Fingerstyle vs Fingerpicking
 

Pardon my ignorance but can someone briefly explain the main differences between fingerstyle and fingerpicking? I assume fingerstyle is used without a pick and fingerpicking is used with a thumb pick?

I finger pick and don't use a thumb pick or finger picks.

Finger style is finger picking where you play the melody of the song as you play. Finger style uses no vocal accompaniment.

Finger picking is similar and although it may incorporate the the melody is actually for those who sing while playing.

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"Fingerstyle" is really just a high-falutin' way of saying "solo fingerpicking". :)

I'm going with this one.

I've picked melodies with bare fingers ever since I found a Baxter's Fingerpicking book in the late 60's. I won't even sing in the shower, so it's not to accompany.

I don't think I even heard the word "fingerstyle" until this decade. I consider myself a fingerpicker. Maybe if I was better at it, I'd call it fingerstyle.

Oddly enough, when I typed this response, the word "fingerstyle" got underlined with red dots, indicating a misspelled or non-existent word. I thought that was funny, especially considering this forum and topic.

opencee

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Ah Frosty,
Nailed it, you did..........

Where's my snow??

HE

Huh??

I did not know that.

If your spell check does not recognize it, then it does not exist.

HE

In one, you pick the strings with your fingers, and in the other you use your fingers to pick the strings. I don't remember which is which, though. :D

For my part, I'd use "fingerpicking" to describe what Eddie Adcock does. Plays with single plucks, pinches and three-finger rolls on guitar using banjo picks. That's a very different gig from "solo fingerstyle" a la Pierre Bensusan.

Perhaps this is already beaten to death. I think of it this way: fingerpicking is usually pattern picking...playing the same pattern with your fingers as chords change. ...usually accompanied by singing. Fingerstyle is solo guitar playing...melody and accompaniment played simultaneously. Classical guitar music is sort of the ultimate fingerstyle...at least by my definitions!

i've always heard fingerstyle and finger picking used interchangeably. fingerstyle sounds classier, however :D

I don't know that there are any hard and fast definitions but to me "fingerpicking" generally tends to connote tradtional folk/ragtime blues playing with an alternating thumb bass part underlying the structure, or monotonic bass for delta blues. On the other hand I think "fingerstyle" is a broader term including the above but tending to connote something more complex and hybridized with more influences from classical, jazz, blues, gypsy and who knows what other sources.

I see Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten, and Etta Baker as fingerpickers. Rev. Gary Davis and Josh White were fingerstylists.

' Strang

Any single term which can cover Mississippi John Hurt, Ed Gerhard and every point in between is so broad as to be meaningless. Was Andres Segovia "fingerpicking"? How about Emmett Chapman or Andy McKee?

...the same as the differences between a violin and a fiddle.