Play it like Andy Mckee: Tips to Learn Fingerstyle Techniques

Have you heard about Sungha Jung or Andy Mckee? They are both known for their unique and creative fingerstyle guitar techniques. Playing the fingerstyle guitar technique like them is not an easy thing because this guitar technique has a higher difficulty compared to playing the guitar in general. If you are a melody guitarist, maybe learning fingerstyle guitar technique will not be too difficult, because your fingers are already quite used and agile enough but it will be felt quite difficult for beginners or ordinary guitar players, it takes some tips and advice to learn this specific guitar technique. Here are a few tips to improve your fingerstyle guitar techniques.

5 Essential Fingerpicking Guitar Techniques Tips

1. Prepare the Finger Nails on a Consistent Length

The fingerpicking guitar technique is all about using your hand, wrist, fingers, and nails in a constant rhythm. However, the part that firstly comes in contact with the guitar strings is the nails, that’s why you need to adjust the length of each nail consistently so it won’t hinder you when you are playing. Fingerstyle guitarists usually love to have just enough nails’ length to line up with the fingers’ edge and most importantly it should be smoothly cut.

2. Start with Picking Strings With Fingertips

The first special step that you can try to learn the fingerstyle guitar technique is to get used to plucking the strings with your fingertips. Fingerstyle itself is a guitar technique that uses a lot of fingertips when applied. So it becomes a basic thing for you who want to learn fingerstyle to learn to pluck strings with your fingertips. When you first try to pluck the guitar with your fingertips, you might feel pain in the tip of your right finger, because your fingers are not used to pressing the guitar strings like the tips of your left hand. But over time, your right fingertips will become stronger and you will no longer feel pain.

3. Fingering Practice

To master how to play the fingerstyle guitar, you are advised to practice fingering more often or exercise your fingers with your guitar. You can start by plucking the guitar with your fingertips from the top string to the bottom. In doing finger exercises, try to maximize the strings of your guitar strings. Use your thumb to pluck strings 5 ​​and 6. Then use your index finger to pluck the 4th string and middle finger to pluck the 3rd string. To pluck the 2nd string, you can use your ring finger. As for the first string, use your little finger. Perform these finger exercises regularly to make your fingers more agile. You can also create fingerprint exercises that you do, for example in the order 123456, 645321, 654321, or create your own exercise.

4. Fingerstyle Training

Next is to practice the actual finger style. If you have done and mastered tips 1 and 2 mentioned earlier, you can try to practice playing songs with the fingerstyle guitar technique. To help you learn, you can use fingerstyle sites like songsterr.com as a place to find songs that you can practice. You just have to enter the name of the fingerstyle guitar player like Sung Ha Jung or Andi McKee. Next, start practicing using the fingerstyle direction of the song you choose.

5. Be Consistent and Exercise Routinely

As has been said before, the fingerstyle technique has a higher level of difficulty compared to ordinary guitar playing. Therefore, the last tip that you must apply so that you can become proficient at playing this guitar technique is to practice regularly. Apply tips 1,2 and 3 previously mentioned with regular exercise frequency.

That’s a quick tip for learning fingerstyle guitar techniques for beginners. Hope it helps you master this guitar technique, you can also check out our guitar lessons to help you master the fingerstyle guitar technique easily. Also, don’t forget to always pick the best and suitable guitar for you because as they said, “any problem that you can’t solve with a good guitar is either unsolvable or it isn’t a problem!”