How to Fingerpick

The Blues is a form of music that originated in African-American communities of the United States. The music, characterized by flattened third, fifth, and seventh scale degrees, borrows from African spirituals and work songs. The blues has influenced or been reshaped into most of the genres now considered popular music, from jazz and bluegrass, to rock'n'roll and rhythm'n'blues, and hip-hop. This makes the blues the very foundation upon which most Western music is based, from John Lennon's "Yer Blues" to John Earl Walker's "Little Girl” – Chuck Berry and Elvis to modern alternative rock.

In this free video guitar lesson, expert country blues guitarist Amanda teaches you basic and intermediate blues patterns and fingerpicking skills. Amanda will teach you all about finger picking: hand positions, finger positions, thinking musically, third and fifth note blues, and more. You will also learn fingering techniques, how to use your thumb, how to thumb the baseline, travis finger picking and other styles, hammer ons, pull offs, and slides. Amanda leads you through major chords and picking patterns. It is all here. With these videos you will learn how to finger pick for sure!

"Hi. My name is Amanda Claire and I'm talking to you from Austin, Texas, for Expert Village, and I'm here to talk about fingerpicking in the country blues style, which is a kind of a traditional, American-style of guitar fingerpicking. I got into this gosh, maybe eight years ago, probably more, maybe almost ten years ago, when my friend, Michael Nivison, in New Mexico, started teaching me how to play songs by Mississippi John Hurt. And this is a style that has a lot of links to kind of a ragtime sound, early blues sound, swing sound, even kind of really early country sound also. And, so, I'm here to show you kind of the basics, fundamentals of this style. And it sounds sort of like this."