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'Fingerpicking' is the technique of playing an instrument by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking (picking individual notes with a plectrum called a flatpick) or strumming all the strings of the instrument in chords, either with a pick or with the fingers.
It is used for many genres such as classical guitar (which is almost entirely fingerpicked), folk guitar, rock guitar (as practiced by Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler, and Jorma Kaukonen), jazz guitar (as practiced by Joe Pass and Martin Taylor) and ragtime).

Contents

Classical guitar fingerpicking

Fingerpicking jazz guitar

Travis picking

American primitive guitar

Ragtime guitar

"New Age" fingerpicking

Celtic guitar

Slack-key guitar

Percussive fingerpicking

Thumb and finger picks

Hybrid picking

See also

References

Sound

Classical guitar fingerpicking

A wide range of musical styles are able to be played on the classical guitar. The major feature of classical fingerstyle technique is that it has evolved to enable solo rendition of harmony and polyphonic music in much the same manner as the pianoforte can. The classical guitar, in comparison with the acoustic guitar, excels in such performance and allows the highest degree of control over musical dynamics, texture, volume and the timbral characteristics of the guitar.
The history of the classical guitar dates back to the middle ages and has been used in baroque music and renaissance music.

Fingerpicking jazz guitar

The unaccompanied guitar in jazz is often played in chord-melody style, where the guitarist plays a series a chords with the melody line on top. True fingerstyle jazz guitar, without the use of a plectrum, dates back to players like Eddie Lang (1902-1933) and Carl Kress (1907-1965), but the style did not really fully develop before the invention of the electric guitar. George van Eps (1913-1998) was revered for his polyphonic solo guitar playing, and Joe Pass (1929-1994) truly popularized fingerstyle solo jazz guitar improvisation in his later years. Ted Greene and Lenny Breau were other masters.
Today, fingerstyle jazz guitar has several proponents, from Martin Taylor to the pianistic Jeff Linsky, who freely improvises polyphonically while employing a classical guitar technique. Earl Klugh has also recorded several fingerstyle jazz projects on the solo guitar.
An important factor that influences the unique sound of this style is that most jazz fingerstylists play in all keys, unlike folk, classical and flamenco players who favor keys that provide open strings—C, G, D, A and E (or these same chord formations in other keys with the aid of a capo).

Travis picking

This style is commonly played on steel string acoustic guitars. 'Pattern picking' is the use of "preset right-hand pattern[s]" while fingerpicking, with the left hand fingering standard chords.^[1]
The most common pattern, sometimes named 'Travis picking' after Merle Travis, is as follows:
M I T M T I T M I T M T I T
T T
The thumb (T) alternates between bass notes, often on two different strings, while the index (I) and middle (M) fingers alternate between two treble notes, usually on two different strings, most often the second and first. Using this pattern on a C major chord is as follows in notation and tablature:

Travis' own playing was much more complicated and not limited to patterns.

American primitive guitar

'American primitive guitar' or American Primitivism is a subset of fingerstyle guitar. It originated with John Fahey, whose first record album ''Blind Joe Death'' (1959) inspired many guitarists such as Leo Kottke, who made his debut recording of ''6 and 12 String Guitar'' on Fahey's Takoma label in 1969. American primitive guitar can be characterized by the use of folk music or folk-like material, driving alternating-bass fingerpicking with a good deal of repetitious ''ostinato'' patterns, and the use of alternative tunings (''scordatura'') such as open D, open G, drop D and open C.

Ragtime guitar

As mentioned above, fingerpicking was probably originally inspired by ragtime piano. In the 1960s a new generation of guitarists returned to these roots and began to transcribe piano tunes for solo guitar. One of the best known and most talented of these players was Dave Van Ronk who arranged ''St. Louis Tickle'' for solo guitar. In 1971 guitarists David Laibman and Eric Schoenberg arranged and recorded Scott Joplin rags and other complex piano arrangements for the LP ''The New Ragtime Guitar'' on Folkways Records. This was followed by a Stefan Grossman method book with the same title. A year later Grossman and Ed Denson founded Kicking Mule Records a company that recorded scores of LPs of solo ragtime guitar by artists including Grossman, Ton van Bergeyk, Leo Wijnkamp, Duck Baker, Peter Finger, Lasse Johansson and Dale Miller. One of today's top ragtime stylists is Craig Ventresco, who is best known for playing on the soundtracks of various Terry Zwigoff movies.

"New Age" fingerpicking

In 1976, William Ackerman started Windham Hill Records, which carried on the Takoma tradition of original compositions on solo steel string guitar. However, instead of the folk and blues oriented music of Takoma, including Fahey's American primitive guitar, the early Windham Hill artists (and others influenced by them) abandoned the steady alternating or monotonic bass in favor of sweet flowing arpeggios and flamenco-inspired percussive techniques. The label's best selling artist George Winston and others used a similar approach on piano. This music was generally pacific, accessible and expressionistic. Eventually, this music acquired the label of "New Age", apropos its widespread use as background music at bookstores, spas and other New Age businesses. The designation has stuck, though it wasn't a term coined by the company itself.

Celtic guitar

The guitar does not appear to have had any major role in Celtic music prior to the mid-twentieth century, when it began to be used by folk groups such as the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem to accompany popular Irish pub songs. By the 1960's, folk musicians from the British Isles such as Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, and Martin Carthy were arranging and playing fingerpicking accompaniments to traditional Celtic songs, often tuning their guitars D-A-D-G-A-D (low to high).^[2] By the 1970s, some of these players, along with the French-Algerian Pierre Bensusan and Americans such as Duck Baker, Eric Schoenberg, Glenn Weiser, and Ken Perlman were arranging solo guitar versions of Celtic dance tunes, slow airs, bagpipe music, and harp pieces by Turlough O'Carolan and earlier harper-composers. Both Perlman and Weiser eventually published many of their arrangements in books which are still in print. Since then, many other players, including El McMeen, Pat Kirtley, David Surrette, Steve Baughman, have recorded Celtic fingerstyle guitar CDs.
Given the enormous size of the body of Celtic music (the Irish Department of Education alone has collected over 11,000 traditional Irish tunes), much clearly remains to be done in terms of arranging and recording these melodies for guitar.

Slack-key guitar

Slack-key guitar is a fingerpicked style that originated in Hawaii. The English term is a translation of the Hawaiian ''kī hō‘alu'', which means "loosen the [tuning] key." Slack key is nearly always played in open or altered tunings--the most common tuning is G-major (DGDGBD), called "taropatch," though there is a family of major-seventh tunings called "wahine" (Hawaiian for "woman"), as well as tunings designed to get particular effects.
Basic slack key style, like mainland folk-based fingerpicking, establishes an alternating bass pattern with the thumb and plays the melody line with the fingers on the higher strings. The repertory is rooted in traditional, post-Contact Hawaiian song and dance, but since 1946 (when the first commercial slack key recordings were made) the style has expanded, and some contemporary compositions have a distinctly New Age sound.
Slack key's older generation included Gabby Pahinui, Leonard Kwan, Sonny Chillingworth, Atta Isaacs, and Raymond Kāne. Prominent contemporary players include Keola Beamer, his brother Kapono Beamer, Ledward Kaapana, Dennis Kamakahi, John Keawe, Ozzie Kotani, George Kuo, Peter Moon, and Cyril Pahinui

Percussive fingerpicking

"Percussive picking" is an emerging term for a style of fingerpicking incorporating sharp attacks on the strings, as well as hitting the strings and guitar top with the hand for percussive effect. Flamenco guitarists have been using these techniques for years but the greater resistance of steel strings made a similar approach difficult in fingerstyle until the use of pickups on acoustic guitars became common in the early 1970s. Michael Hedges began to use percussive techniques in the early 1980s. Current percussive fingerstylists include Preston Reed, Kaki King, Justin King, Erik Mongrain, Phil Keaggy and Andy McKee.

Thumb and finger picks

As an alternative to using the fingertips or finger nails, fingerstyle guitarists—generally country or folk-style—may use small picks attached to the fingertips or thumb of their picking hand. These thimble-like prosthetics are also common among banjo players (Scruggs style). The picks are worn over the fleshy part of the finger or thumb.
Fingerpicks are generally worn to gain increased volume from each pluck of the string. Thumb picks are useful when more emphasis is desired for the bass line, as the thumb is typically dedicated to plucking the top three, deeper sounding, strings.
Chet Atkins, also known as Mr. Guitar, demonstrated this type of playing; he used a thumb pick and his first 3 fingers to pluck the strings.
Jazz guitarist Bruce Dunlap has achieved unmatched technical and improvisational abilities via a thumbpick and three fingerpicks, primarily on nylon-string guitar.

Hybrid picking

Main articles: Hybrid picking

Following on from the use of thumb picks, several guitarists who only make occasional use of finger picking may tend towards 'hybrid picking'. In hybrid picking, the plectrum is held, as usual, between the thumb and index finger while the remaining fingers are used for fingerpicking.
Because it is convenient for guitarists who use a flatpick (plectrum), hybrid picking has found its way into styles of guitar music where fingerpicking is rarely, if ever, used. Many contemporary guitarists will use this as an auxiliary technique. Ritchie Blackmore used this technique for his famous opening riff for "Smoke on the Water" (Ritchie used to hold a pick in his teeth when performing parts with his fingers). Eric Johnson makes frequent use of the technique as well. Carl Verheyen, Brett Garsed, Albert Lee, and Steve Trovato use this technique in country and rock. Gustavo Assis-Brasil uses hybrid picking in jazz and Brazilian music, and Jesse Cook in some modern flamenco pieces. Notable users of hybrid picking are Zakk Wylde, who brings this technique to heavy metal, and Australian acoustic guitarist Tommy Emmanuel who uses the technique effectively in a lot of his music.

See also

★ Pattern picking

★ Clawhammer (a banjo fingerpicking style adaptable to guitar)

★ Scruggs style (a banjo fingerpicking style)

★ Hybrid picking

References

1. Fingerpicking Styles For Guitar, , Happy, Traum, Oak Publications, 1974, ISBN 0-8256-0005-7
2. See Colin Harper, ''Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival'', Chapter 4 (Bloomsbury Books, 2001, ISBN 0-7475-5330-0)

Sound