No Band? No Vocals? No inspiration?
Playing guitar should feel creative and expressive, a way to make music for you own enjoyment. But if you don't have time to get together with other people, or would rather solo than sing, all the great gear in the world can leave you feeling unsatisfied when you sit down to play.
Make your own groove, be your own band. Back porch not included.
Build a Repertoire. Make It Your Own.
Play Great Tunes
Put an end to aimless noodling with the Fingerstyle Five's classic and contemporary blues instrumentals
Play With Confidence
Use a simple, step-by-step method to play every song with great timing and a solid groove
Play Like You
Make every song your own with intros, solos, new chords and more
Reconnect With Your Guitar
When you still love music but don't have the bandwidth to play with other people, you need a satisfying way to keep going on your own. With the Fingerstyle Five, you'll learn how to groove and start improvising so you can make great songs sound good all by yourself.
Miquel P.
"I can't believe what I've learned; it's more than I ever expected...and now every lesson, every song, every day I find easier."
Johnny F.
"Well-prepared and organized, clear, concise and patient. David's approach to improvisation has provided me with a foundation for real improvement."
Bill Z.
"Learning the monthly songs is so much deeper than just how to play the notes. I play blues better now because i understand what I'm playing and how it fits together."
Learn to Sound Good All By Yourself
Join the Membership
Get immediate access to over fifty hours of lessons and workshops.
Get Organized Lessons
Take each song from start to finish with consistent, step-by-step lessons
Start Playing Better
Hone new skills at your own pace while building your repertoire.
Learn to Play Fingerstyle, Step By Step
If you’re an even semi-responsible 21st-century adult guitar player, you know what the snag is: too much adult and not enough guitar player. Practice time is hard to come by and getting together with musician friends is a long shot, so you wind up using what time you have playing things you already know and going down various rabbit holes on the internet, only to come up empty-handed and annoyed hours later.
Like most guitar players, you’re probably into various kinds of music, not just blues. And you may have tried fingerpicking before and found it convoluted and overwhelming, like trying to eat sushi and hit backhands at the same time. But fingerstyle blues is one of the best ways to sound good all by yourself, for several reasons.
First, you don’t have to get it perfect. If you can keep time and play a good groove, the details are pretty flexible. Second, fingerstyle blues guitarists solo using the same kind of blues licks and pentatonic scales you might know from playing blues in a band, so you can start learning to play your own improvisations without learning boatloads of jazz scales in every key and position on the guitar.
And finally, the blues repertoire is full of tunes familiar to anyone who’s listened to blues-rock, country music, folk or blues in the last four decades – tunes like “Sitting On Top Of The World,” “Nine Pound Hammer,” “House of the Rising Sun,” “Baby Please Don’t Go” – so even if you think you don’t know much about blues, you probably know a lot of the songs already.
Learning to play solo fingerstyle blues is really just a five-step process.
- Learn or solidify your basic right-hand coordination: how to keep your thumb steady while your fingers play a melody.
- Use that coordination to start playing your first few blues tunes. Nothing tricky, just playing the melody with your fingers while your thumb keeps the bass going.
- Start dressing up those tunes with a few details: a few cool new chords, a bass run or two, a groovier version of the melody.
- Add your first solo or two to a song. You can start by learning a few written-out solos to get a feel for what’s possible, then start mixing and matching licks to come up with your own improvisations
- Use intros, endings and other instrumental sections to turn each song into a complete, full-length arrangement
The Fingerstyle Five can help no matter what stage of this process you’re at. For every song, there are clear, organized videos and PDFs to show you how to learn the groove, play the basic melody and add details to that melody, while providing sample solos to help you start improvising, and suggesing specific intros, turnarounds and other ideas you can use right away to start building your own arrangement.
Whether your aim is to sit in the living room picking for yourself or to learn an entire set of solo instrumentals, the Fingerstyle Five’s over fifty hours of lessons and workshops can show you how to get there. And with over 500 members regularly taking part in the lively members-only forum and regular Q&A live streams, you can always get answers to your questions, see how other people are using the material and get feedback on your work in progress.
Sign up now for immediate access to every lesson, video and live stream, and start sounding better all by yourself.
