Fingerpicking

What it means

Fingerpicking designates guitar playing with the fingers of the right hand instead of with a plectrum. The thumb usually takes the bass strings, index, middle, and ring fingers the higher ones. In this way several voices can be led at the same time: a bass, a melody, and accompanying notes in between. The term comes from popular and folk music; classical guitar technique works on the same basic principle but uses a terminology of its own and other kinds of touch.

Musical use

Characteristic of many fingerpicking styles is a continuous, alternating bass in the thumb, over which the other fingers place melody and filler voices. From this arises the impression of hearing two instruments although only one is playing. This way of playing shapes song and instrumental music of numerous traditions, especially in the Anglo-American area, and is at home on steel-string guitars as much as on instruments with nylon strings. Compared with plectrum playing it gains in polyphony and variety of tone colour but loses somewhat in cutting power in fast single-line runs.

Performance practice

Begin with a stable alternating thumb bass alone until it runs without thinking; only then do the upper voices come in. Keep the wrist loosely arched and let the fingers work from the base joint, not from the arm. You control the tone colour through the place of attack — near the bridge harder, over the sound hole rounder — and through the angle of the finger. Whether you play with nail, pad, or fingerpicks is a question of style; decide deliberately and care for the nails accordingly. Take care to damp strings that ring along unintentionally, usually with the heel of the thumb. Practise slowly with a metronome, because the alternating bass makes any unsteadiness mercilessly audible.

Remember that the type of string determines the touch: steel strings demand more force and tolerate fingerpicks, nylon strings respond to light touch. Do not switch between the two instruments unthinkingly. Practise melody and bass separately and put them together slowly; the independence of the thumb is the real task. Take care that the bass does not become louder than the melody when the attention lies on the upper voices. Record yourself occasionally, because one judges one's own balance poorly.