Jim Bruce Acoustic Guitar Lessons – Basic Finger Picking – The Thumb Is King!

By: Jim Bruce

As the first in a series of guitar instructional videos I’ll be presenting at Guitar International, I thought I’d start out with a video with about the classic Big Bill Broonzy song ‘Hey Hey’, in which I attempt to copy that swinging Chicago acoustic blues sound that he developed.

When starting to learn basic blues picking (or any finger picking technique) it might help us to remember that there are only three basic movements possible – a strike with the thumb, a strike with one finger (or more) or a ‘pinch’, which is when the thumb and finger strike two strings at the same time. Incredibly, that’s it, no matter how complicated the sound.

This is great news for student guitarists, because if we can work out where to put our picking fingers, and practice slowly, we can learn to play just about anything. We just need to go for it!

Of course, other things are happening during the finger picking process which are very important for the overall sound and feel of the music. My advice to new finger pickers is always the same – educate the thumb and the rest will follow.

The Thumb is King. In the beginning of the Delta blues the thumb beat provided the drive and the drum beat of a song, and was mostly used in the ‘monotonic bass’ style. This means that the thumb strikes just one bass string, or sometimes two or three in the same stroke.

Many blues men doubled up the timing of their bass srikes to simulate a heart beat – ‘thum-thum thum-thum’. This appealed directly to the emotions and was a powerful technique in the hands of expert blues men like Robert Johnson and Lightnin’ Hopkins. Often, the bass strings are damped down with the heel of the hand after being picked, so that the note doesn’t ring out, but makes a ‘thunk’ sound a bit like a drum.

At three minutes and thirty-two seconds (3m 32s) into the video we take a close up look at my right hand and the damping technique often associated with this monotonic bass picking style.

Next I talk about introducing more complexity (3m 56s) and how some guitarists started to alternate their thumb between two bass strings. Perhaps this was prompted by the arrival of syncopated ragtime piano music.

It’s probable that the early ragtime guitarsists like Blind Blake perfected the true alternating bass style of picking, which later became the main characteristic of ‘Travis Picking’ (after Merle Travis) and was used in many folk type songs typical of the folk revival in the early ’50s and ’60s.

I use a close up view again at 5m 17s  to see how that alternating bass works in a simple form. Sometimes the basses are damped with the heel of the hand, and sometimes not – it all depends on the song and the flow of the music.

Once we learn how to control that thumb and can play an alternating bass pattern, almost automatically, then it’s possible to break out of it at any time and start to get creative. This means we can add rhythmic variations, syncopation and single string runs using thumb and finger, for example.

This all helps to make the music interesting and more exciting for the listener.

At 6m 21s I finish off with a short example featuring the basic Piedmont ragtime picking style of Blind Boy Fuller using his classic song, “Step It Up and Go”. The song starts off with a walking type bass line and then changes to an alternating bass pattern.

Try it out, experiment with it and most of all, don’t forget to have fun!