How to Finger Pick Blues Music on Guitar

As an "organic" musical genre, blues lends itself to picking on the guitar. Many musicians like to play the blues guitar sans pick, using their fingers to produce natural-sounding note tones. Methods vary, but there are some conventions blues players use often for finger picking the blues on the guitar.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Assign fingers to strings. The most conventional way to finger pick on the guitar is to use your thumb on the bottom strings and your fingers on higher strings. You should practice picking open strings and find a finger picking style that suits you. This will be good support for quickly finger picking notes you'll select later.

2. Pick through a blues scale. One popular style of blues finger picking is double picking an octave in a major scale. You start with the first scale note, pick it twice, go on to the second scale note, etc. When you do it in a catchy rhythm, it sounds a lot like classic blues.

3. Pick chord structures. When you want to apply finger picking to chord progressions, first find your chords. Then, holding a chord position, instead of strumming, practice your finger picking style and hear how it sounds different from using a pick to strum all strings at the same time.

4. Add extras like hammer on and pull off notes. These classic techniques help create a blues sound. A good example is this: when finger picking an open E major chord, add your pinkie to the third fret of the bottom E string to make a quick G note, then drop your finger off and resolve back to E. you'll hear how extra notes can make your play sound "bluesy."

5. Mix in blues type progressions. You can use finger picking for rhythms like the twelve bar, or the 1,4, 5 chord progression that supports a lot of blues songs. Apply your finger picking knowledge to any composition and add your own personal touch with rhythm changes or extra notes.