What Are Guitar Requirements to Learn Before Taking Acoustic Fingerstyle / Picking Lessons?
Posted in guitar lessons on 31. Jul, 2011
Another guitar lessons question has come in this week. Let’s tackle it straight away:
Are there any requirements or knowledge needed?
I am a Travis picker, so here is how I got into it: Work on some of the patterns given in the link below. Get a non-syncopated pattern down so you can accompany a song with it. Then develop a syncopated pattern. If you are playing a steel string guitar you might want to use a plastic thumb pick and a brass banjo pick on your index and middle fingers. If you play a classical guitar, or have tough fingernails you can play bare fingered
Finally, try picking a melody on the top two strings. The open string chords in the key of C work well for this. Borrow a finger from the chord pattern to move or just lift to get the note you need for the melody, and develop finger independence – be able to use the index picking finger when the pattern would have you using the middle finger so you can hit the note you need for melody. This will be difficult and may take you a year to get it down cold.
Lessons will help greatly – but find an instructor who can teach ou what you want to learn.
