which work best for any particular student. Possibly, if you are not familiar with how you learn vs how your instructor teaches, a brief discussion is in order. Some players require a constant work out hour after hour until the single bar of music is under their command. I believe this is how Chet Atkins taught himself how to play. SRV and his brother would come home from school and spend the evenings playing and working out how to play through monotonous repitition. Sitting in front of the TV and silently playing the pattern is often a most effective exercise as you are learning to move your thumb to the beat without really concentrating on your thumb. Use your electric and palm damp the strings as you run through the pattern over and over. The wife, kids and cats will appreciate the effort and the relative silence.

Other players might better respond to playing a pattern for, say, five to ten minutes but concentrating on how to make the most of those few moments. Then set the pattern aside and do other things. Come back to the pattern again several times during the day making it the first thing you do in the AM and the last thing you do in the PM. When you walk by your guitar, pick it up and play the pattern for five minutes. Still others learn best in the context of a simple song which allows them to develop more fluency in expressing their creative talents. You must recognize how you learn and then you will find the goal you should be aiming for, which is, of course, listening to the metronome.

As of now I would say pay attention to the metronome, it will always tell you when to move.

[Muffinhead]

Many times the best answer is no answer. Have you ever heard of or read a Zen koan? Here's one of my favorites; 1. A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

Like a koan, many answers regarding how long, how much, which way, etc are not always a simple cut and dry solution due to individual human nature combined with human failings and human aspirations. A Zen approach to anything first teaches humility towards the subject and would take far too long to work out in the context of your question. However, your expectations as you develop a mastery of an alternating bass line might be somewhat unlike your instructor's opinion of how proficient a student should become before they move to another level. Therefore, first, empty your cup.

What a great answer, and it really has helped me a lot. I have to change my mindset and empty my cup. I need to think less about structure and be more goal oriented.

[JanVigne]

You'd be surprised at the number of times I find that particular koan to be a near perfect answer to the subject at hand. Emptying your cup is one of the most important aspects of allowing information in. Playing guitar is one of the more difficult things we do since we all have ideas of our guitar gods out there wailing away to adoring crowds or confidently extracting wonderful music from their instrument. All of it comes so easily to them yet we struggle so mightily as we try to become them. While I have no intention of pushing any form of thinking on anyone, here's a book you might find interesting; http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35397.Zen_Guitar

It is a book you can pick up to read any chapter or begin at the front and read to the back while still finding some ideas which will apply to your learning. No great insight or wisdom so much as simple ideas which we all know intuitively yet allow to be buried in our rush to become the player we see on stage. And, even if you don't get a thing from the book, you haven't spent your last dollar on something completely frivolous like another Rod Stewart re-issue album. Give it a look.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Muffinhead

With the right hand pluck the 5th string, then the 2nd, etc using the appropriate fingers.

Help me make sure I understand.

You are actually just playing the fingerstyle pattern T-3-1-2 with the picking hand on the inside strings (eliminating the low and high E strings)?

OK - if that's right, I get it now.

I'd deploy that pattern all over the neck, on different sets of strings. A D major chord would work nicely with that pattern on strings 1-2-3-4.

An A, Am, C, C7 or C9 would work great with your original string set (2-3-4-5) or you could simply modify it by leaving the thumb on the 5th string, and move the other three fingers up to strings 1-2-3

E, Em, E7 would work great by skipping strings and playing it on strings 1-2-3-6 or strings 2-3-4-6. The pattern can be independent from the string set, and a lot of where you are going to put your fingers depends on the voicing of the strings with a given chord shape. With an E based chord (major or minor) we place the Bass on the low E and the fingers seek out a good voicing...so the chord part is often played on strings 1-2-3 or 2-3-4.

And the traditionally fingered G chord strings 1-2-3-6.

I think once you have the pattern well rehearsed, you need to move it all over the place on different string sets. Fingerstyle learning is not about a different exercise for every string set, but reapplying the same fingering on many string sets.

The next level would be to begin alternating the bass note. So if you played an A chord with the pattern T-3-1-2 on strings 1-2-3-5 and then dropped to the open E string for the bass alternate note it's still T-3-1-2, but on strings 1-2-3-6

Is this connecting?

Play the root with the thumb the first time through the pattern, and the 5th the second time through. Many of these are easy. For instance the root of the D chord is the open D string. The 5th of the D chord is the open A string. An A chord the root bass is the open A string, and the 5th (alternating bass) is the open E string.

The root of an E is "E" and the 5th of any E chord is the ''B'' which your finger is already pressing down on the A string. The 5th of the C chord is the G which is 3rd fret on the low E so all you have to do is walk the finger that was playing the C on the 5th string down to the G note and then right back up to the C for the next iteration.

This is an illustration from one of my student's lessons on a variation of the Cotton Pick (named after Elizabeth Cotton who never played with 4 fingers)



The T-3-1-2 is your pattern, and the pluck is just plucking the chord notes with fingers 1-2-3. Rhythm, roots and alternates are all illustrated.

Hope this makes sense...