Guitar for Dummies: Playing Fingerstyle

After a year of taking guitar lessons, I quit thinking I could learn enough on my own without having to pay such a high cost for lessons. While it's true that I have learned on my own and improved since then, I have avoided certain things that never really interested me. For example, when I took lessons I had to learn how to read sheet music when I rather learn music by listening to a song by ear and figuring out what notes to play myself. I may have been able to focus on the things I wanted to learn by not taking lessons, but it makes my guitar playing more one dimensional since I'm less likely to take up different styles I normally don't. Therefore, I wanted to learn something from the folk music section of the book since I probably wouldn't learn folk music on my own, which brings me to learning fingerstyle.

The song I played here is "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day which is a song that isn't played with fingerstyle, but I arranged it in a way that it mixes between the melody of the song and the actual notes the guitar plays.

Fingerstyle was found in the folk music section of the book because it is common practice in the folk genre that they don't use guitar picks which I'm accustomed to. However, this doesn't mean fingerstyle can only be played in the folk genre. To explain further from the book "Guitar for Dummies" which teaches fundamentals of guitar, on page 208 in the section 'Playing Fingerstyle', the text states "Your right-hand thumb plays the bass line while the fingers play the melody and inner voices for an even fuller and more complex sound"(Chappell 208). By applying this rule, I used my thumb to play the bass notes of the chords, then used my fingers to play the voice of the singer in the song. This style of playing was very awkward for me and even in this video I don't feel like I nailed it 100%, but it was still a good experience for me because it let me broaden my skills as a guitar player.

The song I played here is "Blackbird" by The Beatles. In the last video, I played a more complex song while this song is just a simple pattern and is simply the lead guitar part instead of the melody or bass. 

Learning this song shows that fingerstyle is a very versatile form of guitar playing. You can use it to change the sound of a song to make it more complex, or you can create a simple rhythm and pattern to write a well-known song. "Blackbird" follows the description said in the book where typically the thumb plays the bass strings and the fingers pluck upward to play the high strings (Chappell 208). Playing this song wasn't as hard for me, and made me feel more comfortable about using my fingers to play instead of my pick all the time. 

Before learning this new style, I felt uncomfortable and scared to try something different since I have been playing with a pick ever since I got my hands on the guitar. Trying this new style opens up a new realm of possibilities for my skills as a guitar player than before. Being able to learn these new styles makes me a better player since my versatility allows me to play in any shape or form without faltering or being scared of seeing something I've never seen before. This shows how doing something that you may be uncomfortable with can actually benefit you and make you stronger in that specific field whether you look at this at a musical, an academic, or an athletic standpoint. 

Seeing that fingerstyle is a different type of guitar playing that is usually meant for folk music, I wanted to know what is your favorite genre of music and why? 

Phillips, Mark, and Jon Chappell. Guitar for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Pub., 2006. Print.