Fingerstyle guitar
Encyclopedia
Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar
by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking
(picking individual notes with a single plectrum
called a flatpick).
The term is often used synonymously with fingerpicking, although fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the US. See below.
Music arranged for fingerstyle playing can include chords, arpeggios and other elements such as artificial harmonic
s, hammering on
and pulling off
with the fretting hand, using the body of the guitar percussively, and many other techniques. Fingerpicking is the standard technique on the classical or nylon string guitar
, but is considered more of an unusual or specialised technique on steel string guitars and even more so on electric guitar
s.
The term classical "Classical guitar
" can refer to any kind of art music
played on a nylon string guitar, or more narrowly to music of the classical period
, as opposed to baroque
or romantic music
. 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 piano
can. The technique is intended to maximise the degree of control over the musical dynamics, texture, volume and timbral characteristics of the guitar. Careful attention is paid to the physical posture of the player. Thumb, index, middle and ring fingers are all employed for plucking. Chords are often plucked, with strums being reserved for emphasis. The repertoire varies in terms of keys, modes, rhythms and cultural influences. Altered tunings are rarely employed, with the exception of Dropped D.
Fretting hand fingers are given as numbers in circles, plucking hand fingers are given as letters
Common alternation patterns include:
- factors include:
Flamenco
technique is related to classical technique, but with more emphasis on rhythmic drive and volume,
and less on dynamic contrast and tone production. Flamenco guitarists prefer keys such as A and E that allow the use of open strings, and typically employ capo
s where a departure is required. They often strengthen their fingernails artificially.
Some specialized techniques include:
is most commonly performed on the nylon-string classical guitar
, played with the fingers rather than with a pick
. Its purest form could be considered unaccompanied guitar with vocals, as exemplified by João Gilberto
. Even in larger, jazz-like arrangements for groups, there is almost always a guitar that plays the underlying rhythm. Gilberto basically took one of the several rhythmic layers from a samba ensemble, specifically the tamborim
, and applied it to the picking hand.
The style originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as southern African-American blues
guitarists tried to imitate the popular ragtime
piano
music of the day, with the guitarist's thumb functioning as the pianist's left hand, and the other fingers functioning as the right hand. The first recorded examples were by players such as Blind Blake
, Big Bill Broonzy
, Memphis Minnie
and Mississippi John Hurt
. Some early blues players such as Blind Willie Johnson
and Tampa Red
added slide guitar
techniques. Fingerpicking was soon taken up by country and Western artists such as Sam McGee
, Ike Everly (father of The Everly Brothers
), Merle Travis
and "Thumbs" Carllile. Later Chet Atkins
further developed the style.
Most fingerpickers use acoustic guitars, but some, including Merle Travis
often played on hollow-body electric guitars.
piano
. An early master of ragtime guitar was Blind Blake
, a popular recording artist of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
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, Tom Ball 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.
, also known as "'thumb brush' technique or the 'Carter lick,' and also the 'church lick' and the 'Carter scratch'", is a style of fingerstyle guitar named for Maybelle Carter
of the Carter Family
's distinctive style of rhythm guitar
in which the melody
is played on the bass strings, usually low E, A, and D while rhythm strum
ming continues above, on the treble
strings, high E, B, and G. This often occurs during the break
.
.
The most common pattern, sometimes broadly referred to as Travis picking after Merle Travis
, and popularized by Chet Atkins
, Marcel Dadi
and Tommy Emmanuel
, is as follows:
Middle | X X | X X
Index | X X | X X
Thumb | X X X X | X X X X
The thumb (T) alternates between bass note
s, 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 simple patterns. He referred to his style of playing as "thumb picking", possibly because the only pick he used when playing was a banjo thumb pick.
" and "Frailing" are primarily banjo
techniques which are sometimes applied to the guitar. Jody Stecher
and Alec Stone Sweet
are exponents of guitar clawhammer.
Fingerstyle guitarist Steve Baughman distinguishes between frailing and clawhammer as follows. In frailing, the index fingertip is used for up-picking melody, and the middle fingernail is used for rhythmic downward brushing. In clawhammer, only downstrokes are used, and they are typically played with one fingernail as is the usual technique on the banjo.
, is a subset of fingerstyle guitar. It originated with John Fahey
, whose recordings from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s 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 ostinato
patterns, and the use of alternative tunings (scordatura
) such as open D
, open G
, drop D
and open C
.
, jazz
and ragtime
with British traditional music
, was what became known as 'folk baroque'. Pioneered by musicians of the Second British folk revival began their careers in the short-lived skiffle
craze of the later 1950s and often used American blues, folk and jazz styles, occasionally using open D and G tunings. However, performers like Davy Graham and Martin Carthy
attempted to apply these styles to the playing of traditional English modal music. They were soon followed by artists such as Bert Jansch
and John Renbourn
, who further defined the style. The style these artists developed was particularly notable for the adoption of D-A-D-G-A-D
(from lowest to highest), which gave a form of suspended-fourth D chord, neither major nor minor, which could be employed as the basis for modal based folk songs. This was combined with a fingerstyle based on Travis picking and a focus on melody, that made it suitable as an accompaniment. Denselow, who coined the phrase ‘folk baroque’ singled out Graham’s recording of traditional English folk song ‘Seven Gypsys’ on Folk, Blues and Beyond
(1964) as the beginning of the style. Graham mixed this with Indian, African, American, Celtic and modern and traditional American influences, while Carthy in particular used the tuning in order to replicate the drone common in medieval and folk music played by the thumb on the two lowest strings. The style was further developed by Jansch, who brought a more forceful style of picking and, indirectly, influences from Jazz and Ragtime, leading particularly to more complex basslines. Renbourn built on all these trends and was the artist whose repertoire was most influenced by medieval music.
In the early 1970s the next generation of British artists added new tunings and techniques, reflected in the work of artists like Nick Drake
, Tim Buckley
and particularly John Martyn
, whose Solid Air
(1972) set the bar for subsequent British acoustic guitarists. Perhaps the most prominent exponent of recent years has been Martin Simpson
, whose complex mix of traditional English and American material, together with innovative arrangements and techniques like the use of guitar slides, represents a deliberate attempt to create a unique and personal style. Martin Carthy passed on his guitar style to French guitarist Pierre Bensusan
. It was taken up by in Scotland by Dick Gaughan
, and by Irish musicians like Paul Brady
, Dónal Lunny
and Mick Moloney
. Carthy also influenced Paul Simon
, particularly evident on ‘Scarborough Fair
’, which he probably taught to Simon, and a recording of Davy’s 'Anji
' that appears on Sounds of Silence
, and as a result was copied by many subsequent folk guitarists. By the 1970s Americans such as Duck Baker
, Eric Schoenberg
were arranging solo guitar versions of Celtic dance tunes, slow airs, bagpipe music, and harp pieces by Turlough O'Carolan
and earlier harper-composers. Renbourn and Jansch’s complex sounds were also highly influential on Mike Oldfield
’s early music. The style also had an impact within electric folk
, where, particularly Richard Thompson, used the D-A-D-G-A-D tuning, though with a hybrid picking
style to produce a similar, but distinctive effect.
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", given 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.
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 Tommy Emmanuel
, Preston Reed
, Laurence Juber, Shaun Hopper, Kaki King
, Justin King
, Erik Mongrain
, Phil Keaggy
, Thomas Leeb
, Jon Gomm
, Eric Roche
, Doyle Dykes
, Michael Gulezian
, Don Ross
, Andy McKee
, Antoine Dufour
, Craig D'Andrea
, Trace Bundy
, Rodrigo y Gabriela
, Newton Faulkner
, and Paul Finley.
The pioneer of Congolese
fingerstyle acoustic guitar
music
was Jean Bosco Mwenda
, also known as Mwenda wa Bayeke (1930–1990). His song "Masanga" was particularly influential, due to its complex and varied guitar part. His influences included traditional music of Zambia and the Eastern Congo, Cuban groups like the Trio Matamoros, and cowboy movies. His style used the thumb and index finger only, to produce bass, melody and accompaniment. Congolese guitarists Losta Abelo and Edouard Masengo
played in a similar style.
Herbert Misango and George Mukabi were fingerstyle guitarists from Kenya
.Ali Farka Toure
and Vieux Farka Toure
are father-and-son fingerstylists from Mali
, whose style has been compared to John Lee Hooker
's. Djelimady Tounkara
is another Malian fingerstylist.
S. E. Rogie
and Koo Nimo
play acoustic fingerstyle in the palm wine music tradition.
Benin
-born Jazz guitarist Lionel Loueke
uses fingerstyle in an approach that combines jazz harmonies and complex rhythms. He is now based in the US.
Tony Cox
(b. 1954) is a Zimbabwe
an guitarist and composer based in Cape Town
, South Africa
. A master of the Fingerpicking style of guitar playing, he has won the SAMA (South African Music Awards) for best instrumental album twice. His music incorporates many different styles including classical, blues, rock and jazz, while keeping an African flavour.
of individuals strings. For this reason, slide and steel guitar playing are very often fingerstyle.
Slide guitar
or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar
. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles. Instead of altering the pitch
of the strings
in the normal manner (by pressing the string against fret
s), a slide is placed upon the string to vary its vibrating length, and pitch. This slide can then be moved along the string without lifting, creating continuous transitions in pitch.
Slide guitar is most often played (assuming a right-handed player and guitar):
. 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 fingerstyle, 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 t1946 (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
and Raymond Kāne
. Prominent contemporary players include Keola Beamer
, Moses Kahumoku, Ledward Kaapana
, Dennis Kamakahi
, John Keawe
, Ozzie Kotani
and Peter Moon
and Cyril Pahinui.
are equally suited to this style. Some players alternate between fingerstyle and plectrum playing, "palming
" the plectrum when it is not in use. There is no single technique of fingerstyle jazz, but players generally avoid the use of capos and altered tunings.
Early blues and ragtime guitarists often used fingerstyle. True fingerstyle jazz guitar dates back to early swing era
acoustic players like Eddie Lang
(1902–1933) Lonnie Johnson
(1899–1970) and Carl Kress
(1907–1965), Dick McDonough
(1904–1938) and the Argentinian Oscar Alemán
(1909–1980). Django Reinhardt
(1910–1953) used a classical/flamenco technique on unaccompanied pieces such as his composition Tears.
Fingerstyle jazz on the electric guitar was pioneered by George van Eps
(1913–1998) who was respected for his polyphonic approach, sometimes using a seven string guitar. Wes Montgomery
(1925–1968) was known for using the fleshy part of his thumb to provide the bass line while strumming chordal or melodic motives with his fingers. This style, while unorthodox, was widely regarded as an innovative method for enhancing the warm tone assciated with jazz guitar. Montgomery's influence extends to modern polyphonic jazz improvisational methods. Joe Pass
(1929–1994) switched to fingerstyle mid career,making the Virtuoso series of albums. Little known to the general public Ted Greene
(1946–2005) was admired by fellow musicians for his harmonic skills. Lenny Breau
(1941–1984) went one better than van Eps by playing virtuosic fingerstyle on an eight string guitar
. Tommy Crook
replaced the lower two strings on his Gibson
switchmaster with bass strings, allowing him to create the impression of playing bass and guitar simultaneously.
Chet Atkins
(1924–2001) sometimes applied his formidable right-hand technique to jazz standards, with Duck Baker
(b. 1949), Richard Smith
(b.1971), Woody Mann
and Tommy Emmanuel
(b. 1955), among others, following in his footsteps. They use the fingerpicking technique of Merle Travis
and others to play wide variety of material including jazz. This style is distinguished by having a steadier and "busier" (several beats to the bar) bass line than the chord melody approach of Montgomery and Pass making it suited to up-tempo material.
Fingerstyle has always been predominant in Latin American guitar playing, which Laurindo Almeida
(1917–1995) and Charlie Byrd
(1925–1999) brought to a wider audience in the 1950s.
Today, fingerstyle jazz guitar has several proponents: the pianistic Jeff Linsky
(b. 1952), freely improvises polyphonically while employing a classical guitar technique. Earl Klugh
(b. 1953) has also performed fingerstyle jazz on the solo guitar. Briton Martin Taylor (b. 1956), a former Stephane Grappelli
sideman, switched to fingerstyle on relaunching his career as a soloist. His predecessor in Grappelli's band, John Etheridge
(b. 1948) is also an occasional fingerstyle player.
is rarely played fingerstyle, although no great technical challenges are presented.
Slide guitarists often employ fingerstyle, which applies equally to the electric guitar,for instance Duane Allman
and Ry Cooder
. Blues guitarists have long used fingerstyle: modern exponents include Albert King
, Albert Collins
, John Lee Hooker
, Derek Trucks
and Joe Bonamassa
Exponents of fingerstyle rock guitar include, Mark Knopfler
, Jeff Beck
(after years of pick playing), Robbie Krieger, Lindsey Buckingham
, Mike Oldfield
, Patrick Simmons
, Wilko Johnson
, J.J. Cale
, Robbie Robertson
, Hillel Slovak
and David Longstreth
Guitar picking
Guitar picking is a collection of techniques for setting a string into motion to produce an audible note; that is, plucking or strumming the strings on a guitar. Picking can be done:-* With a plectrum held in the hand...
by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking
Flatpicking
Flatpicking is a technique for playing a guitar using a guitar pick held between two or three fingers to strike the strings...
(picking individual notes with a single plectrum
Plectrum
A plectrum is a small flat tool used to pluck or strum a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick, and is a separate tool held in the player's hand...
called a flatpick).
The term is often used synonymously with fingerpicking, although fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the US. See below.
Music arranged for fingerstyle playing can include chords, arpeggios and other elements such as artificial harmonic
Artificial harmonic
To produce an artificial harmonic, a stringed instrument player holds down a note on the neck with the non-dominant hand, thereby shortening the vibrational length of the string, uses a finger to lightly touch a point on the string that is an integer divisor of its vibrational length, and plucks or...
s, hammering on
Hammer-on
Hammer-on is a stringed instrument playing technique performed by sharply bringing a fretting-hand finger down on the fingerboard behind a fret, causing a note to sound. This technique is the opposite of the pull-off...
and pulling off
Pull-off
A pull-off is a stringed instrument technique performed by plucking a string by "pulling" the string off the fingerboard with one of the fingers being used to fret the note.-Performance and effect:...
with the fretting hand, using the body of the guitar percussively, and many other techniques. Fingerpicking is the standard technique on the classical or nylon string guitar
Classical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
, but is considered more of an unusual or specialised technique on steel string guitars and even more so on electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
s.
Fingerstyle as technique
Because notes are struck by individual digits rather than the hand working as a single unit, fingerstyle playing allows the guitarist to perform several musical elements simultaneously. One definition of the technique has been put forward by the Toronto (Canada) Fingerstyle Guitar Association:Physically, “Fingerstyle” refers to using each of the right hand fingers independently in order to play the multiple parts of a musical arrangement that would normally be played by several band members. Bass, harmonic accompaniment, melody, and percussion can all be played simultaneously when playing Fingerstyle.
Advantages and disadvantages of fingerstyle
- Players do not have to carry a plectrum; but fingernails may have to be maintained at the right length and in good condition.
- It is possible to play multiple non-adjacent strings at exactly the same time
- It is more suitable for playing polyphonically, with separate musical lines, or separate melodyMelodyA melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
, harmonyHarmonyIn music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and bass, and therefore more suitable to unaccompanied soloing. Fingerstyle players have up to four (very rarely five) surfaces striking the string independently; however, that does not equate to four plectrums, since plectra can strike strings on both an up and a downstroke, which fingers generally cannot. - It is easy to play arpeggios; but the techniques for tremoloTremoloTremolo, or tremolando, is a musical term that describes various trembling effects, falling roughly into two types. The first is a rapid reiteration...
and melody playing are more complex than with plectrum playing. - It is possible to play chords without any arpeggiation, because up to 4 strings can be plucked simultaneously.
- There is less need for fretting hand damping in playing chords, since only the strings that are required can be plucked.
- A greater variation in strokes is possible, allowing greater expressiveness in timbreTimbreIn music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
. - A wide variety of strums and rasgueadoRasgueadoRasgueado is a guitar finger strumming technique commonly associated with flamenco guitar music. It is also used in classical and other fingerstyle guitar picking techniques...
s are possible - Less energy is generally imparted to strings than with plectrum playing, leading to lower volume when playing acoustically.
- Playing on heavier gauge strings can damage nails: fingerstyle is more suited to nylon strings or lighter gauge steel strings (but this does not apply to fingerpicks).
Classical guitar fingerstyle
The term classical "Classical guitar
Classical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
" can refer to any kind of art music
Art music
Art music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition...
played on a nylon string guitar, or more narrowly to music of the classical period
Classical period
Classical period can refer to the following:*The Classical Period of ancient Greece, which fell between its Archaic Period and Hellenistic Period.*Classical antiquity*Classical period of music*Classic stage of American archaeology...
, as opposed to baroque
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
or romantic music
Romantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
. The major feature of classical fingerstyle technique is that it has evolved to enable solo rendition of harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and polyphonic music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
in much the same manner as the piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
can. The technique is intended to maximise the degree of control over the musical dynamics, texture, volume and timbral characteristics of the guitar. Careful attention is paid to the physical posture of the player. Thumb, index, middle and ring fingers are all employed for plucking. Chords are often plucked, with strums being reserved for emphasis. The repertoire varies in terms of keys, modes, rhythms and cultural influences. Altered tunings are rarely employed, with the exception of Dropped D.
Notation
Fingerings for both hands are often given in detail in classical guitar music notation, although players are also free to add to or depart from them as part of their own interpretation.Fretting hand fingers are given as numbers in circles, plucking hand fingers are given as letters
| Finger | Notation | Finger | Notation |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | - | Thumb | p |
| Index | 1 | Index | i |
| Middle | 2 | Middle | m |
| Ring | 3 | Ring | a |
| Little | 4 | Little | c |
Alternation
To achieve tremolo effects and rapid, fluent scale passages, and varied arpeggios the player must practice alternation, that is, never plucking a string with the same finger twice.Common alternation patterns include:
- i-m-i-m Basic melody line on the treble strings. Has the appearance of "walking along the strings".
- i-m-a-i-m-a Tremolo pattern with a triplet feel (i.e. the same note is repeated three times)
- p-a-m-i-p-a-m-i Another tremolo pattern..
- p-m-p-m A way of playing a melody line on the lower strings.
Tone production
Classical guitarists have a lot of freedom within the mechanics of playing the instrument. Often these decisions with influence on tone/timbreTimbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
- factors include:
- At what position along the string the finger plucks the string (This is actively changed by guitarists since it is an effective way of changing the sound(timbre) from "soft"(dolce) plucking the string near its middle, to "hard"(ponticelo) plucking the string near its end).
- Use of nail or not: today almost all concert guitarists use their fingernails (which must be smoothly filedNail fileA nail file is a tool used to gently grind down and shape the edges of nails. They are often used in manicures and pedicures after the nail has been trimmed using appropriate nail clippers...
and carefully shaped) to pluck the string since it produces a sharper clearer sound, and also a better-controlled loud sound. The "use of nail or not" is usually a fixed consistent decision of the player and not varied; the thumb is an exception and might actively be varied between nail [sharper clearer sound] and flesh. Playing parameters include - Which finger to use
- What angle of attack to hold the wrist and fingers at with respect to the strings
- Rest-stroke apoyandoApoyandoApoyando is a method of plucking used in both Classical guitar and Flamenco guitar known in English as 'Rest Stroke'. Apoyando is a method of plucking used in both Classical guitar and Flamenco guitar known in English as 'Rest Stroke'. Apoyando is a method of plucking used in both Classical...
; the finger that plucks a string rests on the next string—traditionally used in single melody lines—versus free-stroke (tirandoTirandoTirando is a method of plucking used in Classical guitar and Flamenco guitar. Tirando is Spanish for "pulling." In English, it is also called a "free stroke")...
( plucking the string without coming to a rest on the next string)
Flamenco guitar fingerstyle
Flamenco
Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....
technique is related to classical technique, but with more emphasis on rhythmic drive and volume,
and less on dynamic contrast and tone production. Flamenco guitarists prefer keys such as A and E that allow the use of open strings, and typically employ capo
Capo
A capo is a device used on the neck of a stringed instrument to shorten the playable length of the strings, hence raising the pitch. It is frequently used on guitars, mandolins, and banjos. G.B...
s where a departure is required. They often strengthen their fingernails artificially.
Some specialized techniques include:
- Picado: Single-line scale passages performed apoyandoApoyandoApoyando is a method of plucking used in both Classical guitar and Flamenco guitar known in English as 'Rest Stroke'. Apoyando is a method of plucking used in both Classical guitar and Flamenco guitar known in English as 'Rest Stroke'. Apoyando is a method of plucking used in both Classical...
but with more attack and articulation. - Rasgueado: Strumming typically done by bunching all the right hand fingers and then flicking them out in quick succession to get four superimposed strums. The rasgueado or "rolling" strum is particularly characteristic of the genre.
- Alzapua: A thumb technique which has roots in oudOudThe oud is a pear-shaped stringed instrument commonly used in North African and Middle Eastern music. The modern oud and the European lute both descend from a common ancestor via diverging paths...
plectrum technique. The right hand thumb is used for both single-line notes and strummed across a number of strings. Both are combined in quick succession to give it a unique sound. - TremoloTremoloTremolo, or tremolando, is a musical term that describes various trembling effects, falling roughly into two types. The first is a rapid reiteration...
: Done somewhat differently from the conventional classical guitar tremolo, it is very commonly played with the right hand pattern p-i-a-m-i.
Bossa nova
Bossa novaBossa nova
Bossa nova is a style of Brazilian music. Bossa nova acquired a large following in the 1960s, initially consisting of young musicians and college students...
is most commonly performed on the nylon-string classical guitar
Classical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
, played with the fingers rather than with a pick
Guitar pick
A guitar pick is a plectrum used for guitars. A pick is generally made of one uniform material; examples include plastic, nylon, rubber, felt, tortoiseshell, wood, metal, glass, and stone...
. Its purest form could be considered unaccompanied guitar with vocals, as exemplified by João Gilberto
João Gilberto
João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira, known as João Gilberto , is a Brazilian singer and guitarist. His seminal recordings, including many songs by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, established the new musical genre of Bossa nova in the late 1950s.-Biography:From an early age, music...
. Even in larger, jazz-like arrangements for groups, there is almost always a guitar that plays the underlying rhythm. Gilberto basically took one of the several rhythmic layers from a samba ensemble, specifically the tamborim
Tamborim
A tamborim is a small, round Brazilian frame drum of Portuguese and African origin.The frame is 6" in width and may be made of metal, plastic, or wood. The head is typically made of nylon and is normally very tightly tuned in order to ensure a high, sharp timbre and a minimum of sustain...
, and applied it to the picking hand.
The North American fingerpicking tradition
Fingerpicking (also called thumb picking, alternating bass, or pattern picking) is a term that is used to describe both a playing style and a genre of music. It falls under the "fingerstyle" heading because it is plucked by the fingers, but it is generally used to play a specific type of folk, country-jazz and/or blues music. In this technique, the thumb maintains a steady rhythm, usually playing "alternating bass" patterns on the lower three strings, while the index, or index and middle fingers pick out melody and fill-in notes on the high strings.The style originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as southern African-American blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
guitarists tried to imitate the popular ragtime
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
music of the day, with the guitarist's thumb functioning as the pianist's left hand, and the other fingers functioning as the right hand. The first recorded examples were by players such as Blind Blake
Blind Blake
"Blind" Blake was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist.-Biography:...
, Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences...
, Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie was an American blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist.-Career:...
and Mississippi John Hurt
Mississippi John Hurt
John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt was an American country blues singer and guitarist.Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine...
. Some early blues players such as Blind Willie Johnson
Blind Willie Johnson
"Blind" Willie Johnson was an American singer and guitarist, whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals....
and Tampa Red
Tampa Red
Tampa Red , born Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, was an American Chicago blues musician....
added slide guitar
Slide guitar
Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...
techniques. Fingerpicking was soon taken up by country and Western artists such as Sam McGee
McGee Brothers
The McGee Brothers were an American old-time performing duo consisting of brothers Sam McGee and Kirk McGee . Sam typically played guitar and Kirk usually played banjo or fiddle, although they were both proficient in multiple string instruments...
, Ike Everly (father of The Everly Brothers
The Everly Brothers
The Everly Brothers are country-influenced rock and roll performers, known for steel-string guitar playing and close harmony singing...
), Merle Travis
Merle Travis
Merle Robert Travis was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and musician born in Rosewood, Kentucky. His lyrics often discussed the life and exploitation of coal miners. Among his many well-known songs are "Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues" and "Dark as a Dungeon"...
and "Thumbs" Carllile. Later Chet Atkins
Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins , known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, created the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle...
further developed the style.
Most fingerpickers use acoustic guitars, but some, including Merle Travis
Merle Travis
Merle Robert Travis was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and musician born in Rosewood, Kentucky. His lyrics often discussed the life and exploitation of coal miners. Among his many well-known songs are "Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues" and "Dark as a Dungeon"...
often played on hollow-body electric guitars.
Ragtime guitar
As mentioned above, fingerpicking was probably originally inspired by ragtimeRagtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
. An early master of ragtime guitar was Blind Blake
Blind Blake
"Blind" Blake was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist.-Biography:...
, a popular recording artist of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
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
Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
who arranged St. Louis Tickle for solo guitar. In 1971, guitarists David Laibman and Eric Schoenberg arranged and recorded Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was later dubbed "The King of Ragtime". During his brief career, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas...
rags and other complex piano arrangements for the LP The New Ragtime Guitar on Folkways Records
Folkways Records
Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...
. This was followed by a Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records.-Early life and influences:Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Herbert and Ruth Grossman...
method book with the same title. A year later Grossman and ED Denson
ED Denson
Eugene "ED" Denson is an American music group manager, producer, record label owner, and - later - lawyer, who has made notable contributions to folk, blues, and early San Francisco rock.-Biography:Denson was born in Washington D.C. in 1940...
founded Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records was an independent American record label founded in 1972 by Stefan Grossman and Eugene "ED" Denson. Denson was previously a co-owner of Takoma Records. The company's title comes from the country blues sexual two-timing allegory "there's another mule kicking in your stall"....
a company that recorded scores of LPs of solo ragtime guitar by artists including Grossman, Ton van Bergeyk, Leo Wijnkamp, Duck Baker
Duck Baker
Duck Baker is an accomplished and influential American fingerstyle guitarist, who in his playing combines genres as varied as rags, blues, country, gospel, cajun, bluegrass, Celtic music, ballads and jazz, swing, New Orleans jazz and free jazz.-Biography and career:Baker grew up in Richmond,...
, Peter Finger, Lasse Johansson, Tom Ball 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
Terry Zwigoff
Terry Zwigoff is an American filmmaker whose work often deals with misfits, antiheros, and themes of alienation. His fiction films are the features Ghost World , Bad Santa , and Art School Confidential...
movies.
Carter Family picking
Carter Family pickingCarter Family picking
Carter Family picking, also known as "'thumb brush' technique or the 'Carter lick,' and also the 'church lick' and the 'Carter scratch'", is a style of fingerstyle guitar named for Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family's distinctive style of rhythm guitar in which the melody is played on the bass...
, also known as "'thumb brush' technique or the 'Carter lick,' and also the 'church lick' and the 'Carter scratch'", is a style of fingerstyle guitar named for Maybelle Carter
Maybelle Carter
"Mother" Maybelle Carter was an American country musician. She is best known as a member of the historic Carter Family act in the 1920s and 1930s and also as a member of Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters.-Biography:...
of the Carter Family
Carter Family
The Carter Family was a traditional American folk music group that recorded between 1927 and 1956. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, Southern Gospel, pop and rock musicians as well as on the U.S. folk revival of the 1960s. They were the first vocal group to become country...
's distinctive style of rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
in which the melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
is played on the bass strings, usually low E, A, and D while rhythm strum
Strum
In music, a strum or stroke is an action where a single surface touches several strings of a string instrument, such as a guitar, in order to set them all into motion and thereby play a chord...
ming continues above, on the treble
Treble (sound)
Treble refers to tones of high frequency or range. In music this corresponds to high notes, and for this reason the treble clef is often used for instruments with higher pitch. Examples of treble sounds are guitar tones, female voice , young boy voice, etc. They have frequencies above 9 KHz. Treble...
strings, high E, B, and G. This often occurs during the break
Break (music)
In popular music, a break is an instrumental or percussion section or interlude during a song derived from or related to stop-time – being a "break" from the main parts of the song or piece....
.
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 chordsChord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
.
The most common pattern, sometimes broadly referred to as Travis picking after Merle Travis
Merle Travis
Merle Robert Travis was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and musician born in Rosewood, Kentucky. His lyrics often discussed the life and exploitation of coal miners. Among his many well-known songs are "Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues" and "Dark as a Dungeon"...
, and popularized by Chet Atkins
Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins , known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, created the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle...
, Marcel Dadi
Marcel Dadi
Marcel Dadi was a Tunisia-born Jewish French guitarist known for his finger-picking style which faithfully recreated the instrumental styles of American guitarists such as Chet Atkins, Merle Travis and Jerry Reed...
and Tommy Emmanuel
Tommy Emmanuel
William Thomas "Tommy" Emmanuel AM is an Australian guitarist, best known for his complex fingerpicking style, energetic performances and the use of percussive effects on the guitar. In the May 2008 and 2010 issues of Guitar Player Magazine, he was named as "Best Acoustic Guitarist" in their...
, is as follows:
Middle | X X | X X
Index | X X | X X
Thumb | X X X X | X X X X
The thumb (T) alternates between bass note
Bass note
In music theory, the bass note of a chord or sonority is the lowest note played or notated. If there are multiple voices it is the note played or notated in the lowest voice. While the bass note is often the root or fundamental of the chord, it does not have to be, and sometimes one of the other...
s, 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
Musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...
and tablature
Tablature
Tablature is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches....
:
Clawhammer and frailing
"ClawhammerClawhammer
Clawhammer is a highly rhythmic banjo playing style and common component of American old-time music. The principal difference between clawhammer style and other styles is the picking direction...
" and "Frailing" are primarily banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
techniques which are sometimes applied to the guitar. Jody Stecher
Jody Stecher
Jody Stecher is an American singer and musician, who plays bluegrass and old-time music on banjo, mandolin, fiddle and guitar, and Dagar-vani dhrupad on the sursringar, a rare Indian instrument that is a baritone relative of the sarod....
and Alec Stone Sweet
Alec Stone Sweet
Alec Stone Sweet grew up in Bellingham, Washington. He is Leitner Professor of Law, Politics, and International Studies at the Yale Law School, and a notable author, musician, and Petanque player.-Scholarship:...
are exponents of guitar clawhammer.
Fingerstyle guitarist Steve Baughman distinguishes between frailing and clawhammer as follows. In frailing, the index fingertip is used for up-picking melody, and the middle fingernail is used for rhythmic downward brushing. In clawhammer, only downstrokes are used, and they are typically played with one fingernail as is the usual technique on the banjo.
American primitive guitar
American primitive guitar, or American PrimitivismAmerican Primitivism
American Primitivism, also known as American Primitive Guitar, is the music genre started by John Fahey in the late 1950s. Fahey composed and recorded avant-garde/neo-classical compositions using traditional country blues fingerpicking techniques, which had previously been used primarily to...
, is a subset of fingerstyle guitar. It originated with John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
, whose recordings from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s inspired many guitarists such as Leo Kottke
Leo Kottke
Leo Kottke is an acoustic guitarist. He is widely known for his innovative fingerpicking style, which draws on influences from blues, jazz, and folk music, and his syncopated, polyphonic melodies...
, who made his debut recording of 6 and 12 String Guitar on Fahey's Takoma
Takoma Records
Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by John Fahey in the late 1950s.. It was named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland.-History:...
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 ostinato
Ostinato
In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in...
patterns, and the use of alternative tunings (scordatura
Scordatura
A scordatura , also called cross-tuning, is an alternative tuning used for the open strings of a string instrument, in which the notes indicated in the score would represent the finger position as if played in regular tuning, while the actual pitch is altered...
) such as open D
Open D tuning
Open D tuning is an open tuning for the acoustic or electric guitar. The open string notes in this tuning are: D A D F♯ A D. It uses the three notes that form the triad of a D major chord: D, the root note; A, the perfect fifth; and F♯, the major third...
, open G
Open G tuning
Open G tuning is a tuning for guitar, such that the open strings play a G major chord with no fingering or capo.The standard Open G tuning is D-G-D-G-B-D. Note that this leaves the D as the bottom of the chord, creating an inversion. To rectify this problem, some guitar players will remove the low...
, drop D
Drop D tuning
Drop D tuning, also known as DADGBE, is an alternate, or scordatura, form of guitar tuning — specifically, a dropped tuning — in which the lowest string is tuned down from the usual E of standard tuning by one whole step to D.- Uses of drop D tuning :In drop D the three bass strings...
and open C
Open C tuning
Open C Tuning is an open tuning for guitar. The open string notes in this tuning are CGCGCE. It uses the three notes that form the triad of a C major chord: C, the root note; G, the perfect fifth; and E the major third....
.
Folk baroque
A distinctive style to emerge from Britain in the early 1960s, which combined elements of American folk, bluesBlues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and ragtime
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
with British traditional music
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
, was what became known as 'folk baroque'. Pioneered by musicians of the Second British folk revival began their careers in the short-lived skiffle
Skiffle
Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly...
craze of the later 1950s and often used American blues, folk and jazz styles, occasionally using open D and G tunings. However, performers like Davy Graham and Martin Carthy
Martin Carthy
Martin Carthy MBE is an English folk singer and guitarist who has remained one of the most influential figures in British traditional music, inspiring contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and later artists such as Richard Thompson since he emerged as a young musician in the early days...
attempted to apply these styles to the playing of traditional English modal music. They were soon followed by artists such as Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
and John Renbourn
John Renbourn
John Renbourn is an English guitarist and songwriter. He is possibly best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence .While most commonly labelled a...
, who further defined the style. The style these artists developed was particularly notable for the adoption of D-A-D-G-A-D
DADGAD
DADGAD, D modal tuning or Celtic tuning is an alternative guitar tuning most associated with Celtic music, though it has also found use in rock and other genres. Instead of the standard EADGBE tuning, the six guitar strings are tuned, from low to high, DADGAD...
(from lowest to highest), which gave a form of suspended-fourth D chord, neither major nor minor, which could be employed as the basis for modal based folk songs. This was combined with a fingerstyle based on Travis picking and a focus on melody, that made it suitable as an accompaniment. Denselow, who coined the phrase ‘folk baroque’ singled out Graham’s recording of traditional English folk song ‘Seven Gypsys’ on Folk, Blues and Beyond
Folk, Blues and Beyond
Folk, Blues and Beyond is the second studio album by British musician Davey Graham, originally released in 1964.It has been considered Graham's most groundbreaking and consistent work and a defining record of the 20th century...
(1964) as the beginning of the style. Graham mixed this with Indian, African, American, Celtic and modern and traditional American influences, while Carthy in particular used the tuning in order to replicate the drone common in medieval and folk music played by the thumb on the two lowest strings. The style was further developed by Jansch, who brought a more forceful style of picking and, indirectly, influences from Jazz and Ragtime, leading particularly to more complex basslines. Renbourn built on all these trends and was the artist whose repertoire was most influenced by medieval music.
In the early 1970s the next generation of British artists added new tunings and techniques, reflected in the work of artists like Nick Drake
Nick Drake
Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician. Though he is best known for his sombre guitar based songs, Drake was also proficient at piano, clarinet and saxophone...
, Tim Buckley
Tim Buckley
Timothy Charles Buckley III was an American vocalist, and musician. His music and style changed considerably through the years; his first album was mostly folk oriented, but over time his music incorporated jazz, psychedelia, funk, soul, avant-garde and an evolving "voice as instrument," sound...
and particularly John Martyn
John Martyn
John Martyn, OBE , born Iain David McGeachy, was a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. Over a forty-year career he released twenty studio albums, working with artists such as Eric Clapton and David Gilmour...
, whose Solid Air
Solid Air
Solid Air is a folk jazz album released in 1973 by John Martyn on Island Records.Contemporary reviews were favourable with music paper Sounds declaring that Solid Air flows beautifully and shows the entire spectrum of music that John Martyn has at his fingertips." The album has continued to...
(1972) set the bar for subsequent British acoustic guitarists. Perhaps the most prominent exponent of recent years has been Martin Simpson
Martin Simpson
Martin Simpson is an English folk singer, guitarist and songwriter. His music reflects a wide variety of influences and styles, rooted in the British Isles, America and beyond.-Biography:...
, whose complex mix of traditional English and American material, together with innovative arrangements and techniques like the use of guitar slides, represents a deliberate attempt to create a unique and personal style. Martin Carthy passed on his guitar style to French guitarist Pierre Bensusan
Pierre Bensusan
Pierre Bensusan is a French-Algerian guitarist. As a sephardic Jew, his family came from Spain, Spanish Morocco and French Algeria. The genre of his acoustic guitar music is often characterized as Celtic, Folk, World music, New Age, or Chamber jazz. He has also published three books of music and...
. It was taken up by in Scotland by Dick Gaughan
Dick Gaughan
Richard Peter Gaughan usually known as Dick Gaughan is a Scottish musician, singer, and songwriter, particularly of folk and social protest songs.-Early years:...
, and by Irish musicians like Paul Brady
Paul Brady
Paul Joseph Brady is an Irish singer-songwriter, whose work straddles folk and pop. He was interested in a wide variety of music from an early age...
, Dónal Lunny
Dónal Lunny
Dónal Lunny is an Irish folk musician. Lunny has been at the forefront of the evolution of traditional Irish music for more than thirty-five years and has participated within the renaissance of traditional Irish music in that time period...
and Mick Moloney
Mick Moloney
Michael "Mick" Moloney is a traditional Irish musician and scholar. Born in Limerick, County Limerick, he was an important figure on the Dublin folk-song revival in the 1960s. In 1973, he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
. Carthy also influenced Paul Simon
Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
, particularly evident on ‘Scarborough Fair
Scarborough Fair
"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional ballad of the United Kingdom.The song tells the tale of a young man, who tells the listener to ask his former lover to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she...
’, which he probably taught to Simon, and a recording of Davy’s 'Anji
Anji (Song)
"Anji" is an acoustic fingerstyle guitar piece composed and recorded in 1961 by noted folk guitarist Davey Graham. The piece is one of the most well-known acoustic blues-folk guitar pieces ever composed, with many notable artists covering it, including Bert Jansch, Simon and Garfunkel and Harry...
' that appears on Sounds of Silence
Sounds of Silence (album)
Sounds of Silence is the second album by Simon and Garfunkel, released on January 17, 1966. The album's title is a slight modification of the title of the duo's first major hit, "The Sound of Silence", which originally was released as "The Sounds of Silence"...
, and as a result was copied by many subsequent folk guitarists. By the 1970s Americans such as Duck Baker
Duck Baker
Duck Baker is an accomplished and influential American fingerstyle guitarist, who in his playing combines genres as varied as rags, blues, country, gospel, cajun, bluegrass, Celtic music, ballads and jazz, swing, New Orleans jazz and free jazz.-Biography and career:Baker grew up in Richmond,...
, Eric Schoenberg
Eric Schoenberg
Eric Schoenberg is an American guitarist known for his fingerstyle guitar playing, as well as a recording artist and designer of acoustic guitars....
were arranging solo guitar versions of Celtic dance tunes, slow airs, bagpipe music, and harp pieces by Turlough O'Carolan
Turlough O'Carolan
Turlough Carolan, also known as Turlough O'Carolan, was a blind, early Irish harper, composer and singer whose great fame is due to his gift for melodic composition. He was the last great Irish harper-composer and is considered by many to be Ireland's national composer...
and earlier harper-composers. Renbourn and Jansch’s complex sounds were also highly influential on Mike Oldfield
Mike Oldfield
Michael Gordon Oldfield is an English multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, working a style that blends progressive rock, folk, ethnic or world music, classical music, electronic music, New Age, and more recently, dance. His music is often elaborate and complex in nature...
’s early music. The style also had an impact within electric folk
Electric folk
Electric folk is the name given to the form of folk rock pioneered in England from the late 1960s, and most significant in the 1970s, which then was taken up and developed in the surrounding Celtic cultures of Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man, to produce Celtic rock and its...
, where, particularly Richard Thompson, used the D-A-D-G-A-D tuning, though with a hybrid picking
Hybrid picking
Hybrid picking is a guitar-playing technique that involves picking with a pick and one or more fingers alternately or simultaneously. Hybrid picking allows guitar players who use a pick to perform music which would normally require fingerstyle playing. It also facilitates wide string leaps Hybrid...
style to produce a similar, but distinctive effect.
"New Age" fingerstyle
In 1976, William AckermanWilliam Ackerman
William Ackerman is a Grammy winning guitarist and composer of acoustic-based instrumental music. He founded and ran for many years the influential New Age record label Windham Hill Records.- Career :...
started Windham Hill Records
Windham Hill Records
Windham Hill Records is a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment specializing in Acoustic, New Age and Folk music. Originally founded in 1976 as an Independent record label by guitarist and carpenter William Ackerman and his then-wife Anne Robinson, Windham Hill was a successful and well-respected...
, which carried on the Takoma
Takoma Records
Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by John Fahey in the late 1950s.. It was named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland.-History:...
tradition of original compositions on solo steel string guitar
Steel-string acoustic guitar
A steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar descended from the classical guitar, but strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound...
. 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
Flamenco
Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....
-inspired percussive techniques. The label's best selling artist George Winston
George Winston
George Winston is an American pianist who was born in Michigan, and grew up mainly in Miles City, Montana as well as Mississippi and Florida. He attended Stetson University in Deland, Florida and lives in Santa Cruz, California.-Background:...
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", given its widespread use as background music at bookstores, spas and other New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
businesses. The designation has stuck, though it wasn't a term coined by the company itself.
Percussive fingerstyle
"Percussive picking" is an emerging term for a style incorporating sharp attacks on the strings, as well as hitting the strings and guitar top with the hand for percussive effect. FlamencoFlamenco
Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....
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
Michael Hedges
Michael Alden Hedges was an American composer, Acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter.-Background:...
began to use percussive techniques in the early 1980s. Current percussive fingerstylists include Tommy Emmanuel
Tommy Emmanuel
William Thomas "Tommy" Emmanuel AM is an Australian guitarist, best known for his complex fingerpicking style, energetic performances and the use of percussive effects on the guitar. In the May 2008 and 2010 issues of Guitar Player Magazine, he was named as "Best Acoustic Guitarist" in their...
, Preston Reed
Preston Reed
Preston Reed is an American fingerstyle and tapping guitarist.- Biography :Preston Reed learned guitar as a child on his father's guitar and, for a short time, classical guitar with a too-severe teacher. When he was 16 his interest was rekindled by Jorma Kaukonen's acoustic guitar-playing in Hot...
, Laurence Juber, Shaun Hopper, Kaki King
Kaki King
Kaki King is an American guitarist and composer. King is known for her percussive and jazz-tinged melodies, energetic live shows, use of multiple tunings on acoustic and lap steel guitar, and her diverse range in different genres.In February 2006, Rolling Stone released a list of "The New Guitar...
, Justin King
Justin King (guitarist)
Justin King is an American musician and artist from Eugene, Oregon, recognized as a pioneering guitarist for his percussive "tapping" playing style which consists of a variety of influences ranging from Flamenco to Celtic music...
, Erik Mongrain
Erik Mongrain
Erik Mongrain is a Canadian composer and guitarist. He uses a unique acoustic style with a wide array of different techniques, approaches and textures reminiscent of Michael Hedges.-Biography:...
, Phil Keaggy
Phil Keaggy
Phil Keaggy is an American acoustic and electric guitarist and vocalist who has released more than 50 albums and contributed to many more recordings in both the contemporary Christian music and mainstream markets...
, Thomas Leeb
Thomas Leeb
Thomas Leeb is an Austrian fingerstyle guitarist.- Biography :Thomas Leeb grew up in the small Austrian mountain village Turracher Höhe, Carinthia, as the youngest of four children of a hotel-owner's family. Over a period of thirteen years he taught himself the electric guitar, then switched to...
, Jon Gomm
Jon Gomm
Jon Gomm is an English singer-songwriter and virtuoso performer, using one acoustic guitar to create drum sounds, bass lines and melodies simultaneously. His songs draw on a range of influences and styles, including blues and soul. Michael Hedges is an important source of inspiration...
, Eric Roche
Eric Roche
Eric Roche was an Irish fingerstyle guitarist.-Biography:Roche was born in New York City, but his family soon moved to Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland. He was a learnt accountant, but practised only for a short time before enlisting for classical guitar in 1992 at the London Musician's Institute...
, Doyle Dykes
Doyle Dykes
Doyle Dykes is an American country acoustic guitarist from Jacksonville, Florida. He is influenced by a wide variety of musical styles and musicians such as Chet Atkins, the Allman Brothers, to the Beatles and U2...
, Michael Gulezian
Michael Gulezian
Michael Gulezian is an American composer and Fingerstyle guitarist. He is noted for dramatic compositions, a penchant for manipulating metre, an affinity for open tunings, and an unconventionally free two-handed technical approach...
, Don Ross
Don Ross (guitarist)
Donald James Ross , commonly known as Don Ross, is a Canadian fingerstyle guitarist noted for the emotion and intensity of his playing as well as his use of extended technique....
, Andy McKee
Andy McKee
Andy McKee is an American fingerstyle guitarist, currently signed to the American record label .His style of playing and his compositions have earned him a considerable international fanbase...
, Antoine Dufour
Antoine Dufour
Antoine Dufour is a French-Canadian acoustic guitarist currently signed to CandyRat Records.-Biography:Dufour started playing guitar at the age of fifteen. He went on to study at the CEGEP in Joliette, where he listened to the music of Leo Kottke, Don Ross, and Michael Hedges at the behest of his...
, Craig D'Andrea
Craig D'Andrea
Craig D'Andrea is an American acoustic guitarist currently signed to CandyRat Records.-Biography:Craig began his musical education when he played cello at Riverside Elementary School. He quit in middle school because he had been playing by ear and could not read music. He later received two...
, Trace Bundy
Trace Bundy
Trace Bundy is an instrumental acoustic guitar player who lives and performs in Boulder, Colorado. He is known to fans as "The Acoustic Ninja" for his legato and finger tapping skills. His playing style features him playing with both hands on the fretboard, intricate finger picking arpeggios and...
, Rodrigo y Gabriela
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Rodrigo y Gabriela , also known as "El Rodri y La Gabi", are a Mexican musical duo who specialize in playing fast, rhythmic acoustic guitars...
, Newton Faulkner
Newton Faulkner
Sam Newton Battenberg Faulkner is an English singer-songwriter and musician from Reigate, Surrey. Known for his guitar playing, which involves rhythmically tapping and hitting his guitar's body, Faulkner came to prominence in 2007, with the release of his debut studio album, Hand Built by Robots...
, and Paul Finley.
African fingerstyle
Music of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Describing the music of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is difficult, due to vagaries surrounding the meanings of various terms. The country itself was formerly called Zaire and is now sometimes referred to as Congo-Kinshasa to distinguish it from the Republic of the Congo...
fingerstyle acoustic guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
was Jean Bosco Mwenda
Jean Bosco Mwenda
Jean Bosco Mwenda, also known as Mwenda wa Bayeke was a pioneer of Congolese fingerstyle acoustic guitar music. He was also popular in other African countries, particularly East Africa, and in the late 1950s and early 1960s was briefly based in Nairobi, where he had a regular radio show and became...
, also known as Mwenda wa Bayeke (1930–1990). His song "Masanga" was particularly influential, due to its complex and varied guitar part. His influences included traditional music of Zambia and the Eastern Congo, Cuban groups like the Trio Matamoros, and cowboy movies. His style used the thumb and index finger only, to produce bass, melody and accompaniment. Congolese guitarists Losta Abelo and Edouard Masengo
Edouard Masengo
Edouard Masengo was a Congolese guitarist....
played in a similar style.
Herbert Misango and George Mukabi were fingerstyle guitarists from Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
.Ali Farka Toure
Ali Farka Touré
Ali Ibrahim “Farka” Touré was a Malian singer and guitarist, and one of the African continent’s most internationally renowned musicians. His music is widely regarded as representing a point of intersection of traditional Malian music and its North American cousin, the blues...
and Vieux Farka Toure
Vieux Farka Touré
Boureima "Vieux" Farka Touré is a Malian singer and guitarist. He is the son of Grammy-winning Malian musician Ali Farka Touré.-Biography:Touré was born in Niafunké, Mali in 1981 to Ali Farka Touré...
are father-and-son fingerstylists from Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
, whose style has been compared to John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...
's. Djelimady Tounkara
Djelimady Tounkara
Djelimady Tounkara is a Malian musician and one of the foremost guitarists in Africa.Born in the culturally rich town of Kita, west of the Malian capital, Bamako, Djelimady grew up surrounded with traditional music played by members of his family, griots, musicians and historians by birth....
is another Malian fingerstylist.
S. E. Rogie
S. E. Rogie
S. E. Rogie was a highlife and palm wine guitarist and singer from Sierra Leone. He was born in 1926 and began performing early, while supporting himself as a tailor. In the 1960s, he became a professional musician, singing in four languages. His hits include "Koneh Pehlawo", "Go Easy with Me"...
and Koo Nimo
Koo Nimo
Koo Nimo is a leading folk musician of Palm wine music or Highlife music from Ghana. Born in the village of Foase, in the Atwima District of Ashanti Region in Ghana,West Africa, he worked in various jobs in science and medical-related field while maintaining his interest in music...
play acoustic fingerstyle in the palm wine music tradition.
Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
-born Jazz guitarist Lionel Loueke
Lionel Loueke
Lionel Loueke is a guitarist born in the west African country of Benin. He moved to Ivory Coast in 1990 to study at the National Institute of Art. He attended the American School of Modern Music in Paris, France from 1994-1998...
uses fingerstyle in an approach that combines jazz harmonies and complex rhythms. He is now based in the US.
Tony Cox
Tony Cox
Joseph Anthony "Tony" Cox is an American dwarf and actor known for his comedic performances in Bad Santa, Me, Myself and Irene, Date Movie and Disaster Movie. He is also known for his work in George Lucas's Willow and as an Ewok in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. In the two spin-off...
(b. 1954) is a Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
an guitarist and composer based in Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
. A master of the Fingerpicking style of guitar playing, he has won the SAMA (South African Music Awards) for best instrumental album twice. His music incorporates many different styles including classical, blues, rock and jazz, while keeping an African flavour.
Slide, steel and slack-key guitar
Even when the guitar is tuned to a chord, it often undesirable for all six strings to sound. When strumming with a plectrum.a guitarist must damp unwanted strings with the fretting hand; when a slide or steel is employed, this fretting hand damping no longer possible, so it becomes necessary to replace plectrum strumming with pluckingof individuals strings. For this reason, slide and steel guitar playing are very often fingerstyle.
Slide guitar
Slide guitar
Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...
or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles. Instead of altering the pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
of the strings
Strings (music)
A string is the vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments, such as the guitar, harp, piano, and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a flexible material kept under tension so that they may vibrate freely, but controllably. Strings may be "plain"...
in the normal manner (by pressing the string against fret
Fret
A fret is a raised portion on the neck of a stringed instrument, that extends generally across the full width of the neck. On most modern western instruments, frets are metal strips inserted into the fingerboard...
s), a slide is placed upon the string to vary its vibrating length, and pitch. This slide can then be moved along the string without lifting, creating continuous transitions in pitch.
Slide guitar is most often played (assuming a right-handed player and guitar):
- With the guitar in the normal position, using a slide called a bottleneck on one of the fingers of the left hand; this is known as bottleneck guitar.
- With the guitar held horizontally, with the belly uppermost and the bass strings toward the player, and using a slide called a steel held in the left hand; this is known as lap steel guitarLap steel guitarThe lap steel guitar is a type of steel guitar, an instrument derived from and similar to the guitar. The player changes pitch by pressing a metal or glass bar against the strings instead of by pressing strings against the fingerboard....
.
Slack-key guitar
Slack-key guitar is a fingerpicked style that originated in HawaiiHawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. 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 fingerstyle, 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 t1946 (when the first commercial slack key recordings were made) the style has expanded, and some contemporary compositions have a distinctly New Age
New Age music
New Age music is music of various styles intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or other environments, and is often...
sound.
Slack key's older generation included Gabby Pahinui
Gabby Pahinui
Charles Philip "Gabby" or "Pops" Pahinui was a slack-key guitarist.Gabby was born Charles Kapono Kahahawaii Jr. and later hānai-ed into the Pahinui family as Charles Philip Pahinui and raised in the Kaka'ako area of Honolulu in the 1920s...
, Leonard Kwan
Leonard Kwan
Leonard Kwan was one of the most influential Hawaiian slack-key guitarists to emerge in the period immediately preceding the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance of the 1970s. He made the first LP of slack key instrumentals, co-wrote the second slack key instruction book, and composed a number of pieces...
, Sonny Chillingworth
Sonny Chillingworth
Edwin Bradfield Liloa Chillingworth, Jr., known as Sonny Chillingworth, was an American guitarist. Widely influential in Hawaiian music, he played slack-key guitar and is widely regarded as one of the most influential slack key guitarists in history.-Life:Chillingworth was born in Oahu in Hawaii,...
and Raymond Kāne
Ray Kane
Raymond Kaleoalohapoinaʻoleohelemanu Kāne , was one of Hawaii's acknowledged masters of the slack-key guitar. Born in Koloa, Kauaʻi, he grew up in Nanakuli on Oʻahu's Waiʻanae Coast where his stepfather worked as a fisherman....
. Prominent contemporary players include Keola Beamer
Keola Beamer
Keola Beamer is a Hawaiian slack-key guitar player, best known as the composer of "Honolulu City Lights" and an innovative musician who fused Hawaiian roots and contemporary music.-Family:...
, Moses Kahumoku, Ledward Kaapana
Ledward Kaapana
Ledward Kaapana is a Hawaiian musician, best known for playing in the slack key guitar style. He also plays steel guitar, ukulele, autoharp and bass guitar, and is a renowned falsetto singer.-Early life:...
, Dennis Kamakahi
Dennis Kamakahi
Dennis David Kahekilimamaoikalanikeha Kamakahi is a Hawaiian slack key guitarist, recording artist, and music composer. He has won multiple Grammy Awards, and in 2009 was inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame.-Professional music career:...
, John Keawe
John Keawe
John Keawe is a Hawaiian musician and slack key guitar player from Hawi in the North Kohala district of the Big Island of Hawaii.He has toured throughout Hawaii and the Mainland U.S. and regularly performs on the Big Island...
, Ozzie Kotani
Ozzie Kotani
Ozzie Kotani is a slack-key guitar player and a well-respected teacher, arranger, solo performer and accompanist.Kotani was born in 1956 in Honolulu, Hawaii in the neighborhood of Pauoa...
and Peter Moon
Peter Moon (musician)
Peter Moon is a ʻukulele and guitar player.-Career:Peter Moon was born on the island of Oʻahu to Wook and Shay-Yung Moon. From the late 1950s through the 1960s, he gained musical inspiration, insight, and knowledge; playing as a Maile Serenader with Gabby "Pops" Pahinui in the 1960s. Later, in...
and Cyril Pahinui.
Fingerstyle jazz guitar
The unaccompanied guitar in jazz is often played in chord-melody style, where the guitarist plays a series of chords with the melody line on top. Fingerstyle, plectrum, or hybrid pickingHybrid picking
Hybrid picking is a guitar-playing technique that involves picking with a pick and one or more fingers alternately or simultaneously. Hybrid picking allows guitar players who use a pick to perform music which would normally require fingerstyle playing. It also facilitates wide string leaps Hybrid...
are equally suited to this style. Some players alternate between fingerstyle and plectrum playing, "palming
Palming
Palming is a technique for holding or concealing an object in the palm of the hand. It is used frequently by magicians to conceal the presence of a card, coin, or other object. When done skillfully, the hand containing the palmed object appears to be completely empty.-Methods:Methods for palming...
" the plectrum when it is not in use. There is no single technique of fingerstyle jazz, but players generally avoid the use of capos and altered tunings.
Early blues and ragtime guitarists often used fingerstyle. True fingerstyle jazz guitar dates back to early swing era
Swing Era
The Swing era was the period of time when big band swing music was the most popular music in the United States. Though the music had been around since the late 1920s and early 1930s, being played by black bands led by such artists as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Moten, Ella Fitzgerald,...
acoustic players like Eddie Lang
Eddie Lang
Eddie Lang was an American jazz guitarist, regarded as the Father of Jazz Guitar. He played a Gibson L-4 and L-5 guitar, providing great influence for many guitarists, including Django Reinhardt.-Biography:...
(1902–1933) Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson
Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos...
(1899–1970) and Carl Kress
Carl Kress
Carl Kress was an American jazz guitarist.-Musical career:Kress began his career with Paul Whiteman in 1926, and thereafter launched a successful career as a studio guitarist...
(1907–1965), Dick McDonough
Dick McDonough
Dick McDonough was an influential American jazz guitarist and composer. His major recordings included "Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jibe" with the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra with Johnny Mercer, "Stage Fright" with Carl Kress, "Chasin' a Buck", "Feelin' No Pain", recorded in 1927 with Red Nichols, and...
(1904–1938) and the Argentinian Oscar Alemán
Oscar Aleman
Oscar Marcelo Alemán was an Argentine jazz guitarist.He was a singer, dancer, entertainer, and guitarist...
(1909–1980). Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...
(1910–1953) used a classical/flamenco technique on unaccompanied pieces such as his composition Tears.
Fingerstyle jazz on the electric guitar was pioneered by George van Eps
George Van Eps
George Van Eps was an American swing and Mainstream jazz guitarist noted both for his recordings as a leader, and for his work as a session musician. He was also the author of instructional books that explored his approach to guitar-based harmony...
(1913–1998) who was respected for his polyphonic approach, sometimes using a seven string guitar. Wes Montgomery
Wes Montgomery
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery was an American jazz guitarist. He is widely considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian and influencing countless others, including Pat Martino, George Benson, Russell Malone, Emily...
(1925–1968) was known for using the fleshy part of his thumb to provide the bass line while strumming chordal or melodic motives with his fingers. This style, while unorthodox, was widely regarded as an innovative method for enhancing the warm tone assciated with jazz guitar. Montgomery's influence extends to modern polyphonic jazz improvisational methods. Joe Pass
Joe Pass
Joe Pass was an Italian-American jazz guitarist of Sicilian descent. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest jazz guitarists of the 20th century...
(1929–1994) switched to fingerstyle mid career,making the Virtuoso series of albums. Little known to the general public Ted Greene
Ted Greene
Theodore "Ted" Greene was an American fingerstyle jazz guitarist, music columnist, and music educator active in Encino, California.-Early Days:...
(1946–2005) was admired by fellow musicians for his harmonic skills. Lenny Breau
Lenny Breau
Leonard Harold "Lenny" Breau was a musician, guitar player, and music educator. He was known for blending many styles of music including: jazz, country, classical and flamenco guitar...
(1941–1984) went one better than van Eps by playing virtuosic fingerstyle on an eight string guitar
Eight string guitar
An eight-string guitar is a guitar with eight strings instead of the commonly used six strings. Such guitars are not as common as the six string variety, but are used by classical, jazz, and metal guitarists to expand the range of their instrument by adding two strings.-History and variants:There...
. Tommy Crook
Tommy Crook
Tommy Crook is an American guitarist who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2007.-Professional career:...
replaced the lower two strings on his Gibson
Gibson
Gibson may refer to:* Gibson Amphitheatre* Gibson Appliance* Gibson Girl* Gibson Guitar Corporation* Gibson * Gibson Generating Station-Places:In the United States:* Gibson, Arkansas* Gibson, Georgia* Gibson, Iowa* Gibson, Louisiana...
switchmaster with bass strings, allowing him to create the impression of playing bass and guitar simultaneously.
Chet Atkins
Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins , known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, created the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle...
(1924–2001) sometimes applied his formidable right-hand technique to jazz standards, with Duck Baker
Duck Baker
Duck Baker is an accomplished and influential American fingerstyle guitarist, who in his playing combines genres as varied as rags, blues, country, gospel, cajun, bluegrass, Celtic music, ballads and jazz, swing, New Orleans jazz and free jazz.-Biography and career:Baker grew up in Richmond,...
(b. 1949), Richard Smith
Richard Smith (musician)
Richard Smith is an English guitarist, now residing in the USA and specializing in the fingerstyle tradition of Merle Travis, Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed. He is the 2001 National Fingerstyle Guitar Champion.-Biography:...
(b.1971), Woody Mann
Woody Mann
-Biography:Mann specializes in jazz, blues, and American roots music.He was born in New York, where he first studied acoustic guitar with ragtime and blues guitarist Reverend Gary Davis from 1968-72. From 1973-78, Mann continued private lessons, focusing on improvisation with jazz pianist Lennie...
and Tommy Emmanuel
Tommy Emmanuel
William Thomas "Tommy" Emmanuel AM is an Australian guitarist, best known for his complex fingerpicking style, energetic performances and the use of percussive effects on the guitar. In the May 2008 and 2010 issues of Guitar Player Magazine, he was named as "Best Acoustic Guitarist" in their...
(b. 1955), among others, following in his footsteps. They use the fingerpicking technique of Merle Travis
Merle Travis
Merle Robert Travis was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and musician born in Rosewood, Kentucky. His lyrics often discussed the life and exploitation of coal miners. Among his many well-known songs are "Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues" and "Dark as a Dungeon"...
and others to play wide variety of material including jazz. This style is distinguished by having a steadier and "busier" (several beats to the bar) bass line than the chord melody approach of Montgomery and Pass making it suited to up-tempo material.
Fingerstyle has always been predominant in Latin American guitar playing, which Laurindo Almeida
Laurindo Almeida
Laurindo Almeida was a Brazilian virtuoso guitaristand composer who made many recordings of enduring impact in classical, jazz and Latin genres...
(1917–1995) and Charlie Byrd
Charlie Byrd
Charlie Lee Byrd was a famous and versatile American guitarist born in Suffolk, Virginia. His earliest and strongest musical influence was Django Reinhardt, the famous gypsy guitarist. Byrd became the American guitarist who best understood and played Brazilian music, especially the Bossa Nova genre...
(1925–1999) brought to a wider audience in the 1950s.
Today, fingerstyle jazz guitar has several proponents: the pianistic Jeff Linsky
Jeff Linsky
Jeff Linsky is an American guitarist known for improvisational freedom on the solo guitar. He has lived and worked in Hawaii and the San Francisco area....
(b. 1952), freely improvises polyphonically while employing a classical guitar technique. Earl Klugh
Earl Klugh
Earl Klugh is an American smooth jazz/crossover jazz/jazz fusion guitarist and composer.At the age of 13, Klugh was captivated by the guitar playing of Chet Atkins when Atkins made an appearance on the Perry Como Show. Klugh was a performing guest on several of Atkins' albums...
(b. 1953) has also performed fingerstyle jazz on the solo guitar. Briton Martin Taylor (b. 1956), a former Stephane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands....
sideman, switched to fingerstyle on relaunching his career as a soloist. His predecessor in Grappelli's band, John Etheridge
John Etheridge
John Michael Glyn Etheridge is a British jazz/fusion guitarist associated with the Canterbury Scene....
(b. 1948) is also an occasional fingerstyle player.
Electric blues and rock
The solid-body electric guitarElectric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
is rarely played fingerstyle, although no great technical challenges are presented.
Slide guitarists often employ fingerstyle, which applies equally to the electric guitar,for instance Duane Allman
Duane Allman
Howard Duane Allman was an American guitarist, session musician and the primary co-founder of the southern rock group The Allman Brothers Band...
and Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
. Blues guitarists have long used fingerstyle: modern exponents include Albert King
Albert King
Albert King was an American blues guitarist and singer, and a major influence in the world of blues guitar playing.-Career:...
, Albert Collins
Albert Collins
Albert Collins was an American electric blues guitarist and singer whose recording career began in the 1960s in Houston and whose fame eventually took him to stages across the US, Europe, Japan and Australia...
, John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...
, Derek Trucks
Derek Trucks
Derek Trucks is a Grammy Award-winning, American guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. He founded The Derek Trucks Band and worked as a session musician when he was still in his early teens. Throughout those teenage years, he toured with The Allman Brothers Band primarily as a slide...
and Joe Bonamassa
Joe Bonamassa
Joe Bonamassa is an American blues rock guitarist and singer.-Early life:Bonamassa was born and raised in New Hartford, United States. His parents owned and ran a guitar shop. He is a fourth-generation musician...
Exponents of fingerstyle rock guitar include, Mark Knopfler
Mark Knopfler
Mark Freuder Knopfler, OBE is a Scottish-born British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the British rock band Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977...
, Jeff Beck
Jeff Beck
Geoffrey Arnold "Jeff" Beck is an English rock guitarist. He is one of three noted guitarists to have played with The Yardbirds...
(after years of pick playing), Robbie Krieger, Lindsey Buckingham
Lindsey Buckingham
Lindsey Adams Buckingham is an American guitarist, singer, composer and producer, most notable for being the guitarist and male lead singer of the musical group Fleetwood Mac. Aside from his tenure with Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham has also released six solo albums and a live album...
, Mike Oldfield
Mike Oldfield
Michael Gordon Oldfield is an English multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, working a style that blends progressive rock, folk, ethnic or world music, classical music, electronic music, New Age, and more recently, dance. His music is often elaborate and complex in nature...
, Patrick Simmons
Patrick Simmons
Patrick Simmons is an American musician best known as a guitarist and vocalist for the rock band The Doobie Brothers. His fingerstyle guitar playing complements the strumming style of Tom Johnston. Born in Aberdeen, Washington, he has been the band's only consistent member throughout their tenure...
, Wilko Johnson
Wilko Johnson
Wilko Johnson is an English guitarist and songwriter, particularly associated with the UK rhythm and blues band Dr. Feelgood in the 1970s.-Career:...
, J.J. Cale
J.J. Cale
JJ Cale , born John Weldon Cale on December 5, 1938, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter and musician. Cale is one of the originators of the Tulsa Sound, a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country, and jazz influences. Cale's personal style has...
, Robbie Robertson
Robbie Robertson
Robbie Robertson, OC; is a Canadian singer-songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known for his membership as the guitarist and primary songwriter within The Band. He was ranked 59th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time...
, Hillel Slovak
Hillel Slovak
Hillel Slovak was an Israeli-American musician best known as the original guitarist and founding member of the Los Angeles rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers...
and David Longstreth
Dirty Projectors
The Dirty Projectors aka David Longstreth includes Amber Coffman , Angel Deradoorian , Brian McOmber , Nat Baldwin , and Haley Dekle during live performances...
External links
- Travis Picking Deconstructed - The Basics Explained
- Acoustic Fingerstyle Web site - Tab, Open Tuning Tutorial, Equipment reviews
- Fingerstyle Guitarists