10th April 2018: Course Update: Twelve New Videos Added
I've made some licks to go along with the patterns. I also show you how to strum with these patterns and I've given you a couple of different timings to play with. If you add these ideas to the basic twenty patterns, you should start making some great melodies!
Check out Lick 3 to see one of the lick videos.
There's no talking in the first part of this course. It's just, watch, copy and then play. In the licks section, I talk.
Once you've learned a pattern, practice it with a capo up and down the neck. Some patterns also work well on an electric guitar with FX like delay etc. Learn one pattern and then move onto the following pattern and repeat.
Try Pattern 1 first to see if you like the approach. Scroll down to the Class Curriculum to find it on preview.
Learning to fingerpick was one of the best things I ever did as a guitar player. As soon as I learned these patterns, my guitar playing and songwriting vastly improved. Instead of just strumming the same chords over and over, I could now play these chords in twenty different ways. Instead of going Am-G-Am-G I now had many more options to make those two chords sound much better.
It also meant I could use fingerpicking segments as breaks within songs. I could go from strumming to a middle eighth of fingerpicking back to strumming again. The fingerpicking patterns gave me an option of varying tempos within my songs. And this opened up my guitar playing and songwriting.
The very first fingerpicking song I wrote ended up being played on BBC Radio.
I
used two fingerpicking patterns from this course, and I also
experimented. The song is based on a true story about Britain’s first
ever black army officer and Britain’s first ever black outfield
footballer, Walter Tull.
Instead of just strumming chords, which would have made the song sound like every other song, I combined fingerpicking and strumming. It gave my song a different melody and it also meant I could vary the tempo within the song.
If you play
eight songs in a row that all have the same tempo, then your music is
going to get boring fast. If you strum eight songs in a row, then your
music is going to sound boring fast. If, however, you mix and match the
tempo’s and mix strumming with fingerpicking, then you’re going to keep
an audience’s attention.
What
I loved most about learning to fingerpick was how it improved my
songwriting. It gave me a new dimension as a songwriter. It even got me a
Japanese girlfriend for three years! :)
49 Students Now Enrolled
So why not improve your guitar playing and songwriting by learning to fingerpick!
On “Fingerpicking for Guitar!” you’ll learn twenty different fingerpicking patterns that will turn your chords from being average into being amazing!
It’s fast; it’s easy, and you’ll be playing awesome sounding chords in under an hour!
More importantly, there's no blah blah blah on this course. All you do is memorize, watch, copy and play! Then you go and practice the patterns on different chords and be amazed at how these same chords now sound so different!
Beginners with little guitar playing experience will also benefit from this course.
If you’re ready to learn more, then go ahead and hit that "Enroll" button, or take a test drive by using the "Free Preview" feature.
"I've already learned Pattern 1, 1b and 1c. How fun!!"
Faith Fuller
Documentary Maker
Desktop Documentaries
Check out my twanging here. Songs 2 - 6 for fingerpicking examples.
Ashley's been teaching online for two years now. He has two loves in his life, radio and guitar playing.
In the day he runs the Online Radio School. There he teaches in radio presenting and media interviewing. In the night he performs regularly on the London open mic scene. He's been playing guitar for twenty years now and loves writing songs.
You can hear his supa-fab music here
Any questions then email me here: ashley@onlineradioschool.com
