The polyphonic nature of fingerstyle is what lights up so many musical horizons for guitarists, across all traditional and contemporary styles. It’s also what makes it challenging to truly master. At the same time, if you learn and practice the essential components of the technique, your learning journey will progress quickly and you’ll be making great music along the way.
Richard Smith’s Fingerstyle Horizons will clearly light your path and accelerate both your understanding and development of essential fingerstyle skills.
”In this course, I’ll show you how I approach and practice finger and thumb independence, adding a melody with alternating thumb, harmonics, chord shapes, banjo-style rolls, and many other essential fingerstyle tips and skills.
We’ll also work on flatpicking with a thumbpick, choosing fingerings and tone, arranging for guitar, widening the practice loop, working with a metronome, and essential ear training for melody and harmony.
We’ll put all of these techniques and approaches to work across a series of performance studies to help you hone your fingerstyle skills and start to widen your repertoire.”
Chet Atkins calls Richard, “The most amazing guy I know on the guitar. He can play anything I know, only better.” Tommy Emmanuel agrees, “If you like my playing, you should hear Richard Smith! The world champion!” Doyle Dykes is likewise a fan, “Guitar playing at its finest. Don’t miss this one.”
We’re thrilled to finally welcome Richard to the family with his first TrueFire course, Fingerstyle Horizons. You will likewise be thrilled as you learn, practice and play your way through his insightful curriculum.
Fingerstyle Horizons not only reveals the core of Richard’s technique but also gives you a solid and clear path to get your own fingerstyle chops to the next level and beyond.
As you work through the curriculum, Richard will explain and demonstrate a series of key techniques and approaches. Along the way, you’ll put them all to work, in a musical context, across a series of performance studies: Freight Train, Upon a Star Etude, Banjo Roll Etude No. 1, Banjo Steppin', Doc's Dream, Easy Winners, The Entertainer - C Section, The Cherokee Shuffle, Pizzi Pickin', and Lullaby for Madeleine. A breakdown follows every performance study and Richard will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches in play.
You’ll get standard notation and tabs for all of the performance studies. Plus, you’ll be able to use TrueFire’s learning tools to sync the tab and notation to the video lesson. You can also loop or slow down the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace.
Grab your guitar and let’s explore our fingerstyle horizons with Richard Smith!
What you'll learn
Apply drone string technique for traditional fiddle sound
Integrate melody notes with thumb bass accompaniment
Create variations on the basic melody while maintaining structure
Maintain consistent eighth note rhythm in fingerpicking
Understand how to arrange flat-picked fiddle tunes for fingerstyle
Hi, I'm Richard Smith. Welcome to Fingerstyle Horizons.
The polyphonic nature of fingerstyle is what lights up so many musical horizons for guitarists, across all styles. It's also what makes it challenging to truly master. At the same time, if you learn and practice the essential components of the technique, your journey will progress quickly and you'll be making great music all along the way.
In this course, I'll show you how I approach and practice finger and thumb independence, adding a melody with alternating thumb, harmonics, chord shapes, banjo-style rolls, and many other essential fingerstyle tips and skills.
We'll also work on Flatpicking with a Thumbpick, Choosing Fingerings & Tone, Arranging for Guitar, Widening the Practice Loop, Working with a metronome, and ear training for melody and harmony.
We'll put all of these techniques and approaches to work across a series of performance studies to help you hone your fingerstyle skills and start to widen your repertoire.
So if you're ready to come join me on this journey, grab your guitar and let's go.
2Foundations: Thumb Independence
The coordination between our thumb and fingers that allows our thumb to establish a groove, and our fingers to play the melody is an essential skill for fingerstyle guitarists. In this lesson, we break down the method into simple building blocks. When you hit a roadblock, make sure you slow WAY down, count the beats, and try to be very consciously aware and in control of exactly what your thumb and fingers are doing. Remember, when we're learning something truly new, there is no muscle memory programmed in our brain yet, so we have to learn these moves from scratch, like it's our very first lesson.
3Adding a Melody & Alternating Thumb
Let's look at a real simple melody to work on keeping the thumb constant, then start working on how to alternate the thumb playing a chord on the 2nd and 4th beats of the bar, as well as playing the 5th string on beat 3.
4Freight Train
"Freight Train" is a staple of the alternating thumbpicking style. After you've practiced and understood the first lesson, and are fairly confident that your thumb and fingers are independent, it's now time to apply it to this simple and popular melody for country fingerpickers.
Get this down, and you're on the right track to learn a whole host of other Travis picking tunes. Take it slow and steady. Use a metronome!
5Freight Train
"Freight Train" is a staple of the alternating thumbpicking style. After you've practiced and understood the first lesson, and are fairly confident that your thumb and fingers are independent, it's now time to apply it to this simple and popular melody for country fingerpickers.
Get this down, and you're on the right track to learn a whole host of other Travis picking tunes. Take it slow and steady. Use a metronome!
6Freight Train
"Freight Train" is a staple of the alternating thumbpicking style. After you've practiced and understood the first lesson, and are fairly confident that your thumb and fingers are independent, it's now time to apply it to this simple and popular melody for country fingerpickers.
Get this down, and you're on the right track to learn a whole host of other Travis picking tunes. Take it slow and steady. Use a metronome!
7Foundations: Alternating Harmonics
Let's talk a bit about alternating harmonics - these are the harp like sounds that you're hearing where we're playing a natural (open or fretted) note and then a harmonic. Let's learn how to get this under our fingers, and where you might want to use it.
This is a delightful, and thorough download. I've never been disappointed with any of the products I've bought from TrueFire. If I've had questions concerning a particular download, their staff was always there to answer my questions. Whatever you spend for any downloads from TrueFire, is certainly well spent money. I taught at the university level, as well as at music school in Boston, and I truly wish these downloads were available back then. Thank You TrueFire for all you do for our communiity.
Fran Ferry
Guitar Teacher/ Guitar Author
R
rm14543
Verified buyer
07/15/23
Don’t miss this fingerstyle training
Outstanding! Richard Smith is an excellent teacher and provides valuable knowledge every fingerstyle player needs. You can take his examples and plug them into any tune you might already know to make it sound even better. Very practical material.
O
otisredine
Verified buyer
12/15/21
A very usefull opus by a virtuoso fingerpicker. Franck from France.
P
Prem T.
11/25/21
Rating system does not describe what he gives out. RS(Richard Smith) is Beyond rating
I have bought a bunch of courses here, but no one is a greater teacher than RS. He gives you the distilled version of music learning and playing right from the first lesson. I believe most teachers themselves are unaware of such a thing that takes place in music. The methodical approach presented here, it one of its kind. I rarely write recommendations, but one has to bow down to master - like Tyson bows to Mohd. Ali.
L
LuigiD
Verified buyer
07/15/21
Great player and great teacher! Very good course! 5 STARS!
