WHAT THEY SAY
Book reviews
"Patrick does a great job of starting with the basics, and then gradually adding in new elements, one lesson at a time"
– Ben Phillips
"Easy to follow. Takes his time while explaining where to hold the right hand and how to pluck each string in what order, and that’s good for me"
– Rick Mars
"Clear and concise. Easy to understand."
– Phil Lammi
"Very good. Everything broken down to digestible bits."
– Michael Needle
The most effective way to learn guitar is a structured approach which helps you learn by spending a manageable amount of time each day mastering a particular skill - and all of those quickly add up! A fingerpicking course should teach you the correct technique, musical examples, and how to blend the playing of the bass strings with the thumb along with the melodies of the individual notes with the fingers.
My approach will enable you to commit 15 minutes per day to making a positive step along the road of mastering fingerpicking. The 'structure' will enable you to master isolated exercises which then stack in a logical way to result in an awesome fingerpicking outcome.
A well-structured approach will enable a complete beginner to competently fingerpick the basic patterns within one month. The student should commit 15 minutes per day to make this kind of progress.
This progress is possible - even if the student has zero musical experience, cannot yet play any chords and has no experience playing other musical instruments.
A well-structured approach will enable a complete beginner to competently fingerpick the basic patterns within one month. The student should commit 15 minutes per day to make this kind of progress.
This progress is possible - even if the student has zero musical experience, cannot yet play any chords and has no experience playing other musical instruments.
Like any other discipline in life, if you watch a true master then it's going to appear magical to watch. When you have a structured approach to learning, then your goal is just to master the next lesson. The teacher has already figured out the order of the building blocks to maximize your results.
It's not true that fingerstyle is "really hard". I actually recommend it as the way to learn guitar for complete beginners! A beginner can learn one chord and do many interesting fingerpicking things in their first hour of learning. This isn't true with the strumming of chords or playing lead guitar. Start with fingerpicking because it is the easiest way to learn!
Some years ago, I set myself the goal of helping one million people learn guitar. Giving this book away for free helps me to achieve my goal.
I also sell an accompanying guitar course From Zero To Guitar Fingerpicker which has exactly the same syllabus and approach as this book - ideal for beginners - and some people choose to buy that.
You can certainly learn just by using the book (thousands of people have!) but if you are a visual learner and you would like to see my play and explain each exercise in the videos, check out the course.
The truth is that any guitar can be used for fingerstyle, whether it be acoustic, electric with nylon strings or steel strings - it doesn't matter.
The best guitar for fingerstyle is the one you have right now. Do not let a guitar be an obstacle to learning fingerpicking. If you were thinking of buying a guitar anyway, I would suggest a steel string with light-guage strings. It will mean a little bit of finger pain for the first few days on the tips of the fingers, but it's worth it. If you really fear the tips of your fingers being sore for a few days, try an acoustic guitar with nylon strings.
If you are a complete beginner or failed beginner, then the Zero to Guitar Fingerpicking in 30 days is my beginner level course. You need zero experience to start - you don't even need to know any chords.
If you have played a bit of guitar but not a lot, then I would still recommend the Zero to Guitar Fingerpicking course. The first section teaches the basics like string names, chords and reading tab and then the next sections go quite far into basslines, fingerpicking patterns and travis picking. The course moves quite quickly focusing on doing a lot of fingerpicking with just a few chords.
If you are able to fingerpick with alternate bass and travis picking, I recommend the Intermediate course as your next step. Here we will make melodies stand out with hammer-ons, pull-0ffs, slides and more while keeping that bass steady.
If you have completed the Intermediate course, the Advanced course is next up!
All of these courses show your preview videos on the product page - so you can actually see what you are going to master if you just put in the 15 minutes a day.
All courses come with a 30 day moneyback gaurantee as well. If you're not happy, you'll get a refund, no questions asked.
Read my article about Setting a guitar goal and choose which of these performance videos represents how good you want to be.