Hello, Justin here, how are you doing?
In this lesson we are going to be checking out
some really cool fingerstyle picking patterns
just kind of basic ones you might use
for your normal kind of pop ballad
Hopefully you've done your finger picking exercise
that we talked about in the last stage
just doing thumb-1-2-3
the fingers' positions are going to be the same
so make sure you get your thumb here...
In this case I'm just gonna actually start here
on the sixth string... Thumb on the sixth string,
first finger on the third string,
second finger on second string,
and third finger on the thinnest string
now, the first pattern we are going to check out
just playing a G chord with my left hand
we are starting here with the thumb on the sixth string
first finger on the third string,
second finger on the second string,
and third finger on the thinnest string
and the pattern we are going to be checking out today
goes like this : it's thumb - 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2
thumb - 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2
. . .
and we are going to do this really slowly together
so get your G chord on with the left hand
and lets have a little bit of a go here
here we go, nice and slow, 3.. 4..
thumb - 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2
keep going... 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2
and the trick here is just to do it over and over again
so it becomes a little bit automated
just so you think about it,
at some point in the near future
you gonna start changing chords while you're doing this
the big trick is just to keep doing it over and over again
once you got the pattern kind of under your fingers
a good idea is to speed it up a little bit
maybe getting it up to a speed kind of like
. . .
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and
thumb - 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2
now, all of those were the G chord
with the thumb playing the bass note there
which is on the sixth string
a really nice little sequence to practice is
G - D - C - D
this is a really good one,
aside from the fact that is actually sounds going nice
it means that your thumb is moving
from the sixth string for the G
over to the fourth string for the D chord
to the fifth string for the C chord
and back to the fourth string for the D chord
so really, your thumb is getting a bit of workout
what you do is to probably just play that pattern
once on each chord something like this...
so G
to D
to C
to D
very nice little sequence this one
you could even say it's a wonderful sequence
. . .
so that's the first little chord sequence
I want you to try and get through
G - D - C - D
use that little pattern: thumb - 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2
really, really nice, it's on the website
it can definitely help to say it,
it can definitely help to see it as well
so maybe write down on a piece of paper:
thumb - 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2 ...
would be a good thing to have in front of you
you can kind of almost use it as a little trigger
just to see it and do it as your eyes follow along
so maybe check that out
Now I wanna do another little pattern with you
this one is this, I'm gonna do it on a C chord,
and this is thumb - 1 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 3
thumb - 1 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 3
. . .
very nice little sequence again
so you can apply this lots of different ways of course
you might do it on an E minor
so thumb will be on the sixth string
thumb - 1 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 3
then maybe to a C chord
thumb - 1 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 3
to a D chord
. . .
E minor
. . .
C
. . .
of course remembering that with the C
the thumb is now on the fifth string
D. And now the thumb is on the fourth string
. . .
so that's also a really, really nice little sequence
the last one I want to explain to you here
is we kind of looked at it last time,
but this one I want to describe it to you as being in six
now you could think of it as kind of two triplets,
but really what we are going for is 1-2-3-4-5-6
so if we just do it on the D chord,
we are just going up and down so going
thumb - 1 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 1
like 1-2-3-4-5-6...
then to G: 1-2-3-4-5-6
D: 1-2-3-4-5-6
G
it's a very nice little sequence this one
and you can work it through lots of different chords
now we've just gone to an E minor
maybe go to an A, now we've got a fifth string root
we can go back to E minor even
we can even go, maybe something radical
we've just gone to C chord
with the thumb moving over to the fifth string
the big key here is making sure that your thumb knows
which the bass note is for each of the chords
so it knows whether to pluck the sixth string,
the fifth string or the fourth string
so have a play around with those three patterns
see if you can apply them to some songs
there's a list of songs that use them on the website
but just use your ears as well,
you might try putting the fingerstyle on a song
that's not normally fingerstyle
why not, remember if it sounds good, it is good
so experiment
and see what cool things you can come up with
you might end up writing your own tune even
wow, cool!
so, have fun with that,
I shall see you for another lesson really soon
take care of yourselves, bye bye