Fingerpicking on electric

CharlieShaw · December 2022

I’m looking for exercises and ideas for fingerpicking on the electric. I’m learning fingerstyle on the acoustic using Fingerstyle Blues and Contemporary Travis Picking books and it doesn’t really translate to electric well. I’ve started using my fingers to pluck the top strings together, sometimes with the bass note on, sometimes off, which sounds quite nice and is distinct from what you can achieve using a plectrum. It sounds much more suited to the electric than travis picking too. Any other ideas would be appreciated.

mart · December 2022

Learn some Mark Knopfler riffs?

GoFish · December 2022

Fingerstyle blues should work pretty well as a bease from which to build. What do you feel doesn't translate?

As with not playing many 6 string chords, economy works better on electric - that and using picking fingers to reach notes quickly.

richman6100 · December 2022

How about learning something like Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah? Lovely track and no that difficult.

Kilgore · December 2022

Try some Lightnin' Hopkins tunes.

He played a lot of steady bass fingerstyle stuff with plenty of electric style lead lines thrown in for good measure.

Instead of plucking the high strings try some brush ups instead.

Grangousier · December 2022

OK, it seems I felt the need to type a bunch of stuff, though when I give advice it mostly just demonstrates that I'm an idiot.

FWIW, I came from nylon string, plugged in to gig, and about five years ago decided I wanted to play a lot more electric, and decided to quit using a pick on electric. It's been a ride.

My experience has been that the most important thing has been muting - when I use a pick, I can use the whole side of my hand to mute, but with fingers I've found using the left palm to mute top strings, resting the thumb on the lower strings and keeping the pads of the fingers on the strings to stop them from ringing is the way to go. And keeping the downstrokes clean - if you want a technique that's not locked in to one position (which is how a lot of electric players seem to go, tbh, and I note that they've achieved a lot more than me), looking up the basics of classical technique can help.

The other thing I found was that I needed the tone rolled off more than I would with a pick, as the strings picked up a lot more finger noise, etc - with a less bright tone I wasn't so self-conscious about that sort of thing. Otherwise it was like being under a microscope, and although that can be a good discipline, sometimes you need to give yourself a break, especially if you want to have fun. In general, I find the sound more pleasing if I start with the tone down almost half and the volume down maybe a quarter and then adjust effects and amp from there.

Try using a compressor and then - equally importantly - not using a compressor. With gives you something to push against, without gives you a lot more dynamic range. Similarly, with and without a low-gain overdrive or combination of.

Also, you can do a lot more with a lot less - simple triads sound amazing, especially with reverb, and might be enough, especially if you move them around (there are a lot of different ways to play a simple major triad across all six strings in all inversions).

Tuck Andress used to have a section of the Tuck and Patti website (Tuck's Corner, I think), which had some very useful information - I just checked and it says it's being reconstructed, and already contains this incredibly detailed PDF: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a5bd42e8fd4d2aea7b0b426/t/5eddf0091cb53938998f511c/1591603210434/Pick+and+Fingerstyle+technique+6-7-20+version.pdf which is probably a bit much, but full of really useful information.

On the other hand, if that's a pleasing direction, may I suggest looking at Tim Lerch (jazz-blues) on YouTube and if you want to go really hardcore, old student videos of Ted Greene. I found his stuff really useful (though way beyond what I can actually do), though the consensus seems to be that it's like suggesting learning particle physics.

Gassage · December 2022

To add- try learn some of Buckingham's playing.

Also worth looking at some of the things Steuart Smith does (although with a thumb pick)

GuyBoden · January 2023

I play finger style, single notes and chord melody. I've been using a five finger picking technique for the last couple of years. Here is a video of the five finger picking technique when I first started using it.

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Fingerpicking on electric

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