CHAPTER ONE

Getting Started
Introduction
Thank you for reading this Acoustic Guitar Fingerpicking ebook. I’m so
excited that you want to take this course and I promise you I’m going to do
everything in my power to make sure you’ve got all the tools you need to be a
fantastic acoustic fingerpicker.

What You Will Learn

First thing I want to do is welcome you to the course. Well done for making
this commitment. I take it as a privilege that you have chosen me to be your
guitar teacher. I have prepared absolutely everything you need to learn the
fundamentals of fingerpicking and to play your first song - descriptions, photos,
chord charts, guitar tablature etc. Here are some of the things you will learn in
this eBook:
• Three chords
• String names
• How to practice
• How to play with a metronome (good rhythm from the start!)
• How to play guitar tab (pick up a guitar book and play!)
• What fingerpicking patters will work over G, C and D chords
• Which right hand fingers to use for each picking pattern
• Five different picking patterns
• How to find bass notes in each chord
• How to isolate and practice your right hand finger technique
• How to isolate and practice your right hand thumb technique

Who This Course is For

Finally, I want to say that you are perfect for this course if you are a beginner
or a failed beginner. A ‘failed beginner’ is someone who tried to learn before,
maybe even played a few chords but gave up after a while, maybe because
learning wasn’t engaging enough or playing guitar didn’t stick. If that’s you or if
you are a complete beginner, then this course is perfect for you. You can call
yourself a fingerpicker if you can play the song at the end of this PDF, so good
luck!
Who Am I?
My name is Patrick O’Malley. I have been giving guitar lessons for over 15
years and about ten years ago, I started teaching all my new students to
fingerpick from lesson one. I noticed that the students who started this way
almost always stuck with the instrument and kept returning for more lessons. I
also noticed that they were far more musical and creative from an early stage, in
comparison to students who began with chords, scales and theory. I still meet
and play with many of them to this very day.

Believe it or not, I was very good at maths when I was younger and to many
extra money I would give maths lessons to kids (teenagers) when I was in
college. I always noticed one thing about maths - wherever anyone was stuck,
they were always missing a key building block that was necessary. In my guitar
teaching, I have over the years observed what common building blocks students
are missing to understand what is required to play guitar and indeed
fingerpicking, so I’m confident that the way everything is presented here is going
to give you what you need to get to the end of the book and hopefully continue
learning far beyond that.

I have a guitar site dedicated to learning fingerpicking at the suitably titled

http://www.learnfingerpicking.com

I wish you success and hope you soon enjoy playing guitar as much as I do.
Patrick O’Malley
Some Resources
There are a few things that you need before you get started:
1) Have a guitar
2) Be able to string up your guitar
3) Be able to tune your guitar
4) Be able to read some guitar notation (or tablature).

The chances are that you already have a guitar if you are reading this eBook. But
if not, then check out some of
the options here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h03QB_iDPqE

If you have an old guitar and you need to buy strings, then it’s probably good to
get a light set of strings or “11
gauge strings” for your acoustic. You need to be able to put strings on your guitar
so if you can’t do it yet, then bit
the bullet and try. Worst case, you muck it up one time so maybe buy two sets of
strings in case. But you can’t get
out of being able to change your own strings so dive in there if you have to. This
is a great YouTube video if you
need guidance on how to put strings on your guitar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcYS117qyco&list=RDvcYS117qyco-

For tuning your guitar, there is a good guide here if you have never done it -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDw2yWW1ThY

For reading tablature, we deal with that in a later section so don’t worry. You
have all the basics you need.
String Names
Let’s start with some basics. The names of the six strings. Look down at the
guitar. The string nearest your head, which you will notice is the thickest string
also has the most bass sound. It is an E note. We call this the 6th string for the
rest of the book.

The next string (the next thickest and next nearest your head) is the A string
which we call the 5th string. Then we have the D string (which we call the 4th
string), G string (3rd string), B string (2nd string) and then the thinnest string
(furthest from your head) is another E note which we call the 1st string.

You will notice two strings are E notes (6th string and 1st string) but if you play
them both you will hear that one is quite bass-sounding (the low E) and one is
very high pitched (the high E). It’s worth saying that when we say low here, we
mean the tonality of the note (and not where the string physically is on the
guitar).

There are ways to remember the string names. If you can remember the
phrase “Eat Apples Daily Grow Big Ears” then that mnemonic will help you
remember EADGBE, the strings in order.
“

Three Chords
The first 3 chords we learn are G, C and D.

Have a look at the chord charts below and we’ll learn these three chords in
no time! When you look at a chord chart, the number in the black circle is the
finger (left hand finger) to use. The low E or thickest string is on the left and the
high E or thinnest string is on the right. .

So for the G chord, put the second finger of the left hand on the low E or
thickest string at the third fret. Then put the index finger of the left hand on the A
string (string below) at the second fret. Then put the third finger of the left hand
on the high E or thinnest string at the third fret. Then play all six strings and you
get a G chord. Make sure to take your time and play each note individually to
make sure they all sound nice and clean.

For the C chord, put the third finger of the left hand on the A string (5th string)
at the third fret, then the second finger of the left hand on the D string (4th string)
at the second fret and the index finger or first finger of the left hand on the B
string (2nd string). This time, you only strum five strings with the right hand - the
low E or thickest string you don’t need to play.

For the D chord, you put the index finger on the G string (3rd), the third finger
on the B string (2nd) and the second finger on the high E string (1st). Now you
strum four strings with the right hand (not the two lowest the E and A strings).

Take your time, play each chord slowly and make sure you do two things
with the right hand, strum the whole chord then pick each note individually.
When playing individual notes, listen for any bad or wrong notes and then
correct (by taking a good look at what the left hand is actually fretting!). Playing
individual notes of the chord is the way to know if you make a mistake.
Reading Tab
Guitar Tablature (or guitar tab) is a way of notating music for guitar. It is not
quite reading “sheet music” like our piano playing friends, it is a little bit easier
but still takes a little getting used to.

We’ll start by playing a melody on one string. Then we will add other strings.
Then we will look at how chords are written in tab.

So we’ll start by looking at playing one note - the 6th string (low E). This is
just playing an open string so don’t fret anything with your left hand - just play
the thickest string on your guitar and let it ring. Note if you are not fretting a
string, then we call that an open string and it is denoted in tab as a ‘0’.

Now if we play that same string (the low E string) three times: first as an open
string, then at the 3rd and 5th fret, it would have guitar tab that looks like this

Now if we play the same string low E four times - first open, then 3rd fret,
then 6th fret then 5th fret, it would look like this.

Finally if we play both patterns above then follow by play the low E string
open, 3rd fret, 5th fret, 3rd fret, open string, you are playing Smoke on the Water
by Deep Purple. You do know this riff! Google it if you are not familiar with it
and then hum it and then play this tab until it matches. Now you will have
followed tab to play a song on one string and from here adding other strings is
relatively easy.
 Notes on Several Strings
So now let’s play the 1st string (high E / thinnest string) three times open.
Repeat.

And now play the high E string open, then at the third fret.
And now the 2nd string (B string) at the first fret then third fret.

And finish by playing the 1st string (high E) open.

Congratulations. You have just played Jingle Bells - but really this is kinda
cool because this is reading tab on two strings!

Playing Notes at the Same Time

Up until now, we have played notes sequentially, meaning one then the next
one after that.
But what if we want to play two notes at the same time?

Well if we play the 6th string (low E) open and the 5th string (A) at the second
fret - at the same time - then it looks like this

And if we wanted to show a G chord using tab, it would look like this.

Remember from the last section how to play a G chord. We fret the 6 string
(or low E or thickest string) at the third fret. Then we play the 5th string (A string)
at the second fret. The 4th and 3rd strings (D and A) are open. Then we play the
6th string (the high E or thinnest string) at the third fret.
CHAPTER TWO
Fingerpicking
Starting To Fingerpick - The Big Rule
In order to play fingerpicking guitar, the real key to begin with is the right
hand. So for the first few lessons, we will play something easy with the left hand
like a G chord or a D chord - that’s it! So start by fretting a G chord with your
left hand. That’s all we’re going to do for the rest of the lesson with the left hand.

The Big Rule

When you play guitar, you use two hands obviously and the right hand frets
chords or individual notes and the left hand hits the strings. When you play a
chord, you hit all the strings at once. But when you want to do fingerpicking,
then each finger will hit individual strings.

In playing guitar with the fingers, there is one big rule:

• The thumb plays the bottom three strings (the bass strings which are the
6th, the 5th and the 4th) and it has ownership for any notes played on
those three strings (the one nearest your head) and the other three fingers
play one string each!
• If there is a note on the 6th, 5th or 4th string, the thumb must play it.
• The index finger always plays the G string or third string.
• The middle finger always plays the B string or second string.
• The ring finger always plays the high E string or first string.
And that’s it!
 It sounds simple. It is simple! But at first, it will take a little bit of practice for
those fingers to obey you. In particular, in a rush to play what the brain is telling
it, some students end up playing it with one finger - because it is easier. Well, if
you notice that, just make yourself practice using the right fingers per string
again. And here’s a great exercise if you notice that happening.

One Finger Per String Exercise - Open Strings

What we will do now is play a G chord.
The bass note is on the sixth string (low E string). Let’s play that four times
with the thumb (T)
The G string is played by the index finger - let’s play that four times
The B string is played by the middle finger - let’s play that four times.
The high E string is played by the ring finger - let’s play that four times.
 Exercise 1

It’s actually really nice to play each of these notes four times. Because when
you do so, it gives your mind some time to play and also to think about ‘am I
using the right finger there?’.

So as a beginner, feel free to play this exercise a few times. If you think it’s
really super easy, then try to speed it up. But the most important thing is using
the right finger, not speed.

One Finger Per String Exercise - G chord

Exercise 2

Here we play the 6th string (the low E string, the thickest one!) at the third
fret, then the open 3rd string (G) and the open 2nd string (B) and finally the open
1st string (the high E).

Here we are not focused on speed; instead we focus on using the right
fingers of the left hand and having a nice clean note! That’s the most important
thing.

Assignment 1
So your assignment after our first lesson is to play this pattern (exercise 2) for
a few minutes until you are comfortable with it. Feel free to stick with just the G
chord. But try something new also with the right hand. Experiment! Do
something different! Maybe it is to play the notes backwards (from highest E to
the low E). Or maybe you play each note twice? Maybe you skip a note? I
cannot emphasise enough how great it is for you musically to just experiment
and mess around with everything I show you.

As a bonus, if you know some other chords, try this pattern - you might
notice it sounds great with other chords and sometimes not. Any idea why that
is? We’ll explain it in lesson 2, but it’s worth thinking about now.
Fingerpicking with Two Chords

Last Assignment
So how did playing your first pattern go? Did you experiment a bit and try
some new permutations? If you did, was that fun? Here’s a question - when you
started playing with other variations, did you keep using the designated right
hand fingers per string? If so, awesome.

Sometimes we may notice as beginners that you start off playing each string
with the right fingers but then if we relax our concentration, we find that one
finger may take over. So for example, maybe the index finger tries to play all the
strings!

This might be the easiest way to play something today but the problem is that
if we want to play something complex or start to speed up, it’s going to be
impossible. So it’s important that during the first week, we pay particular
attention to using the Big Rule of which finger play which strings. Even at a
really slow speed (like super slow!) if you are using the correct right hand fingers
and thumb to hit the appropriate string, then I am happy.

If it was a bit difficult to keep the right finger hitting each string, go back and
play exercise 1 again. That will iron that out for you, guaranteed! Play exercise 1
for a while and then go back to exercise 2 and see that the right fingers are being
used!

Using a Metronome
The next thing we will do to help us practice is use a metronome. A
metronome is just a tool that plays a solid beat, and our goal is to play along
with one. I suggest that you buy one. This Snark metronome is nice and does the
job but any metronome will do. If you don’t have one, it’s ok as you can play
along with me when I’m using the metronome and that will be enough for now.
But I’d recommend buying one anyway - it will be huge for your progress.

I use a Snark Metronome because it costs around $20 and has different
volumes which is great if you want to be able to practice sometimes a bit more
loud and sometimes more softly if there are other people you don’t want to
disturb. There’s also free online metronomes that you can use. They will work
fine today if you don’t have a physical metronome, but it means you need to
turn it on and off at your computer or laptop and I prefer to be able to press a
physical button.

Here is a link to a good free online metronome - https://

www.metronomeonline.com/legacy

Playing Exercise 2 with a Metronome

Let’s start at 40 b.p.m.

So try it yourself, play one note for each hit on the metronome. I’ll let it play
for a little while so that you can try that. So how did that feel? If it was too hard
you can slow the metronome down even more. Or if it was too easy then you
can speed it up!

But for now, you just want to use the right fingers of the right hand and make
a good connection. Speed will come in time, believe me!

Please don’t skip this exercise. Playing something very slowly in time to a
metronome and then upping the speed to a higher tempo and then to a higher
tempo again is a really fundamental part of being able to play accurately in
time. At the very least, play along at 60 bpm. It should sound pretty nice and
we’re using the right fingers of the right hand and it’s a great start to building our
fingerpicking technique, which will get pretty complex - but it all starts here.

Another Pattern
So now we are going to play a very similar pattern. Except now we’re playing
the C chord with our left hand. The one thing to note here is that the thumb hits
a bass note on the fifth string.
 Exercise 3

Start slowly and make sure the right fingers are hitting the right strings.

Assignment 2
Your exercise is to play the G pattern above followed by the C pattern, If you
know the chords well already, then your job is to think about the fingers of the
right hand - are they sticking to the right strings? Is the thumb hitting the 6th
string for the G bass note and the 5th string for the C bass note?

Exercise 4

If you are completely new to guitar, then don’t worry about this being
difficult. It’s great practice and I’m going to give you a great tip for how to
change chords quickly in the next section. But don’t go there yet! Spend 10-15
minutes trying to change chords and using the right fingers of the picking hand
(left hand).

If you have done your 15 mins homework and you want to mess around, try
new things, experiment and see what sounds musical, feel free!
Doing More - With Just Two Chords!

Last Assignment
I’m so excited to see you do that last exercise:
• We have two chords
• We are changing between them
• We are fingerpicking each chord
• We are using the thumb to play different bass notes on each chord

Now let’s just consider for a second if you found that hard, your fingers
wouldn’t behave themselves and it was just tough to play it the way you wanted.
Don’t get frustrated! It’s going to take some time. You can’t just pick up the guitar
and do everything, but I’ve three helpful tips and routines so that nobody gets
left behind.

Assignment Help 1 - Big Rule Exercise

First question, did you stick to the Big Rule? If one finger started to play each
string (instead of one per string) we play exercise 1. This will help here.

Assignment Help 2 - Thumb String Changing Exercise

Second question, how was it to play different bass notes with the thumb? We
had one bass note on the 6th string and one bass note on the 5th string. It does
take some practice and concentration. If it was really hard to master, here is an
exercise that I would suggest the following exercise. Play your G chord with the
left hand and then just hit the 6th string four times (with the right hand thumb).
Then play your C chord and just hit the 5th string four times (with the right hand
thumb). And repeat. Eventually the thumb should get used to the distance
between the strings and like any practice - eventually it becomes second nature.
You could be having a conversation with somebody and doing this! But in the
early days, it takes some attention and conscious practice.

Exercise 5

Assignment Help 3 - Easier Chord Changing Options

Third question, what if the changing of chords was too hard? Maybe once the
chord was fretted, you were doing great. You could fingerpick away, and you
could use the Big Rule and it was all fine. But when it came time to get to the C
chord, it took a long time to get those fingers in place. Here’s a little exercise in
case the chord changing was hard.

If we look at an Em chord chart, it looks like this.

Now if we choose to play the 6th string then 3rd, 2nd, 1st strings of the Em
chord, we might notice that all of those strings are string that the left hand does
not fret (they are called open strings for this chord).

What that means is that if you take your whole left hand away from the guitar
and play the 6th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st strings (the left hand is not used at all) it sound the
same as when you play the Em chord.

So that gives us a really easy exercise. Play the G chord and do our last
exercise and then take the left hand off the guitar (slightly off the fretboard) and
play and then put the G chord back on with the left hand).

Exercise 6

Up & Down Exercise in G

Our exercises so far have been in one direction - ascending.
What I mean by that is that we started at the thumb and then each note was
higher in pitch. Play them again and hum along and you’ll see what I mean
 Exercise 2 (again)

Now we want to play this again but add two notes - which looks like this.
Fret a G chord. So you will play the bass note on the 6th string with your thumb.
If we look at the right hand, play the 6th string with the thumb, then index,
middle, ring, middle, index.

You could write that (right-hand) pattern like this: T-1-2-3-2-1

Now what you are playing looks like this:

Exercise 7

Now we can try that in C. Note that the bass note for C is on the 5th string
(you might remember that from the last section)

.
Exercise 8

If you put those last two together, you get this

 Exercise 9

Assignment 3
This exercise above is your exercise for today.

But I want you to mess around with it. Honestly, the best way to master
music is to learn something and then do as many different things with that as
you can.

Play it with happy thoughts in your mind. Now play it with a sad feel.
Can you play it using different chords? Maybe get your Em in there, or your
easy Em (taking the left hand off the guitar altogether).

Play with different permutations of G, C and Em and anything else you can
think of. There are no right things to do, apart from enjoy yourself!
The Backwards Pattern

Last Assignment
Let’s have another look at the last exercise.
• You are really fingerpicking now - you have G, C and Em
• You are using different fingerpicking patterns
• You are playing the thumb on different bass notes

Exercise 9

Challenge
Either that exercise went really well, in case I’m going to challenge you to get
your metronome back out and try to play it a little faster! Maybe from 60 bpm to
70 bpm. Playing each note cleanly and playing to the beat are the key. This is
such a good exercise for you.

Or if it was tough, get your metronome out and try and play it at a really slow
speed but using the correct fingers of the right hand (our Big Rule) and in time
with that (slow) metronome beat. If it’s taking some time to master, don’t worry,
it will come eventually.

A New Pattern - The Backwards Pattern

We have seen this pattern before. It is one of the first we looked at. Here the
thumb plays the 6th string (as we know now is the default bass note we play for
our G chord with the thumb). And then we play index, middle, ring fingers.
We write this a T-1-2-3
(Thumb of right hand, first finger of right hand, second finger of right hand,
third finger of right hand)
 Exercise 2

I love this pattern I use it myself a lot. It sounds so musical, with the bass
followed by three notes that decrease in pitch.

Now we play those same four notes, but in a different order.

Exercise 10

We write this as T-3-2-1.

(Thumb of right hand, third finger of right hand, second finger of right hand,
first finger of right hand). I would advise just to play this for 2-3 minutes to get
used to the feel of it. I love this pattern I use it myself a lot. It sounds so musical,
with the bass followed by three notes that decrease in pitch.

Now we can try to play a T321 with a C chord. Notice the bass of the C
chord which we play with the thumb of the right hand is on the 5th string.

Exercise 11
 And you can do the same thing in Em. The bass of Em is the low E string (the
6th string). The easy version of Em is when the left hand doesn’t play anything.

Exercise 12

Assignment 4
Play the T321 for at least 15 minutes.
Your exercise is to vary the chords as much as you can. One example could
be this: Do the pattern in G twice then C twice then Em once then C once (for
example).

It’s fine if you just want to change between G and C for now. But if you want
to mess around with other chords and the length of time you spend in each
chord, I think that would be fun!

Assignment 5
Now play a G-C chord change but vary the pattern of the strings picked by
the left hand. Instead of IMA, can you think of another combination (mai or aim
or anything else would work, or whatever you mind’s eye sees, or whatever is
just playable. So feel free to have that thought in mind when you practice.
The PIMA Notation
For this lesson, we will focus a little bit on theory. This is just to take a little
bit of a break from learning new patterns .

If you are serious about being a guitar fingerpicking you are going to want to
be able to go out there and play music that you find online, in guitar magazines
or through DVDs, so it is good to be familiar with the standard of notation used
so that you can comfortably get and play music from other sources.

In the past we have played something like this and we have used the notation
for the right hand as T-1-2-3 (thumb, then index, middle, ring of the right hand):

Exercise 2

A Little Spanish
Another way to describe this is a PIMA notation.

In Spanish:
◆ Pulgar = Thumb
◆ Indecio = Index
◆ Medio = Middle
◆ Anular = Ring

So if you translated “thumb, index finger, middle finger, ring finger” into
Spanish, you would get “Pulgar, Indecio, Medio, Anular”. And because the
origins of fingerpicking are from that part of the world, that is now a well used
standard.

Two PIMA Examples

TAB NUMBER SYSTEM PIMA SYSTEM

 P-I-M-A
T-1-2-3

T-3-2-1 P-A-M-I

Here in the second example, it is what we practised in our last exercise. So

you know how to play that.

Now it’s simple - call the right hand pattern T-3-2-1 like we did.
Or call the right-hand pattern P-A-M-I if you wish.
Either way, they both describe the same order of strings you hit with right
hand fingers.

I’m now going to return to our T123 notation for our next section. Why?
Because it is just easier. But it’s always good to be aware of what other musical
sources will use.
Everybody Hurts
This is a great example of how a simple picking patter can be really effective
in song-writing. This example from REM is a great song for you to learn. Here’s a
tip: once you have learned the patterns, play the CD or open the song in
YouTube and play along. This might be your first time playing along with the CD
but it’s a great intermediate step to being able some day to play with other
musicians (and stay in time!)

The Verse
Do this (down and up) picking in G

Very similar pattern (down and up) but this time we play a bass note on the
6th string because we are picking a G chord.

Putting it all together, you get this. It should be sounding familiar now.
The Chorus
Then for the chorus, the chords are Em and A

And
 CHAPTER THREE
What Next?

Congratulations on finishing this course.

The first thing I would recommend is listening to as many of the great guitar
players as you can. This twitter account is great for highlighting some of the great
guitarists around - https://twitter.com/guitar_picking

Also you can go to the site http://learnfingerpicking.com where I will put

more materials online in video format on a regular basis.

Keep playing your 15-20 minutes each day and look forward to seeing you
soon!