Fingerpickers-How Comfortable Moving Between 1,2,3 Fingers?

[davidbeinct]

That’s thumb plus 1, 2, or 3 fingers. When I first started fingerpicking about a year ago I committed to using thumb plus three fingers. Then when taking a David Hamburger video lesson he pointed out that many of the double stops and three-string chords voiced on the treble strings in acoustic blues sound more true to the original music when played by raking one finger, usually index, across those two or three strings. I learned to do that and go fairly seemlessly between one finger raking and three fingers, one for each of the treble strings.
Lately I took a zoom lesson from a teacher who does a lot of Mississippi John Hurt stuff. He encouraged me to try thumb and two fingers. He said that the physiology of our fingers means that the ring finger is always going to be harder to move independently and faster. I tried that and I think he is correct. However I recently learned a song where one lick is a sixteenth note arpeggio where the thumb plays the bass string and the first three fingers play the G, B and e strings in that order in rapid succession. All of a sudden my ring finger was balking at coming back into play.
Do any of you regularly switch between these three methods of playing with your picking hand? How easy or hard do you find it?

[JonPR]

I taught myself, and gravitated to thumb, middle and ring mainly. Index would come in when I needed to play four strings at the same time - either as a chord, or as a rapid arpeggio (much like your example).

Thumb and three fingers - p-i-m-a - is classical orthodoxy, but most folk-blues players just use thumb, index and middle (watch Mississippi John Hurt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85BvT5X6WSo).
It's a good argument that that very limitation (not using the ring) dictated the whole style - what you heard was whatever those three fingers could do.

A lot of the time, the thumb would fill in what the index might do in classical guitar - i.e., if any finger was to do a rake, or play more than one string at a time, it would be the thumb, not the index or middle.
Watch Merle Travis, and you see him using thumb and index alone - no middle at all! But his thumb does a hell of a lot of raking. Blind Blake, too, made a two-string thumb rake - "rolling bass" - his trademark.

Personally, when I play classical pieces, I often use my thumb where the index is more "correct". I.e., I will use all 3 fingers (i-m-a) when it's easy enough to do that, but my (self-)training in folk blues means my index often assumes a more dominant role.

[DukeX]

It depends on what I'm playing. More melodic stuff = T+3 pima. More rhythmic stuff (pattern picking) = T+2 pim.

And sometimes I combine styles in one piece.

[reeve21]

David,

I'm a novice finger picker so take this with a grain of salt.

There was another thread a month or so ago that touched on this topic, it might be worth a search.

I started out with Mark Hanson's books, and he advocates using the thumb and 3 (PIMA), which is what I did.

For the past year or so I've been doing a lot of MJH with my teacher, probably 20 tunes or so. He is a classically trained guy who can play almost any style and stringed instrument, and advocates PIMA for the most part. But I found that most Hurt tunes feel and sound better to me the way John played them, 2 fingers, not 3. One exception is Candyman, I find my ring finger creeping back in at times.

I've decided to use both styles. I've been playing a lot of Christmas Carols this month and the ring finger sure comes in handy. In the words of Roy Bookbinder, I'm just trying to use whatever finger gets there first!

I use all interchangeably, sometimes during the same song. Whatever works for the tune.

[Glennwillow]

I am mostly self taught and learned to finger pick starting in 1964. The one guy I knew who was a really good guitar player used thumb and two fingers. He used a thumb pick and plastic finger picks. So based on what I observed, that's what I did. This approach served me well for decades.

In my mid-40s I had to get rid of the finger picks because my right index finger had grown crooked at the first joint from doing so much mechanical work and from osteoarthritis. So today I play with thumb pick and mostly two fingers using short fingernails.

However, I have bought some instructional DVDs in recent years and learned how to use my ring finger for picking as part of learning some of the songs on those DVDs.

So today I can use my ring finger when I want to. I am not as coordinated with it as I am with my first two fingers, but when I need to use my ring finger, I can.

Recently I did "The Christmas Song" on an archtop Eastman guitar in the Show & Tell section. I used my ring finger a lot in this performance for playing the various chord clusters in order to get the voicings I needed.

Because I learned to use my ring finger in recent years, I have also learned to do hybrid picking when it's useful by holding a flat pick between thumb and index finger and then using middle and ring finger for picking strings upward. I have only used this approach on electric guitar. I need to practice at this when the need arrives, but I can do it when it's needed. However, I would not want to teach a master class on this!

- Glenn

[Bob Womack]

Way back in college in the '70s I studied classical guitar hoping it would improve all my guitar playing. It did: I don't struggle at all with integrating the ring finger. I use it for just about everything, from bottleneck to lead to fingerpicking to lap steel. Once you get get it onto an equal footing it is just part of the team. It may not be as independent as the others but it makes four string arpeggios a snap.

Bob

[Psychopasta]

I think that from a technique point of view, you should be able to play any way you want. It’s always good to have options. I’m currently learning PIMA after decades of just using one or two fingers.

[TBman]

I generally use T and 2, but when first learning something I resort to T and 1 and when I feel more comfortable with my left hand I start to relax and use T and 2. I will use T and 3 at times but only if the music dictates a need for it. The tunes I play are generally slow paced and I have plenty of time to do things. If there are quick arpeggios T and 3 is used as appropriate.