Three Finger Guitar Technique

[mr. beaumont]

When I studied classical guitar I was taught that the weakest finger is the 3rd or ring finger. The pinky is stronger and you have greater control over it than the 3rd.

Tell that to anybody who bends strings

[mikostep]

We are debating three vs four fingers.... What about Robben Ford one finger approach? And its pinky!

[Vladan]

Tell that to anybody who bends strings

Isn't bending strings forbidden in Jazz?

[pingu]

Isn't bending strings forbidden in Jazz?

Tell that to Barney !

[pingu]

My approach ....

I'm so much a 3 finger player that

If I'm playing 1 2 3 5 6 pentatonic type stuff
In Bb at the fifth posn , you know the kinda stuff

I find myself playing it without the pinky
shifting between 5th & 6th positions ...
rather than using four fingers , one per fret
how most players do

Analysing the movement it's very inefficient
But I like the way it comes out ...

[christianm77]

My approach ....

I'm so much a 3 finger player that

If I'm playing 1 2 3 5 6 pentatonic type stuff
In Bb at the fifth posn , you know the kinda stuff

I find myself playing it without the pinky
shifting between 5th & 6th positions ...
rather than using four fingers , one per fret
how most players do

Analysing the movement it's very inefficient
But I like the way it comes out ...

Isn't that how most rock and blues players do it? I would say those guys are somewhat specialised in the area of pentatonic major and minor scales, and they tend to use three fingers.

[Vladan]

Tell that to Barney !

[christianm77]

Diagonal positions are important too in the playing of Jimi, Django and Wes. As these guys play better than most people on the forum, I think their fingerings are worth a look. For example, Am pentatonic scale:

--------------------------------------8-10
-------------------------------8-10
-----------------------5-7/9
----------------5--7
-----3--5 / 7
--5

That scale position has a few interesting features.

1) maximises the amount of time spent in the sweet spots of the guitar and avoids high positions on low strings which can cause problems with intonation and a muddier tone even on the finest instruments.
2) plays very well with three fingers
3) lots of slides
4) notice octave mapping - it's three box shapes strung together in octaves. In 4ths tuning it would be completely obvious.

Wes-peggio (Gm13)

---------------------8--12
-------------6--10
---------7
--5--8
-----
----

Wes-peggio with passing tones (Gm13)

------------------------------8--10--12--15
------------------6--8--10
-------------7
--5--7--8
-----
----

Wes most often plays lines in low positions(1-5), only venturing up the neck for high notes.

Django-peggio (also played by Kurt among others.)

----------------------------------------
---------------------------5--7--9
------------------------4
--------------2--4--5
-----------2
0--2--3

Notice octave mapping again. This one can be played with two fingers! See if you can work it out. (No shouting out the answer if you already know it ;-))

There's a lot to be said for memorising one octave shapes, filling in the notes from scales and arpeggios and then linking them together. I suspect this may in fact be more useful than conventional position playing in many cases.

[Little Jay]

Wow Christian, thanks for these fingerings! I am playing around with them right now and they somehow feel very natural.

[PMB]

Diagonal positions are important too in the playing of Jimi, Django and Wes. As these guys play better than most people on the forum, I think their fingerings are worth a look. For example, Am pentatonic scale:

--------------------------------------8-10
-------------------------------8-10
-----------------------5-7/9
----------------5--7
-----3--5 / 7
--5

That scale position has a few interesting features.

1) maximises the amount of time spent in the sweet spots of the guitar and avoids high positions on low strings which can cause problems with intonation and a muddier tone even on the finest instruments.
2) plays very well with three fingers
3) lots of slides
4) notice octave mapping - it's three box shapes strung together in octaves. In 4ths tuning it would be completely obvious.

Wes-peggio (Gm13)

---------------------8--12
-------------6--10
---------7
--5--8
-----
----

Wes-peggio with passing tones (Gm13)

------------------------------8--10--12--15
------------------6--8--10
-------------7
--5--7--8
-----
----

Wes most often plays lines in low positions(1-5), only venturing up the neck for high notes.

Django-peggio (also played by Kurt among others.)

----------------------------------------
---------------------------5--7--9
------------------------4
--------------2--4--5
-----------2
0--2--3

Notice octave mapping again. This one can be played with two fingers! See if you can work it out. (No shouting out the answer if you already know it ;-))

There's a lot to be said for memorising one octave shapes, filling in the notes from scales and arpeggios and then linking them together. I suspect this may in fact be more useful than conventional position playing in many cases.

Yep, diagonal fingerings are really important and rarely discussed. Sid Jacobs provides some diagonal major, melodic and harmonic minor scales in his book, Jazz Guitar Improvisation (he calls them symmetrical fingerings due to their repetitive nature).

[CliveR]

Tell that to anybody who bends strings

Good bending technique is to use the second finger and possibly the first to support the third on the bend.

Anyway I was simply reporting how it was put to me many years ago by my classical guitar teacher.

[edh]

Question for Christian's fingerings...does the 5/9, 5/7 mean to slide into the 9 & 7 position?

Thanks in advance for any help.

edh

[christianm77]

Question for Christian's fingerings...does the 5/9, 5/7 mean to slide into the 9 & 7 position?

Thanks in advance for any help.

edh

Yes

[WillMbCdn5]

probably doesnt help but I have a bit of a wonky ring finger on my left hand ( the tendon was severed and reattached) so for lines I play with my pinky taking the place of my ring finger in three finger situations and then expand/fan my hand to use my index/middle and pinky over four or five frets and if I need to I use my ring finger for adjacent 4 fret lines I support that finger with my pinky. So the three fingers I use by default are Index/Middle and Pinky and ring if need be .Might sound awkward but it actually seems very natural . I have seen a number of folks doing something similar . If I am playing a descending line I always start with my pinky. I think I am a wannabee Bass player

[Robertkoa]

Copying the bad habits of excellent or great players , hoping some of the Greatness will rub off.....¿?¿

[Alter]

part of every guitar style is not only what notes are being played, but how they are being played on the fretboard as well. I think that if someone plays with guitars setup like the guitars of most of the classic jazz players, heavy strings and usually higher action than what most players would use today, the necessity of playing mostly with 3 fingers becomes obvious. It is the period correct style for most of the famous classic jazz players

[christianm77]

Copying the bad habits of excellent or great players , hoping some of the Greatness will rub off.....¿?¿

Thing is when I see a player like Wes I see something that you could think of as bad habits being so ingrained and fundamental to the way he plays that if you got rid of them he would be a very different sounding player.

To me, the three fingered thing is not bad technique, it is a different school of technique.

OTOH it is quite possible to have poor technique that actually hurts you in some way. Three fingered technique will not injure you. In contrast poorly mastered classical left hand with bad posture can stop you playing due to tendonitis . Trust me, I know.

Another form of bad technique is inefficient playing. Again I do not see anything inefficient about Wes. What I see in his left hand is the height of human grace.

Ask yourself, what specific problems was classical left hand technique designed to address, and are they relevant to Wes’s music?

Wes’s technique was PERFECT for Wes’s music.

[MarkRhodes]

What Christian said put me in mind of a recommendation in a guitar book: practice in all registers with all fingerings for maximal freedom. (Or words to that effect.) I thought, "Maximal freedom? That might be a bit much to handle on the fly." As Carol Kaye once said about those who play from "note scales," you have too many choices all the time. It might work better to have great flexibility with a smaller range of options.

Not saying this is so. Certainly not suggesting I'm a player of such quality that what I say here should be given great (or any) weight. Rather, isn't part of what me mean by a player's style a characteristic way of doing things?

Thinking out loud.....

[paulkogut]

I did the heavy "all fingerings, all positions" work in my formative years, and I'm glad I did. But at the time , I thought my goal was to eventually play all things in all positions. What I ended up getting from it was the ability to find the one best fingering for whatever passage I'm going for, and to stick with it.

Take a look at the left hands of Wes, Jimmy Raney, Peter Bernstein . There's a set of common fingerboard mechanics that they share, in my opinion more than what can be dismissed as bad habit and coincidence.

PK

[Freel]

All three finger combinations are good up to around seimquavers at 150 pbm.

After that 234 and its variants break down.

For this reason if someone is trying to play lines where the 234 group comes up as a consequence of position avoiding shifting (ie classical demagoguery) and if the difficulty with this group is exacerbated by fast string shifting then it is better to use a different combination. This might involve consecutive notes with a single finger and more shifting. Best way to study this is to go to youtube and watch Stochelo Rosenberg at half speed.

I remember seeing how much he played with three fingers and thinking that maybe his pinky was weak, now I laugh at my youthfull arrogance.

There are a lot of lines that are MUCH easier to play with two or three fingers than four.

Some classical players, like Pepe Romero, shift to this fingering system above the twelfth fret.

It is a good idea to play a line with the same fret positions and try and finger it for two, three, four and even one finger once in a while.

D.

[jazznylon]

One Finger Technique...

[Freel]

Of course not everything can be given the consideration it deserves when one insists on using the extended middle finger exclusively.....

[Freel]

I

But nobody plays as well as Wes with Thumb - do they ?

[Robertkoa]

He is playing Rest Strokes mostly with fingers I and M and not Playing Jazz and not using his Thumb to play single lines ...and he is not swinging over changes....

Other than that ....

[Freel]

lol