Zero to Guitar Fingerpicking in 30 days

How to go from complete beginner to guitar fingerpicking in 30 days

Go from complete beginner to guitar fingerpicking in 30 Days

I have taught dozens of students to go from never having picked up a guitar before to being really accomplished players. Over the years, I have experimented and realised that there is a way to teach students that seems like starting with what many would believe to be a 'complex' or 'advanced' style - fingerpicking using the thumb and three fingers - is actually the best way for a complete beginner to learn.

There is good reason for this. The traditional method of learning chords and strumming them is relatively easy to do, but actually surprisingly hard to do well. Listen to any beginner strum a set of chords and you see it is hard for the beginner to sound musical after a couple of days. But if you start picking strings individually, then after 4 or 5 days, you can play some really nice pieces. And this is the key: rewarding the student from day one, enabling them to sound musical within the first week. Believe me, I have seen this work time and time again.

When you want to learn the guitar, it matters hugely which course and teacher you pick. The cost of getting this wrong isn't that you lose out on $30-50, it is that the teaching may not stick for you and you may end up with a life where you never learn guitar, rather a life where picking up the guitar is a huge joy and pleasure for you, whether just on your own or playing with other musicians.

For a complete beginner, there is no more effective and no more enjoyable, musical and confidence building way than to start with a couple of chords and a fingerpicking technique.

How is this course structured?

This course is designed to be followed by students in a 30 day period. Of course, some students may go faster and some slower - (if you cover this material in 60 days, you're still doing a great job). The course has five sections

Getting Started - some basic information, identifying string names, a few chords, reading tablature, using a metronome
Fingerpicking Basics - the background to how fingerpicking works, the big rule, several fingerpicking patterns
The Thumb - the key to getting that 'two guitar effect' is for the thumb to do the work of the bass player; alternating bass, walking bass, more fingerpicking patterns
The Fingers - adding more advanced patterns to the right hand fingers, pinching, different sequence length and writing your own fingerpicking patterns
Advanced - clear breakdowns of advanced techniques like Travis Picking and Clawhammer
Note that each section has 5-7 individual lessons with a homework exercise after each lesson. At the beginning of the following lesson, I will give tips for anyone stuck with practical ways to get it mastered if you're finding it difficult.



At the end of my course, students will be able to…

play the most common guitar chords in a fingerpicking style
understand how to break down fingerpicking patterns into the bass/thumb and the melody/fingers and how to practice building up the component parts
read tablature and play along to a metronome
have a formula for composing their own fingerpicking patterns
play in travis picking and clawhammer styles


What materials will come with this course?

Each lesson has a HD video with three camera angles (full, left hand and right hand) so that you can zone in and see what each hand is doing. Each lesson also comes with a downloadable PDF and the relevant music tablature for each lesson.

Who should take this course?

This course is ideal for complete beginners. You don’t need to know anything about music or guitar playing to start. If you own or can borrow a guitar for thirty days, then you’re all set.

It is also perfect for “failed beginners”. Students who maybe toyed around with a guitar for a few months, maybe even learned a few chords but got bored because it wasn’t musical or rewarding enough and just strumming those few chords never sounded that great. If you don’t mind going slowly at first to get to more than just strumming chords, then this is for you.

Note that you do not need any previous experience with music to take this course.

Who should not?

If you having been playing guitar for years and have already several fingerpicking pieces you can play, this course could be too basic for you.

What will students need before starting the course?

Students will need to have a guitar.