Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Discuss the Guitar lesson: Alternating Thumb Fingerstyle- Lesson #3

https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/alternating-thumb-fingerstyle-lesson-3-guitar-intermediate

Expanding the territory! Let’s tackle the G & F chords and start makin’ some music!

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Woohoo a new fingerstyle lesson! THANK YOU! :partying_face:

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Oooh, got an A+ on the exam. Well, with the metronome below 130. :innocent:

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Does anyone have any suggested lessons or songs from the Banjo Ben Clark website to keep practicing what we have learned with the alternating thumb finger style lessons?

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Great question, and I’d say right now that you have the major skills needed to tackle most any of them though they will be difficult. They will include techniques and tricks in them that we haven’t covered in the course up to this point. As the course continues I will teach these techniques explicitly. I honestly do not have any super simple fingerstyle songs on the site right now. I do have “Jesus Loves Me” but it’s not quite the same style: https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/jesus-loves-me-fingerstyle-guitar-beginner

I do love that arrangement and it’s so fun to play!

Try your hand at “I’ll Fy Away”. I had to remove it as a lesson on the site due to copyright but I’ll include it here:
Gtr-IllFlyAway-Finger.pdf (158.2 KB) Gtr-IllFlyAway-Finger.tef (3.1 KB)

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Thank you very much for the recommendation. I really enjoyed the alternating thumb finger-style course. I imagine it was quite a bit of work coming up with the exercises, I found that the exercises were quite useful.

~ Carl

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Good, I hope so! I work hard on the process/exercises. I don’t have any minutes to spare in my schedule, so I don’t aim to waste anyone else’s time either.

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Can I do these with a flat pick, or should I try this style? I have practiced fingerprinting for years with a pick so I can change to cross picking etc in a song. Is there something in the future where I need this style?

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It depends if you want to really sound like the famous alt-thumb pickers out there like Chet or Merle Travis. But yes, you can do it with a flatpick if you want!

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Song Suggestion : His Eye Is On The Sparrow
Seems like a finger style fit to me.
Great Lesson by the way… Yikes I couldn’t resist, I’m here for Mando and clicked on this class and have been swapping instruments for days. Mando,Guitar, and Banjo.
Ben you are a major blessing, Thank you for sharing your gifting. Shalom 2U 70x7!

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I tried to post a question on “hybrid” picking (flatpick, using middle, ring, and pinkie) but for some reason it disappeared. Ben, what do you think of modifying your lessons to make use of hybrid picking?

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I don’t mean you should re-teach your finger picking lessons. I mean what do you think of MY doing this?

I think it’s great, personally. We’ll get slightly different sounds but many of my faves are hybrid pickers.

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Is it okay to use the full F barre chord? I have trouble just barring two strings. Should I keep trying to finger the chord like you do in the lesson?

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Sure, that’s fine!

Enjoyed this lesson! What struck me is how vitally foundational and needed these techniques are. I started playing fingerstyle guitar about 3-years ago when I saw the “Are You Washed In the Blood” BB CLARK lesson / tab. I wish I would have seen these lessons first! “Are you washed” really got me hooked on this style. Being a banjo-player helped me assimilate to the guitar strings maybe a little sooner that would have otherwise. What astonishes me, is how easily fingerstyle can move between genres of music from folk, blues, bluegrass, country and even rock & roll. The “price” (aka: blood,sweat and tears) of learning fingerstyle guitar is really worth the effort in my opinion.

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Hey Ben. Great course, thanks so much.
Will you be adding more lessons beyond #3?

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Yep, it’s on the list! Thanks!

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Thanks again for this excellent course Ben.
Question niggling at me…is there a reason we cover two strings (B and high E) with our middle finger instead of using our ring finger?

To be clear, I mean ring finger for the high E so there’s one string each.

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