Developing Thumb Independence - Part 1 - Learning to Play the Bass Notes

 

Thumb Independence is a useful skill when playing fingerstyle guitar, and it is used a lot when playing many styles of guitar music such as country blues and folk music. In this post, and the accompanying videos, I want to help you to learn this valuable skill though a series of exercises. The exercises will start relatively easy and get progressively harder, until at the end you should hopefully be competent in this skill. There will be 4 videos, with corresponding posts on this website. Each will have 5 exercises giving 20 exercises in total. All the tab for the exercises will be free to download from this website in Power Tab, PDF and TXT format.

Below is the tab for the first 5 exercises which are featured in this video:

Power Tab - PDF - TXT

All of these 5 exercises are played on a guitar tuned to Open D. 

What is Thumb Independence?

Thumb Independence is a fingerstyle guitar technique where basically the thumb plays independently of the other picking fingers. The thumb will pick the bass notes in the music on the lower strings of the guitar, while the other fingers will pick the melody section. The thumb will play the bass notes at regular intervals, often on every beat of the bar, and the other fingers play the melody over this. This can be a difficult skill to learn as the bass notes have to be played regularly and precisely to keep time in the music, and this can be tricky when the other fingers are playing the melody at more irregular intervals.

In this first video I will look at getting the bass notes played at regular intervals on each beat of the bar, which is the cornerstone of learning thumb independence. For all the exercises I recommend you start slowly and build up the tempo. If you are having trouble keeping time and keeping these bass notes played at regular intervals I would recommend using a metronome as a guide.

Exercise 1 - Playing the Bass Notes on a Single String 

The first exercise ivolves playing the bass notes with the thumb at regular intervals on the lowest string of the guitar. The notes are just played in the open position and it it just to help you develop the correct timing. The music is in 4/4 time and each bass note is played on every beat of the bar.

Exercise 2 - Playing the Bass Notes on Different Strings

Here we will play the bass notes on every beat of the bar in the open position, on different strings of the guitar other than the bottom string. Usually when playing music such as this, the thumb plays the bass notes on the bottom 3 strings of the guitar. In this exercise it will play them on the 4th and 5th strings.

Exercise 3 - Playing the Bass Notes Moving Between Strings

In this exercise we will play the bass notes moving between strings. Again these will be played in the open position and it will play 4 bass notes on each beat of the bar and then again but move onto a different string. This will help you develop playing the bass notes at regular intervals whilst moving between strings.

Exercise 4 - Playing the Bass Notes Alternating Between Strings

Travis Picking is a common style used in fingerstyle guitar playing. This is where the thumb plays bass notes alternating between different strings. This usually involves alternating between strings 6 and 4, or strings 5 and 4 of the guitar. This exercise will help develop this bass note picking pattern.

Exercise 5 - Playing Alternating Bass Notes Moving Between Strings

The last exercise for this video will involve the Travis Picking pattern again. This time it will move back and forth between playing strings 6 and 4, and strings 5 and 4 of the guitar.

I hope you get on ok with these exercises. These exercises help develop playing the bass notes with the thumb at regular intervals across different strings. In the next series of exercises we will look at adding in melody notes at different intervals using the other fingers on the picking hand.

Thanks for Reading