Easy Fingerstyle Guitar Exercise #1 | Tutorial
In this video we're learning a new fingerstyle exercise to work on our guitar playing!
Are you trying to improve your fingerpicking on guitar? Are you just starting out with fingerstyle and need some basic exercises? In this video we are going to cover a basic guitar exercise that will improve your playing and fingerpicking!
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Transcription
Hey everyone, Dan here. And in this video, we're going to take a look at a handy beginner/intermediate fingerstyle exercise on guitar. So let's just jump into it and start with the more beginner stuff. So the fingerpicking pattern itself is this. So looking at the TAB, and sorry for the squishiness of it all, it was a bit difficult to get this all on one page. We're actually just doing P-I-M-A on repeat. P-I-M-A, P-I-M-A, P-I-M-A, P-I-M-A. The difference is, we're switching our bass note every time. The P, or our thumb, going from the E string, to the A string, to the D string, back to the A string, and then we go back to the beginning, and we repeat it again. P-I-M-A, P-I-M-A, P-I-M-A, P-I-M-A, or thumb, index, middle, ring, thumb, index, middle, ring, thumb, index, middle, ring, thumb, index, middle, ring. So if we look back at my picking hand, I'm going to P-I-M-A, P-I-M-A, P-I-M-A, P-I-M-A, and just repeat that. Alright, that's enough of that. I think you get the picture. However, if you're new to fingerstyle, that's the first thing you do. You just use all open strings, and you work on getting that P-I-M-A, and so on, comfortable. Get that pattern comfortable with your picking hand, make sure it sounds good, make sure it's in rhythm. Okay, now the next step up, adding a chord to it. So we're going to start easy, we're going to use the E major chord, and we're going to hold that while we do the entire picking pattern. In part B here, you can see the same pattern, that P-I-M-A, P-I-M-A. Same thing as before, except now we're going to hold the E major chord while we do it, and repeat it. We're first going to make sure our E major chord is clean by checking all six strings. Of course, if there's anything muddy or buzzy, be sure to fix it, and then we run the pattern. And you just repeat, repeat, making sure it sounds nice and clean, and make sure it's comfortable. Then another chord that we can hold and try this pattern with is the G major chord. Again, we first check that the chord is clean by checking all six strings. Then we practice running the pattern. And of course, try it at different speeds, things like that. Now let's start adding some difficulty to it. We have our two chords, E major, G major. Now what we want to do is we want to use the pattern with each chord, play them back to back, and just repeat and play them in circles. You can see here with C that we first start with E major, we do the pattern, then we switch to G major without stopping, we do the pattern, and then we repeat. And you want to do it again, and again, and again. Of course, if you need to, slow it down to work on it, and work on speeding it up. Following that, we're now going to add a barre chord into the mix, the F# minor to be exact. So in exercise D here, we're going to start with E major again, then we're going to go up to F# minor instead of G, and then we're going to repeat. My tip here when it comes to playing an E major chord to an E string barre chord like F# minor is to actually change the way that you play E major. If I know I'm going to go to an E string barre chord, I will actually make the E major chord with my ring, pinky, and middle fingers. I can then slide my ring and pinky fingers up and slap my index finger down to make that F# minor chord without having to pick up my ring and pinky fingers. So just like the other ones, take some time practicing this one and make sure it sounds good before moving on. Okay, so we've got two more to cover here. The first of the two, exercise E, we're not only going to be adding a few chords, but they're all going to be barre chords. So we're going to be using F major, G minor, and A minor. You can see here with exercise E, we're going to do the pattern one time with each chord, going F major, G minor to A minor, back to G minor, and then we repeat. That will definitely give your fretting hand a bit of a barre chord workout on top of the fingerstyle exercise. So we have one more to cover, exercise F, which is going to raise the stakes just a little bit. With exercise F, we're going to make a big change from the other exercises. Instead of playing the pattern in full with each chord, we're actually going to change the chord every time we change our bass note. We're going to be using G major, C major, D major, and A minor, all in the open position. We're going to start with G major and go P-I-M-A. Switch to C major, P-I-M-A. Switch to D major, P-I-M-A. Switch to A minor, P-I-M-A. And then you go back and start over, G, to C, to D, to A minor. Really make sure you take your time with this one and just make sure everything's sounding really good and you're keeping it in rhythm. With a little bit of practice, you're going to have it down in no time. If you want to make it more challenging, try adding different chords into the mix and in different places in the pattern. You could also mix open position chords with barre chords to make it even more challenging. Just make sure you're having fun when you play and happy practicing!