Does It Really Make Any Difference What Fingers You Use On Finger Style Patterns?

[wcap]

I guess my response here will be a bit redundant, but I also agree that learning to pick in multiple ways is going to serve you well in the long run. There will be pieces where a thumb and two fingers will just not be enough, or where the fingerings will be much smoother (or, has been noted, possibly more rhythmic) done one way rather than another.

I came to guitar from a banjo background. This was great background for playing fingerstyle guitar in that I was very comfortable with being very adaptable to all sorts of picking patterns, and can adjust my picking patterns pretty easily on the fly. But banjo players tend to just use their thumbs and two fingers, and when I ran into guitar pieces that required a dexterous ring finger I felt like I was starting out from scratch! i had never expected anything much from my ring finger before, and it was an uphill climb for awhile. But now my ring finger is almost (but not quite) interchangeable with my index and middle fingers for most picking situations.

Incidentally, getting my ring finger to pull its own weight took me at least a year or two, playing on average maybe an hour a day, and this was building off of 30 years of experience playing banjo. I'm not saying this to be depressing, but rather to encourage you to be persistent and not give up. It will take a lot of time, and it might seem like you never will get to the point of having the dexterity with your right hand that you want, but with stubborn persistence you will almost certainly get there.

A few examples of pieces where I find the ring finger indispensable are Classical Gas, and Recuerdos de la Alhambra. Recuerdos is where I really had to tackle and conquer the challenge of making the ring finger as useful as any other finger - you can't play this piece without the ring finger.

See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLHR8zaEsA8

No, that is not me playing in that video! And I play it on a normal 6 string guitar, not on a crazy 10 string guitar (I think I'm playing exactly the same notes though).

And wow, hearing this guy play this is making me feel pretty inadequate! I play it relatively well when I'm in practice, but I don't play it as fast or as smoothly! Its good to watch videos like this - it reminds me of how far I have to go!

(I play it closer to this speed, though she is playing it better than me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oScBy...eature=related - it took me a year of looking at this piece and saying "Yeah, right, like I'm really going to be able to do that" and attempting it with little success, followed by a year after the tremo started to actually work for me before I got to being able to play this at all well - I certainly played it at least 1000 time before I started to feel I had it down)


By the way, after you have played fingerstyle for awhile, and have learned a variety of pieces, the right hand picking patterns will start to flow much more effortlessly. It might take some years, and lots and lots of playing, but before you know it, you will easily adapt your right hand picking to the situation at hand.

[wcap]

Also, if you want to get into hybrid picking at some point (something I'm not very good at), you are going to want to have that ring finger used to being a fully functional member of the picking team!

[Billy Memphis]

One thing I have noticed is that if you use alternating thumb more than I,M,A, the thumb will make a heavier atack on the string due to the fact that it is a heavy digit and it is always a downstroke. (almost anyway)
I think you should definitely try to learn it both ways because when you get to the point of playing a triplet on one string as in Malaguena, you will be glad you did. It is impossible to play a bass line with your thumb and a triplet on the upper strings with only your thumb and first one or two fingers. At least I think it is.

[Laird_Williams]

Originally Posted by Brent Hutto

I think there are two concepts which get conflated in these discussions. There are certain idiomatic patterns which are common enough that it makes sense to practice them in isolation or in etudes/studies purely as technical exercises. In other words to develop technique.

But just because those patterns are common and useful enough to merit dedicated practice, one should not conclude that incorporating those into any given piece of music is de facto preferable to the use of some other, non-standard, finger pattern. Ones choice of fingers for each note in a piece should first and always serve the music (subject to physical limitations).

Actually, that is the point that many of us are trying to make - that different fingerings will sound different, and one fingering may sound right for one piece of music and a different fingering may sound right for another. Hence, it is advantageous to learn (and learn to apply) as many different variations as time will permit.

It's hard to argue that that's failing to "serve the music".

[anton]

I think its good to learn using the P I M A right hand pattern. Like was said, alot of players have used just thumb and index, or thumb and middle finger, but obviously it limits what you can play, and how many notes you can play at once.

[noahclem]

Originally Posted by Laird_Williams

Actually, that is the point that many of us are trying to make - that different fingerings will sound different, and one fingering may sound right for one piece of music and a different fingering may sound right for another. Hence, it is advantageous to learn (and learn to apply) as many different variations as time will permit.

It's hard to argue that that's failing to "serve the music".

Plus one on the above. A lot of the old blues guys will do only thumb and index like Travis did, and it certainly sounds different than thumb plus two or three (compare Keb Mo or Kelly Joe Phelps to Mississippi John Hurt or Lightin Hopkins). I wish I could do justice to one style, let alone multiples.