Hello All,
I’ve been playing guitar for 20+ years and am mostly self taught with some help from some old Paul Gilbert and random YouTube instructionals over the years. However, when it comes to fingerstyle stuff on the classical/acoustic, I’ve always managed to figure it out on my own. For the current piece I’m learning though (or re-learning but fully committing to this time), my right hand seems to have plateau’d in one particular section. Below is a snippet of the tabs that I’m struggling with.
I initially tried playing it with my thumb playing the E string and my middle and index fingers playing the other strings (despite the notes saying the composer adds in the thumb for the other strings) because that just seemed like the correct way to do it. However, I’ve been playing it like that for a few weeks new and can only seem to get the speed up to about 75%. When I try to pick up the pace, my fingers just stumble and I’m not entirely sure why. Usually if I have a speed issue with the fingers on my right hand, I can pay attention and use more appropriate fingers, or practice practice practice. This time, I feel like I’m using the appropriate fingers, but more practice isn’t helping. I’ve played around adding in my thumb like the notes indicate in the tabs, and that definitely helps for the D & G strings, but it still feels kinda clunky because the thumb has a lot of distance to cover to and from the E string. Also, I’m concerned that the first two notes with my middle and index won’t really improve enough because if they could, then I wouldn’t need to consider this alternate fingering, right?
I’ve looked at flamenco a little bit to see how they do it, but I think in order to adopt that style, I’d need to completely change how I position my hand and pick each string so it would be like learning to play for the first time.
EDIT: I guess I don’t need to change my hand position for the flamenco way because there’s multiple ways to do the Picado and the way I’ve been trying to do it, is already one of the ways.
EDIT EDIT: I did some more research on the Picado and confirmed that I don’t need to reposition my hand, but I do need to pluck the strings differently than I’m used to which will actually require re-learning to pick.
So I guess my question is what approach do you folks think I should take, and is there an option I’m overlooking? I realize this is probably pretty tough to provide input on unless you’ve experienced something very similar and overcome it, but I appreciate any input regardless.
Thanks,
Josh
