Two Types of Guitar Picking

Series Summary

What is finger style guitar? It is the method of plucking the guitar strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks that are attached to individual fingers. There are different styles of finger style, or finger picking, including Travis picking, American primitive guitar, ragtime guitar, Celtic guitar, slack-key guitar, percussive finger style, and jazz finger style. This style of guitar playing is believed to have been inspired by a ragtime piano. Finger style guitar playing is seen in a range of musical genres as it can range in application, tone and melody. In this series of expert videos, you will learn how to play the guitar using finger style or finger picking techniques. Watch as our expert demonstrates picking patterns for you to try. Get tips on the basic open chord shapes and then challenge yourself with the moving chord shapes. Learn combination picking and get information on what to do with your left hand while finger picking. You’ll be an expert in no time after performing the practice drills shown in these videos. Challenge yourself more with the inside-out picking pattern and other picking patterns. Get tips on altered tuning and working with your fingernails. Our expert helps you to find your way around the guitar in these videos!

Video Transcript

"STEVE ANTHONY: On behalf of Expert Village, my name is Steve Anthony. I'm here in New York City. Today, I'm going to talk a little bit about some beginning guitar picking techniques. We'll talk a little bit today about various guitar picking techniques--finger picking versus flat picking, maybe a mixture of both. It's a--this is for you, beginners, so don't feel like we're going to throw anything at you too complicated. For you, that have already done this sort of thing, you already know what I'm going to talk about. So let's just jump right into it. The two forms of guitar picking are, essentially, flat picking and finger picking. Flat picking is very aptly named because we use this flat pick and hold it between our thumb and forefinger and we draw it across the strings. We can either strum. Or we can do and alternating bass pattern. And that's basically the flat picking technique."