Using the Thumb & Fingers in Fingerpicking

"Okay, so there actually, in my mind, three components to learning how to fingerpick in this kind of country blues style. And one is what you saw me doing with my left hand when I was playing that more kind of complex version of like the "Blue Moon" progression. Which was that, well, even though I was playing kind of simple arpeggio with my right hand, right, just with the root note and the other three or four, you know, notes in the chord that I chose to play. With the left hand, I actually started adding some notes and taking some notes away. So, if you look at my left hand, you know, like right, I added a note there. Now, I can add two here, add one there, add two here. Okay? So, that's one of the three kinds of components of fingerpicking. What your left hand is doing. So we're going to put that on hold for a little bit now. So let's think about the right hand. And so, you know, in order to put that on hold, we'll just sort of hold the chord. Let's just say, we'll hold the G chord. I'm going to hold the G and I'm not going to do anything fancy with my left hand. Okay. So, let's think about the right hand. The right hand actually needs to be doing two different things. And this comes from, it actually comes from kind of a ragtime style or even like a piano playing style. Where you think about like a ragtime piano player, the left hand is, you know, doing a style, of playing which is called vamping, which is just like, right, kind of playing these chords, one, two, one two. And then the right hand is kind of playing the melody. So a lot of Scott Joplin is like this. A lot of ragtime music is like that, where the left hand is kind of doing this one, two, one, two vamping and the right hand is playing these syncopated notes, right. Syncopated meaning that they're on kind of the offbeat. Right? Well, when you learn how to fingerpick in this style, you're actually doing both of those things. Kind of the bass vamping and the syncopated, you know, notes. You're doing those both with the right hand. Okay? So that's why I say there are three components to fingerpicking. One is what the left hand is doing, holding a chord, adding notes, taking them off. Right hand needs to be doing both sort of the bass line, the vamping, like a piano player would, and kind of the more melodic syncopated notes. And so the way that's done is by, you know, dividing the labor, doing the division of labor, dividing the work up, between your thumb and then the rest of your hand. Okay? So, basically, in this style of fingerpicking, your thumb becomes, you know, basically the left hand of the piano player. Your right thumb becomes the left hand of the piano player and your other two, three or four fingers, however many you decide to use, become the right hand of the piano player. Okay? So the next thing we'll work on is how to separate what your thumb is doing from what your other fingers are doing."