Alright, let us talk for a second about the practical use of finger style in guitar. And to do this, we are going to use the most simplistic and some might say reviled of early guitar tunes, twinkle, twinkle little star.
It goes – and I am using my pick here
(Music Demo)
Got that? Good.
Now, let us make it a little more interesting. Let us add a bass note to it. And what we are going to do is we are just going to play the bottom note of the chord. You are going to use your index finger to play the note nearest to the bass string and your middle finger to play the note furthest away from the bass string.
(Music Demo)
So what we have just done is that we have actually added the chord structure to the song by using the bass notes and making it somewhat more interesting. Now, we are going to add a harmony to that and to suggest even more of the chord structure.
(Music Demo)
A couple of things, first of all, this introduces a couple of chords that you are going to be using a lot in finger picking. One is the G with the B in the root.
(Music Demo)
This plays, make sure that you play this with your 2nd and 4th fingers. And, the D chord or D7 chord using an F# in the root like this.
(Music Demo)
Play it sometimes like this with two fingers and sometimes like this adding
(Music Demo)
Now, let us do the same tune. Now, we are going to use alternating bass. In other words, our thumb is going to be going like this.
(Music Demo)
Mind the 4/4 time against the melody as in
(Music Demo)
Alright. Finally, we are going to do twinkle, twinkle little star Travis style where we are going to use alternating bass with our thumb and we are going to do syncopation using our fingers like this.
(Music Demo)
Alright, let us slow that down a little bit so you can see what is going on here. It goes.
(Music Demo)
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