What I always recommend to anyone getting started with fingerstyle guitar is that you must start with the thumb first. The thumb takes care of most of the “backing”—the persistent...
What I always recommend to anyone getting started with fingerstyle guitar is that you must start with the thumb first. The thumb takes care of most of the “backing”—the persistent rhythm that propels the song along—while the index, middle and ring fingers, and occasionally the pinkie too, add melody and harmony notes on the higher stings. But, first and foremost, you want to get your thumb working independently.
STEP ONE
Put those rebellious fingers down onto the face of the guitar, and do not let them up! In fact, sometimes when I’m teaching a student, I will take a piece of gaffers’ tape and tape their fingers to the face of the guitar so that they can’t move!
The objective is to spell out each chord with the notes sounded with the thumb, starting with the root note. When playing fingerstyle, I prefer to utilize a thumb pick. If we play a progression of C-F-G, the thumb will sound, in sequence, the root note, the third, the fifth and the third once more (FIGURE 1). The only pick-hand digit involved here is the thumb, and I am lightly muting all of the strings by resting the edge of my pick-hand palm across them next to the bridge pins. This type of pattern is called alternating bass, and the sound is often described as “BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick.”
You can, of course, use this approach in any key, so here it is in the keys of Ab and A (FIGURE 2). The voicings of the chords used here are different than those in the first example, thus demonstrating that one can easily apply this technique to different keys, string groups and areas of the fretboard.
Another factor is that my thumb is held straight out, parallel