Andrew DuBrock – Easy Fingerpicking Guitar – A Beginner’s Guide to Essential Patterns & Techniques

Finger picking freaks some beginning guitarists out. It can seem so complicated and involved and it’s easy to hear an accomplished player performing some finger style wizardry and think that you’ll never even begin to sound that good.

Fortunately, Andrew DuBrock’s latest guitar tutorial book, Easy Fingerpicking Guitar – A Beginner’s Guide to Essential Patterns & Techniques, does a thorough job of giving the beginning guitarist the necessary basics to start exploring all the possibilities of finger style guitar.

Each step of basic fingerpicking is presented in a simple sequence. You begin by getting your thumb to serve as your bass player, picking out the notes on the three low strings. Then Andrew gets you to add in your index finger and to have both the thumb and the index finger work in tandem. Once you are confident that you can use your thumb and index finger on various chords that involve playing different combinations, he then teaches you how to add in your middle finger (working solely with the thumb) and then the ring finger (again, just with the thumb to start with).

Next, Andrew guides you through is using various combinations of fingers in conjunction with the thumb. Before you know it you are employing all your fingers to create some simple (and beautiful!) finger picking. He also introduces you to alternating bass patterns and discusses how to adapt your finger picking patterns to bring out the tonal highlights of different chords.

You may consider Easy Fingerpicking Guitar a “prequel” to Andrew’s excellent book on Travis Picking. After going through Easy Fingerpicking Guitar you’ll be more than prepared to tackle on Travis picking or any of the many fingerstyle songs you’ve been hoping to play.

Peace