Finger picking with the 5th finger

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

My pinky is physically so much shorter than my other fingers (which are quite long) that using it to fingerpick would cause me to do some weird angle thing with my hand that couldn't be good. So for me, I'll go thumb plus 3.

Same here, my right hand pinky is about 3/4” shorter than the next shortest which is my index and ring which are both about the same. Would be very awkward and I believe just create tension. I also don’t pinky anchor at this point, I like having my right hand float over the strings and my teacher (Mark Hanson) is the same.

[Pitar]

I play fluidly and with as much control of the pinky finger as I do with any other finger. One poster mentioned the pinky being something of an uncoordinated digit to which I wholly disagree. It is what you train it to be. I taught myself to finger pick from the time I first picked up a guitar, because I knew fingers could make a heckuva lot more music that a plectrum could, and the pinky was not excused from from the regimen from the start. My arpeggios begin with the thumb and roll down to the pinky. It isn't anything other than a matter of disciplined training that I use all five. That all said, there are many times the pinky tends to get involved and shouldn't meaning too many fingers, too many notes, and the melody suffers. Also, the pinky fingernail is small. Small nail, small sound, so I stopped using the nail years ago and developed a callous on the tip of the pinky that gives much better power over the string (deflection) than the nail alone.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by Pitar

I play fluidly and with as much control of the pinky finger as I do with any other finger.

One can get by but but it should be seen relative to how precise one wants to be in each finger's control of precision, tone
and volume and with regards to the difficulty level of the piece of music one is attempting to play well.