Right-hand technique

[standup]

And right away I found a video of Peter Keane teaching the John Hurt fingerpicking technique. Works for me, I'm a Peter Keane fan as well.

Originally Posted by reeve21

Hi standup,

Are you familiar with Mississippi John Hurt? He’s kind of a gateway into fingerpicking for a lot of people. Learn some of his repertoire and you will have the alternating bass with your Thumb and syncopated melody on top down pat. Plenty of resources available for learning his tunes on the Internet. Good luck!

[reeve21]

Originally Posted by standup

And right away I found a video of Peter Keane teaching the John Hurt fingerpicking technique. Works for me, I'm a Peter Keane fan as well.

Peter is great. Lost Jim Oldschmidt is also very good at interpreting and teaching MJH. John Miller, too. Lots of material out there.

[Cecil6243]

I can relate. I first learned how to play fingerpicking and rarely used a pick. I have no issues with accuracy with just my fingers, but when it comes to a pick it still feels a little awkward. It is getting better though.

[Bushleague]

Originally Posted by standup

I am a big fan of Missisippi John Hurt, and that's a good suggestion.

My ex-wife was a really good finger picker, kept me from even trying for a while because she was so good at it.

I used to play quite allot of bass, and coming from the bass to the guitar on any picking method, I think its important to work on hitting the strings far less aggressively. I've always been an aggressive player, and I like my guitar to fill allot of space, when I notice things sounding a bit sloppy I need to consciously tell my right hand to be more delicate, and I try thin the overall sound out so that my melody lines can come through with less effort.

Especially with the Hybrid picking that you are describing, I find it very important to stay relaxed and make sure you arent trying to hit the strings too hard. I think the tendency is to fight to make the finger plucked notes louder to compete with the picked notes, which just leads to sloppiness. Just relax and worry about doing the pluck gently and accurately, eventually your hand will learn to dial back the pick attack to balance things out and at that point it starts to sound and feel more natural.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by standup

And right away I found a video of Peter Keane teaching the John Hurt fingerpicking technique. Works for me, I'm a Peter Keane fan as well.

I just found what I guess is the same video, and I agree it's good, very clear.

The important thing is to make sure that thumb beat stays regular. The problem with the concept of the "independent thumb" (often referred to elsewhere) is that it's a distraction. It'd easy enough to get the thumb ticking along on the beat (although getting alternating bass strings in order reliably takes a bit of practice), but adding the finger or two tends to disturb the thumb. So the focus needs to be on interlocking thumb and finger in a pattern. (The "independent thumb" idea arises from how it feels once you've mastered it - it does feel as if the thumb is fixed and the fingers are free to do all kinds of other things. But you don't get that feeling until you've worked for a long time on the mechanical interlocking of thumb and fingers within an on-beat and off-beat pattern.)

He is quite right about focusing first on the "pinch" stroke (thumb and finger together), and then on the "in-between" stroke (finger between the thumb beats). The latter may need to be slowed down some way to be sure the thumb is still regular. There are only three elements to the technique:

1. thumb on the beat
2. thumb and finger on the beat together
3. thumb on the beat, finger between the beats

Every pattern consists of a mix of those three elements. A second (or even third) finger might be added sometimes but always in one of those three ways.

Essentially, get the thumb and finger(s) in order, and practice as slow as you need to to keep the beat.

Lastly, it's not too important, but Mississippi John Hurt didn't use a thumbpick. Most players of this style do (as Keane does), but the point is it's not essential. The thumbnail or flesh of the thumb will do.

Stefan Grossman has some good lessons/demos of the style too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85QwpwMQ0Lo
(He uses fingerpicks as well as a thumbpick - that's quite rare.)

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by standup

I’m working on my right hand, for guitar. I’ve got the bass thing down much more than guitar.

I’ll be using steel string acoustics because that’s what I’ve got, and I’m already doing flat picking and fingerpicking. Just trying to improve. My left hand on guitar kinda knows what it’s doing, but I think my playing will be improved with a stronger right hand.

I just need to do the work. I’m not taking lessons, but can probably find videos on Travis picking, crosspicking, etc.

Just need to apply myself, I guess.

Slow down. Practice playing slowly but accurately.