great exercice.
Hello everyone,
I have a question regarding fingerstyle. I read some of you have been practicing this in fingerstyle but how?
For the down strums no problem, but for the up strums, should I use the index? If I do I don’t feel like it’s strumming and I’m missing the point of this training
If I use my thumb, should i use the top of my nail? Sounds awkward and feels like bad technique. The soft part then? Feels impossible to me
I’ve used a pick for this lesson, but I try to focus on fingerstyle to get closer to MK style.
Hope someone can help me clarify.
Cheers
Paul @Livelong
Are you sure you are not getting a few things mixed up. The lesson you mention is all about using a pick not your fingers. Fingerstyle is using your fingers as the name implies is another technique altogether. There is something called hybrid pick which uses a pick and fingers, is this what you are asking about?
Michael
Hey Michael,
I am trying to do this exercise without a pick. I never play with one and probably never will. I’d like to only play with my fingers like Mark Knopfler so I would like to be able to do this exercice with my fingers.
It feels impossible to me to strum with my fingers and pick individual note with my thumb, but reading this topic it seems some people manage to do it
Paul @Livelong
I have not checked in the earlier 50 odd posts what you say that others do. If you are wanting to strum with you fingers then Justin covers various techniques in the Grade 3 Strumming course however it is a paid for course.
Perhaps other can give you specific advice.
Michael
Is this the lesson topic you are referencing to? It’s a different topic than this one…which might explain the confusion about your question.
Like this message from @Jamolay
"I have worked on this module with fingers only. It works fine.
I am not a pick person, but there are some advantages to picks in some style of play.
I also think you can do it all, at least almost, with fingers. It would help to spend time on finger technique. It takes a lot of dedicated practice, but will make everything easier and sound better."
@Tbushell I saw this is the next lesson but I’m really talking about this one, I havent checked the next one yet.
I think @MAT1953 gave me the right direction which is the paid strumming course.
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Hi @Livelong ,
There is a lesson on how to get this sort of sound with thumb and fingers:
This might be what you are looking for. (I just noticed, this is the very next lesson in the module).
It seems the fingerstyle version is more oriented towards acoustic guitar, while the pick version I associate with a clean, jangly electric guitar, like you might hear from R.E.M. or the Byrds, etc. The finger version doesn’t bring to mind Knopfler, to my ears, certainly not his electric playing. (Though, I imagine you’re more familiar with his music than I am, and he may have done tons of songs in this style that I’m not aware of. 
)
I was trying to transcribe the accoustic intro of Where do you think you’re going and it seems that in the intro there is a strong accent on a high note, like if he was picking the thin string as described in this lesson while upstrumming. I could not reproduce this sound so I just left it in the meanwhile. That could be something like this.
Really hard to understand what he really does as he’s pretty fast, he did not release tabs and there’s almost no live for the Communique album. You can see his fingers roadraging the fretboard on the Sultans of Swing lives but there is just the Rockpalast for WDYG which is way easier.
The next lesson might be it. I’ll do this lesson with a pick, can’t hurt me anyway, and I’ll go into the next one and see if it suits.
Thanks much for your answers all
I’ve also heard that “Mark Kopfler does not use a pick”. And I understand that he often does not…but this 2024 interview in Guitar Player magazine implies the story is complicated. Indeed, he states “I didn’t give it [using a plectrum] up until recently.”
I have a question about the strums specified in the tab. The down strums indicate one should not play the first string on the down strum. I get it: we hit string one on the upstrum, and string one is the first individual string we play, so it sounds nicer to miss it on the down strums. My question: how important is this from a skill point of view, given the goals of this lesson? I don’t recall any strumming lessons so far that talk about missing string one, only string six (for obvious reasons!). Should I be as concerned about missing string 1 on those down strums as I am about hitting the correct individual strings?
Hi Judi,
I think you will find use for reasonably good control of string muting on any string. adjacent strings are usually just laying the fretting finger a little flat or pushing it into the adjacent string above.
Muting string 1 can come fairly quickly by letting finger 1 grab too much of the neck at the bottom. This I tend to do unintentionally, especially when grabbing a long stretch with finger 3. this is from rotating the hand until the bottom of finger 1 touches the edge of the neck and therefore string 1. The other way for me is to curl the finger over the bottom a bit when it is not in use - again, these is muting with the “fluffy” part of the bottom of finger 1 just as the palm is starting.
There can be even some muting required for strings two to four strings away from your ringing strings. I often need to think through a method of quieting string 5 of 6 when it wants to resonate with the note on string 3 or 2. This is more dependent on the position of your hand to give a reliable description here. I find I use the strumming/picking palm in this case, but that is only sometimes and can be hard to do.
Thank you Michael! I’m feeling a bit silly - like you I struggle with inadvertently muting the first string (small hands and reaching, similar to what you’ve described) and constantly work on overcoming that challenge. It never occurred to me to actually use this challenge to advantage in this situation.
Thanks too for bringing up the need to quiet strings 5 or 6. I work on the obvious things - mostly trying to use the tip of another finger or my thumb to quiet string 6 - but my thinking hadn’t become sophisticated enough to consider situations you describe. I’ll keep it in mind now! There’s always something, isn’t there? 
I have found many ways to use a problem to my advantage! Just depends on the situation to see it as a problem or a solution! 
Play an A on string 3 and quiet it. Now feel open string 5. It really stands out on an electric. This is a major nuisance for me on one song! I am using my thumb over the top, but that is not all that easy to do, even with reasonably adequate hands for it. It is very slow to move into the next position.
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What experiences has everyone had when trying to do this exercise without looking at your hands?
I’ve been practising this exercise every day for 2 weeks, and I can just about do it without looking if the first picked note is on the first string (as is the case for the initial 2 bar and 1 bar patterns). However, I’ve found playing without looking basically impossible when attempting to do the ascending pattern (e.g. see tab below for C major). It seems that no amount of practice whilst looking at my hands enables me to play the same thing without looking. Does anyone have any tips on how to make progress here?
I’ve been working on this exercise recently as well. Based on the comments from others, it seems that most folks need a while to get “good” at this. I don’t know if I have tips on making progress, but will share my experience: I’m improving, but I still miss strings if I don’t look. I’ve decided to give myself a bit of grace and to keep practicing while peeking at the strings. Better to train the hand properly, than to repeatedly hit the wrong strings! (I’m also thinking about muting the high e string on the down strums.) Based on my experience working on other guitar skills, the peeking will naturally diminish as I become more proficient, perhaps because it’s really easier not to look. I don’t have natural talent for guitar, and have come to accept that it will take a long time for me to feel “good” at most techniques; maybe others with more talent can offer more technical guidance. For me - I keep improving and that’s what matters!
Another somewhat tangential observation: I recently was distracted from my planned practice routines for about 6 weeks. As I regroup, I’ve begun revisiting songs and exercises I’d been working on over the past year. It was amazing to me how much easier - and how much fun - it is to get going on these things after that break! I plan to consciously do something similar with this exercise (and with all my practice moving forward): I’ll work on it until my progress slows or stalls, at which point I’ll set it aside for some time (maybe 4-6 weeks), then re-introduce it to my practice routine 2-3 times per week. I’ll stay with it until I hit a new plateau, then set it aside again for a while. Of course if the technique is needed in a song I’m working on, that will become the practice.
So that was all about me, but I hope if nothing else it indicates that you’re not alone in this challenge! I’m interested to learn from the suggestions of others. 
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I think you answered your own question Barny. You need to practice WITHOUT looking. If you make a mistake, feel around for the right string/fret and try again. You want to be training your hand to decouple from your eyes.
I’ve been doing this with the intro to Wanted Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi. It wasn’t until I started practicing without looking that I made any real progress.
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Chris @jacksprat, I love your reply…it’s a great illustration of (at least) two things. First - what works well for one person may not work well for another. Second - sometimes we find ourselves trying multiple approaches - sometimes simultaneously, sometimes sequentially.
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That’s exactly what I normally do, albeit sort of unintentionally. Up to this point, I’ve not explicitly practised playing anything at all on the guitar without looking, it just sort of comes naturally after practising enough times. It’s a slow and gradual process; I find myself peeking at my hands less and less. However, in the case of the one-bar ascending pattern, that slow peeking less-and-less process doesn’t seem to be happening, and I start making a lot of mistakes if I simply forced myself to not look.
Good point, I’ll try letting the mistake happen and feel around for the correct string. It seems so obvious now that you say it, but, as mentioned above, that was not the way I approached practising without looking up till now. Thanks for the tip!
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A couple of thoughts: it takes a long time to master this type of playing – accurately picking out single notes, jumping across multiple strings: it’s not easy, even if you look at the picking hand. If you haven’t done much single-note picking before, I would expect dozens of hours of practice would be needed to play this cleanly, at decent speed, while changing chords.
One positive thing is that even if you pick the wrong string on occasion, it will still sound good. (Well, for the treble strings, anyway. I think hitting the correct bass note is important.)
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