Things You'll Need:
- An Acoustic Guitar
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Step 1
Pick up your guitar and look at your right hand. This is your finger-picking hand. With finger picking, you'll be using your thumb, index, middle and ring fingers to lightly pluck the strings. Traditional finger picking teaches that the four fingers used in finger picking are represented by PIMA--P is for thumb, I is for index finger, M is for middle finger and A is for ring finger.
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Step 2
Place your thumb above the low e string. Pluck the low e string with your thumb in a downward motion, ensuring that you only hit the e string and not the A string. In guitar tab, this would be represented as E:--0-- with a P right below the 0.
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Step 3
Place your index finger right above the A string and pluck the string with your index finger in an upward motion. Strive to only hit this string--it may take a few tries to make sure your picking motion is nice and short. Make sure to pluck the string loud enough to hear the note.
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Step 4
Put your middle finger right above the D string and hit the string with your middle finger in an upward, sharp motion. If you've hit it hard enough, you'll hear the note register clearly. Again, practice the motion until it becomes very easy to perform.
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Step 5
Place your ring finger above the G string and pluck the string with this finger in an upward motion. You want to pluck the string so that the note is nice and loud--but not so hard that the note sounds bad.
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Step 6
Practice hitting the e string with your thumb, A string with your index finger, D string with your middle finger and G string with your ring finger. Do this in a constant motion, one string after the other. Practice it until you can do it rather fast--but start slow in the beginning so that your technique is perfect.
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Step 7
Form a G chord with your left hand by putting your middle finger on the third fret of the e string, index finger on the second fret of the A string and ring finger on the third fret of the high E string. Use your right-hand fingers to finger pick the notes individually. You'll notice that this produces a very nice melody if done in order.
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Step 8
Shift your picking hand down two strings so that you're using the thumb to play the D string, index finger to play the G string, middle finger to play the B string and ring finger to play the high E string. Play each string in order using your fingers. You can adapt finger picking to any string you want, so you can shift up and down to create different sounds.
