Grateful Dead Music Forum

so ive been playing almost exclusively with a pick since i started playing guitar (3 years). i havent done much finger-picking at all, and shit is it frustrating. i feel like im starting from scratch. im trying to learn romeo and juliet by mark knopfler. anybody know any good finger-picking exercises?

play peggyo without a pick. folk/dylan songs are awesome finger pickings too. just listen to the song and see what you can do with it. you can look up patterns and stuff i you want too, i never went down that route personally but its def out there.

All i can say is use your thumb on E A and D, and the rest of your fingers on G B E. For me, it was frustrating at first, but I found that after learning a song, if I took a break, it came to me pretty easily the next time I played. Really all it takes is time and feeling the rhythm. In the grateful dead movie, bill says that the trick to drumming is getting all your limbs to work together in a schizophrenic way, after you do that, its pretty much like dancing..I'd say the same applies to finger picking. Think of the thumb as the bass notes, and the fingers as the rest. I agree that dylan songs are the best way to learn how to learn to fingerpick. Check out dylanchords.info for LOTS of bob dylan tabs. I almost exclusively play with my fingers now that I've learned to fingerpick. Finger picking just takes time, you WILL get it, trust me.

Here's a post of mine from the Peggy-o forum

----------------------------------------------------
Here's how I play it.

--A--

e--------------------------------
B---------------------------2-----
G------------2-----2-----2-----2--
D----------2-----2-----2-----2-----
A-------0-----------0------------0-
E-0-2-4-------0-----------0--------


You can pretty much repeat this pattern throughout with a little tweaking here and there. It's a very basic finger picking pattern (it would have to be for me to pull it off).

I'm sure it can be (and has been) jazzed up a bit but this is a good starting point.

I flat pick the alternating bass line and finger pick the other notes (other notes are in red).

If you have some issues getting started just concentrate on the bass line and after getting that down try adding in the notes in red.

Hope this helps.

----------------------------------------------------

I just love Romeo & Juliet and I know I tabbed out the intro but can't find it at the moment - when I do I'll post it.

I have been working on finger picking for a bout a year maybe 18 months now, and like someone above me noted, it gets easier each time you come back to it. Some exercises i use, and i have tweaked them a bit as i have gotten better is pretty simple and here is my lame attempt at mapping it out for you.

First step, remember to put the tip of your pinky finger just below the strings on the pick board. It is a bit uncomfortable in the beginning but it helps in the future.

Second Step, assign a number to each of your four remaining fingers as follows:

1=thumb
2=pointer
3=middle just kidding
4=ring

Third Step, make a G chord with your left hand or right whatever handed you are. Now you want to start with the thumb and pluck the G bass note-Low E string third fret.

Fourth Step, assign fingers 2,3,&4 to the G,B,& high E strings respectively, and pluck those in order. Repeat as necessary.

So it should follow the pattern:
1-thumb
2-pointer
3-middle
4-ring
and so on. Also, you may speed up as you begin to get more comfortable.

When this gets boring reverse the pattern, but always pluck the bass not first so:
1-thumb
4-ring
3-middle
2-pointer
and so on. speed up as necessary

When this gets boring as it soon will, do this pattern:
1-thumb
3-middle
4-ring
2-pointer
and so on. speed up as necessary.

Now you do not have to always play a G chord but for me it was the easiest to learn this with C chords and D chords work well too, and once you get all three-well, finger-pick a tune. Don't worry about how uncomfortable your pinky finger will be that will go away. Also, do not be discouraged this is difficult and will come in time- I am still no good at it and i practice it daily. Furthermore, remember to keep your thumb flat and almost parallel to the strings. This too is difficult at first, but once your thumb loosens up you will be glad you kept it flat. If i can, i will try and post a video in the next day or two. I hope this is understandable and helps, because finger-picking is such a wonderful and simple way to make songs sound better. Good luck my friend!

-James

Julia is a great fingerpicking tune

"Black Bird" by the Beatles is an excellent study in fingerpicking.

[Disclaimer: This is just the first thing that came up from a tab search on this song. I haven't checked it in it's entirety.]
http://www.guitaretab.com/b/beatles/23937.html

As a side note, the first bar of this song (the walk up)... if you omit the open G string, it is the same thing Jerry sometimes plays at the end of the Verse of Lazy Lightning, for example, on the words My Lightning To (instead of an Em walk up to Am, he does a G walk up to Am).
~pb

This comes straight from Jorma Kaukonen's mouth when I took his fingerstyle class a few years ago.

Spend a few weeks just with the thumb. Don't even worry about the other stuff until you can get that alternate thumb bass line going on independently. Once you develop your thumb into a machine, start to incorporate the other fingers.

Crazy 9.5 Fingers wrote:This comes straight from Jorma Kaukonen's mouth when I took his fingerstyle class a few years ago.

Spend a few weeks just with the thumb. Don't even worry about the other stuff until you can get that alternate thumb bass line going on independently. Once you develop your thumb into a machine, start to incorporate the other fingers.

gotcha, the thumb is definitely the hardest thing for me. just keeping that bass going