Fingerstyle Guitar Lesson - The basic Folk music pattern

Basic Finger-Picking Folk Pattern

The Thumb / Middle finger pinch Now that you are comfortable with the alternating bass movement, let's get used to picking with the fingers of our right hand. Look at the diagram and follow these steps:
Diagram 2 The thumb / middle finger pinch	As you strike the bass note with your thumb on beat 1, pluck the first string with the middle finger. This is sometimes called a pinch. Simply pinch both strings at the same time. You should strike the strings with a combination of the finger tip and the nail. This is beat 1 . Now add your alternating bass note (beat 2). Beat 3 is a repeat of the first step, the thumb / middle finger pinch. Finally end the four beat measure with the alternating bass note as in the second step (beat 4).
As before, take your time to become comfortable with this simple pattern. As an additional exercise you can also pinch (beats 1 and 3 ) with the index finger on the second string. Alternating pinches as you keep up a steady alternating bass will produce a very simple picking pattern that you can experiment with as you run this right hand technique through all your first position chords. Remember you should be playing only on the downbeat. Count 1 - 2 - 3 - 4. If you have the Real Audio Player, click here to listen to how it should sound.