Picking the Fingers for Fingerpicking - Which Fingers to pick with in Fingerstyle Guitar?

What fingers do you use when fingerpicking on a guitar? If you are playing a standard 6 string guitar you have 6 strings to pick and 5 fingers on your picking hand, so what is the best or most efficient way to use those fingers to pick those strings? The answer to this varies depending on the type of music you are playing and your own personal playing preference. However, there are some fairly standard picking techniques which are used.

To help us along it is probably easier to number the strings from 1 to 6, with 1 being the highest pitched string and 6 being the lowest. i.e string 6 lying closest to the guitar player and string 1 furthest away. This is common in most guitar tunings.

When holding the guitar the thumb sits where it gives easy access to the strings closest to the guitarist (those that produce the lowest pitched notes) and the other fingers are placed to give easy access to the strings furthest from the guitarist (those that produce the highest pitched notes). Therefore, in most pickings techniques the thumb mostly plays the lowest pitched strings (strings  6,5 and 4 usually) and strings 1,2 and 3 are mostly played with the other fingers.

Count 'em...1.2.3.

One of the most commonly used picking techniques utilises only 3 fingers on the picking hand, the thumb, the index and the middle finger. The ring and pinky fingers don't pick the strings at all. This commonly used in blues, country and folk fingerstyle guitar. In this technique the thumb plays the bass notes on strings 4,5 and 6, and the index and middle finger play the treble notes on strings 1,2 and 3. Usually, the index finger plays strings 2 and 3, and the middle finger plays strings 1 and 2. As you can see string 2 will be played by both the index and middle fingers, which one is used depends the phrase you are playing.

Advantages

• You only need to learn to use three fingers to pick the strings, so the learning curve should be quicker than if you were using more than three fingers.
• I personally find I can't pick with the ring finger as quick as the index and middle, so I find using just the three fingers is good for faster passages of music
• A lot of the old blues music was written specifically to be played with just three fingers, so if this is the only style of music you want to play there is maybe little point in taking the time to learn with more than three fingers.

Disadvantages

• Only utilises three fingers, limiting number of notes that can be played at once.
• Can be tricky as the thumb often needs to play the higher string 3. Also, the index and middle finger have to play three highest strings meaning fingers dance around the strings a lot more than when using more fingers. This also makes it less efficient as more hand movement is required.
• Doesn't develop aptitude in using more than three fingers which could make playing with more fingers in the future problematic

Getting up to Four Fingers

The next technique will utilise four fingers for picking instead of three. These are the thumb, index, middle and ring fingers. This is the standard used in classical guitar. The technique is similar to before with the thumb playing strings 4,5 and 6. However, we now have three fingers to play the highest three strings. Usually, the index finger plays string 3, the middle plays string 2, and the ring finger plays string 1.

Advantages

• Easy to switch to techniques using less than four fingers. Perhaps not so the other way around.
• Each of the 3 treble strings have a finger almost exclusively for playing that string. This mean there is less need for the thumb to move to string 3. This reduces hand movement and is a more efficient style of playing.
• Allows you to use 4 fingers together to play notes. This gives scope for more diversity in the music you can produce.
• An advanced technique worth learning as it allows you to play most styles of music.

Disadvantages

• Using all four fingers together can be tricky so the learning curve can be steep.
• I personally find I can't pick with the ring finger as quick as the index and middle, so this can hamper me in faster passages of music. This may not be the same for everyone.

Using the Pinky...or maybe not

So we have looked at using 3 fingers and 4 fingers, so you may now think we would look at using all 5 fingers. However, the pinky is not commonly used for picking in fingerstyle guitar. You could use it if you want to but it means learning to play with yet another finger and it is not a commonly accepted technique. Most of the music you find across all genres will utilise either the 3 finger picking style or the 4 finger. There seems little point in learning to pick with the pinky.

Just using the Two Fingers

However, we will look at one other picking technique. This uses just 2 fingers, the thumb and the index finger. This technique is not commonly used and I have only seen it used by a few old blues guitarists. The principle is the same as the previous ones. The thumb predominately plays the bass strings 4,5 and 6, and the index finger plays the treble notes on strings 1,2 and 3. However, as you are only using two fingers they will likely have to go to far more strings than this. The thumb may have to get as high as string 2 and the index finger may have to come down as far as string 5.

Advantages

• Because you are only using two fingers it should be the easiest of the techniques to learn.

Disadvantages

• Using only two fingers severely restricts the passages of music that can be played and the notes that can be played together.
• Doesn't develop aptitude in using more than two fingers which could make playing with more fingers in the future problematic.
• It is inefficient at it involves considerable movement in the picking hand

 

Which Picking Technique to Use?

This really depends on what you want to play. If you want to play tunes which only need the two or three finger techniques, then there is probably little point in learning the four finger technique. However, I would strongly urge you to learn the four finger technique. It is the most advanced technique so it will require more time to learn but it allows for far more diversity in the music you can play with it. Moreover, if you learn the four finger technique, the other techniques which use less fingers should be easy to adapt to.

Which Strings to Play in a Specific Piece of Music?

This is a difficult question to answer as it varies from tune to tune. Some pieces of music will directly state in the tab or notation which fingers to use to pick each note. However, most of the time this isn't the case, especially with tabs downloaded off the .net. The best way is to initially stick to the techniques I have shown here with the thumb playing strings 4,5 and 6 and the other finger(s) playing strings 1,2 and 3. This will probably work for the majority of the tunes you come across. If you run into any problems with certain passages of music, just try altering which fingers play which strings until you find something you are comfortable with. For example, if you are playing with three fingers, the thumb may have to come up to string 3 for certain sections in the music.


So find some music you want to play and try different techniques to find the one you are most comfortable with for playing that music.

Thanks for Reading,
Neil