Time to learn guitar fingerpicking!

Are you a complete beginner who just loves the sound of fingerstyle guitar? Do you want to learn guitar in a matter of weeks?

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. There are step-by-step exercises — each with fast/slow audio files, so you'll be able to follow along

It is also perfect for “failed beginners”. Maybe you 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. Just strumming those few chords never sounded that great. You're not alone. I have taught thousands of guitarist a fingerstyle-first approach to learning and you can be an adept fingerstyle guitarist in the next 30 days.

The Approach

This book is designed to help you learn fingerpicking in 30 days. It has 5 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.

The Results

By the end of this book, you 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

Patrick O'Malley