I know there’s a fair amount of interest in different guitar finger picking techniques -- and truthfully I’m sure you could do an entire course just on finger picking -- so I decided to do a little lesson on one of the picking techniques that I like to use.

I like finger picking with this style because it gives a very rhythmic, mellow sound that fits my mood perfectly when I just wanna relax or cool off. Works great with minor chords, as you’ll see here, but feel free to try this guitar finger picking technique with anything that strikes your fancy.

Start using this 2 finger picking technique with the Am7, Dm7 and Em7 chords that I show you here, because you can get used to picking the root note plus the 2nd and 3rd strings. Once you’re familiar with that, try it with some other chords and start moving the string that your root note is on.

Here’s a lesson on finger exercises for guitar. As a guitar player, you are forever strengthening your fingers, not to mention practicing your scales! So, why not do both at the same time?

To be honest, while I was recording this lesson I could feel it in my own fingers… proof positive that these exercises will work you over and build up that strength and dexterity!

Another way to use these finger exercises is to spice up your practice times. Work on going up and down the scale, then working up and down in increments like I describe on the video.

Doing this forces your fingers to become more familiar with each note and the notes around it, and gets you used to quickly changing directions mid-scale.

I used my electric guitar on this lesson, but these finger exercises are just as good on the acoustic guitar. You’ll just have to work a little harder to accomplish the same thing =).

Stroke my ego… leave a comment below the video and tell me how much your fingers hurt after doing these exercises =)

The open D chord can actually be a lot of fun. For the purposes of this lesson, I’m assuming that by now you at least know some of the basic open chord formations… so this lesson is going to expand ever so slightly upon that knowledge. We’re only talking about the open D chord, but this handy little guitar tip can be thrown into literally just about any song you’ll ever come across that has a open D chord in it!

I use Dsus all over the place. Technically the sus I show you here is a sus4.

Quick Theory Lesson:

Wherever you see (sus) it is short for suspended -- it means you’re raising the the second note in the chord (in this case F#) a semitone to G, which is the fourth of D. F# is the third note in the scale… normally you need a root note (D), plus a third (F#) and a fifth (A) to build a chord. Suspending changes the third to a fourth. Confused? I hope not. But you can learn some guitar theory here.

Back to the lesson…

These simple little tricks you can play on the E string, while playing an open D chord, can really add dynamics to whatever song you’re playing. Enjoy…

Video Problems? Watch Open D Chord Tricks on Youtube

I know how much you all like riffs, so I’m hoping you’re gonna like these two as much as I do.

The first riff is basically working off the fourths you find in the pentatonic minor scale. You’re essentially doing mini bars with your fingers… just grabbing two strings at a time though.

Feel free to have fun with this… mix up the order, experiment with hammer-ons and pull offs, and even with the open notes I mentioned. If you look at your Am Pentatonic, you’ll see that E, A, D, G are all in that scale -- so that means that you can use those as open notes as well, even when you’re playing from the fifth fret.

I talk about the fourths and fifths and other intervals a lot more over at Guitar Scale Patterns.

The second riff also uses fourths… this time on the top two strings. Adding a string bend makes it sound really cool.

Enjoy….

If you need a refresher, click here for the pentatonic scale lesson.