Your Free Acoustic Guitar Lesson
Here is a free acoustic guitar lesson to help you improve
your guitar playing skills quickly.
This guitar learning techique will teach you how to fingerpick
folk-style, but in a Latin rhythm in the key of A. This Latin
rhythm has eight quick beats to the measure, and is accented on
the first, the fourth, and the seventh beats.
Your free acoustic guitar lesson will focus on using your
right hand, and your thumb will play the accented beats. Your
fingers will follow. Finger number one, the index finger, is to
pluck the third string on beats two, five, and eight, and
fingers two and three will pluck the second and first strings
together on beats three and six.
In the following acoustic guitar lesson, you will chord an A for
the first sample. To keep it simple, let's take the beats one at
a time...
Acoustic Guitar Lesson - 7 Steps to Chord an A:
1) First, the thumb plucks the open A string for a bass note.
2) Next, finger one plucks the third string, which is sounding
an A.
3) Then fingers two and three pluck strings two and one
together. These two notes will be a C-sharp and the open top E
string.
4) Now the thumb immediately plucks string four, which is an E
and works as an alternate bass string. That's beat 4.
5) Now beat five is just like beat two, with finger one plucking
string three.
6) Beat six is just like beat three, with fingers two and three
plucking the top two strings.
7) On beat seven, use the thumb to pluck the third string, then
finish up with fingers two and three plucking the top two
strings again.
When you've practiced the acoustic guitar lesson above a few
times, it will become second nature to you to pluck this Latin
rhythm.
The next part of your acoustic guitar lesson is to try
the same finger picking pattern using an E chord. Since the open
sixth string is your bass note, you'll pluck it on beat one.
Follow through with the rest of the measure in the same pattern,
except your thumb plucks the fifth string on beat four and the
fourth string on beat seven. When you've mastered the E chord
the acoustic guitar lesson moves on to the D chord. With D, you
can just use the fourth string for your thumb-plucked bass note
each time.
Acoustic Guitar Lesson Tip:
Here's a fast acoustic guitar lesson secret for making the above
finger-picking style of guitar playing a little fancier. Chord
an A. Here's how...
When you pluck the fourth beat of the measure lift your chording
finger - it's the ring finger on your left hand. Lift it and
then press it while plucking. You'll get a little slur at the
start of the note. This sounds great when you build speed up.
Try the same little trick when playing the key of E, too. It
will be finger two that you will be lifting.
Finally in this free acoustic guitar lesson for you, put
everything together in a chord sequence. Play A for two
measures, then D for two measures. Play E for two measures, then
back to D for two measures, then A to finish up.