Most beginners believe that they need to know how to read music, understand theory, struggle through boring exercises and learn hundreds of chords to play fingerstyle guitar. NOT SO!

Guitar is the most popular instrument on the planet because it's the easiest instrument to learn how to play. Thousands of popular songs can be played with just a few chords and a couple of fingerpicking patterns.

Learn those few chords and fingerpicking patterns, along with the basics of holding and tuning a guitar and you too will be able to play hundreds of your favorite songs. And that's what Jump Start Fingerstyle is all about - a quick, easy, fun and interactive approach for learning how to play fingerstyle guitar.

Video Introduction

Click below for a sample video from the course.

About the Guitar Lesson Plan

Interactive Playalong Video Guitar Instruction

Jump Start Fingerstyle starts you off with a series of video guitar lessons showing you the finger naming conventions, how to tune up, hold the guitar and position your hands. Next up, you'll start learning the most common chords used in popular music - only 12 of them and theyŐre all easy! Once you've got a grip on the chords, youŐll learn how to change chords easily and quickly while playing progressions and songs. Now the fun stuff - fingerpicking patterns! You'll learn the five most useful and popular fingerpicking patterns; the Forward Arpeggio pattern, the Reverse Arpeggio pattern, the Basic Pinch pattern, the Inside Roll pattern and the Forward Roll pattern. That's it! Now grab a songbook or download lyrics and chord sheets of your favorite songs and play your heart out!

TrueFire's interactive video software accelerates the learning process with handy controls like zooming, looping, tab, notation, Power Tab files, integrated tuner, metronome, rhythm tracks and direct links to the TrueFire forum and Support Center.

About Your Instructor

Richard Gilewitz

Richard Gilewitz is widely respected as one of the most graceful acoustic guitarists on the contemporary scene. Gilewitz has collaborated and appeared in concert with the likes of John Renbourn, Mose Allison, John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Adrian Legg, The Little River Band, Taj Mahal, John Hammond, Rory Block and Jorma Kaukonen. Richard is also an excellent instructor with an innovative approach for communicating and demonstrating conceptual approaches for guitar-centric composition, improvisation and performance.

Aptly named one of the "Men of Steel" by Fingerstyle Guitar Magazine, Richard Gilewitz regularly fascinates his audiences with his master fingerstyle gymnastics. In addition to his concert performances and recording sessions, he presents instructional guitar and sound reinforcement seminars worldwide, bringing a vast experience of teaching and touring to listeners of all ages and players of all levels.

About the Series

Get Up and Running Without Tedious Theory

TrueFire's Jump Start guitar lessons embrace an unorthodox but highly effective approach for teaching people of all ages how to play guitar. In essence, Jump Start courses skip over all of the tedious theory, boring exercises and drawn-out explanations with one end in mind - help students start playing guitar, making music and having fun as quickly and easily as possible. Once the student is up and running, they'll have the confidence and inspiration to dig deeper into the finer details and expand their knowledge base.