Country Roads-- Guitar Tutorial-- Fingerstyle Guitar

Video-- Fingerpicking Strum Pattern-- with Country Roads

  This is a fingerpicking strum pattern-- using alternating bass notes, then a finger note, down hand strum, and backwards up strum with finger. 

  Shown using John Denver's "Country Roads", we use the chords G--Em--D--C--G. Hope all of you can follow along and we can learn this together.

Thanks to my friend Dennis who videoed this short lesson.

Video Lesson-- Fingerpicking Pattern

For My Students : This is a basic fingerpicking pattern. 

 Hope you all can grasp this, play along with me, and we all can learn the technique together.

Thanks to my friend Dennis who videoed this short lesson.

FINGERSTYLE GUITAR CLASS

New Scale Exercises

     Here are some Scale Exercises.  They are basic Major Scales.   You can experiment, add other scales or exercises of your own.   This is just a starting point--- a launching pad for exploration and learning.   They will help stretch your fingers, as well as assist in learning the notes of the scales, and how they fit together to form chords and types of note patterns.

   Take your time in playing these.  Notice the similarities in the different scales.   Also take note as to the fret patterns--- open, 1, 3;  open, 2, 3;  open 2, 4;  etc.   Get to know which keys and scales start and end on which notes or guitar frets.   Eventually, you will get more comfortable in finding these notes on your own.

'Fives' Exercise

    "Fives" takes you through the first five notes of each Major Scale.  Notice the fret patterns.   Which fret patterns are the same?    Some are similar, though not identical.  They are the same patterns, only on different strings.

'1-3-5' Exercise

     This "1-3-5" scale exercise takes you through the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of each Major Scale.   It is no coincedence that these are the three notes that make up each Major chord.   Therefore, this exercise is like playing a chord, only as an arpeggio : that is, one note at a time.   Enjoy this exercise, and again, look for similarities in scale patterns.

'Up & Down' Exercise

     The "Up and Down" exercise is like a Stair Stepping exercise, it first goes up, then down, and then all around.  You'll enjoy playing this one.   Start slow and then work yourself up to playing it faster.   It's a fun exercise to learn.