One Finger Guitar by Patrick Costello

http://www.dailyfrail.com/
People are always asking me if the guitar is more difficult to learn
than the banjo. It's a tough question to answer because any instrument
will have idiosyncratic techniques that by themselves can be challenging
for people to master- but overall it's six of one and half a dozen of
the other. All fretted instruments operate under a fairly simple set of
rules. Most of the difficulty people have in learning to play the guitar
or the banjo usually stem from how you approach the instrument. If you
start off trying to bypass the basics and jump right into advanced stuff
right away making real progress will be pretty difficult. It takes time.
Not just to learn the right and left hand techniques, it takes time and
experience to learn how to use those techniques. I don't think this is a
bad thing because the journey involved in becoming a musician is full of
wild adventures. Don't be in such a rush to play that you miss out on
the fun.
For this first workshop I am going to share some easy tricks you can use
to start playing out on the front porch almost immediately - but I am
going to balance out the 'quick fix" with some basic concepts so that
you'll actually be able to build on these ideas and concepts down the
road. In upcoming workshops in this series I am going to start looking
at building basic skills in more detail. Some of the material covered in
these workshops is also presented in my Basic Folk Guitar CD ROM
workshop available at http://www.funkyseagull.com as well as my soon to
be released second book The How and the Tao of Acoustic Guitar.
These workshops are not intended to be anything but something to help
you get started. There is a wealth of information available on the
Internet, your local library and, most importantly, your own community
just waiting for you to go out and get it. Playing the guitar isn't
something you pick up in the afternoon. It's a lifelong pursuit.
Hopefully the material covered here will give you the tools to get out
on the front porch to pick a couple of folks songs and maybe even get
out to a jam- but after that you have to sort things out on your own.
Get a chord or two from one of your friends and a bass run from some
stranger at a festival. I'm not a big fan of formal lessons for a lot of
reasons- but I think the main reason is that my best learing experiences
happened when I ran into other guitar players by accident.
Tuning Up
The one thing about learning how to tune that has caused a lot of
frustration for teachers and students in how the strings are numbered.
The nice thing about a plain-text guitar workshop is that you are not
here to argue with me or ask me, "Why do they number them like that?"
(And my only reply would be something along the lines of "just
because.") There is a hilariously grumpy rant by the late guitar wizard
John Fahey at to one of his students about this confusion (and some
pretty good advice on playing in C tuning) at
http://johnfahey.com/CTuning.htm.
The way I usually explain it is that if you look at your guitar strings
you will see (usually) four wound strings and two plain steel strings.
When you are holding your guitar correctly ("correctly" being a relative
term when you stop to think that players like Elizabeth Cotten did just
fine playing upside-down and backwards) the two plain steel strings are

closest to the floor and the last wound string is on top- closest to
your chin. The first plain steel string on the bottom is your FIRST
string and the last wound string is your SIXTH string.
In order to get off to a quick start we are going to mess around in Open
G tuning for the first part of this workshop. See, I can remember all
too well what I went through learning to play the guitar and I see a lot
of folks give up on the instrument because it takes a while before you
really start doing anything that sounds like music. By starting out in
an open tuning you'll have a chance to work up some kind of basic right
hand technique and start singing songs on your front porch in an
afternoon.
Starting out in an open tuning is kind of traditional and nontraditional
at the same time. A lot of great music has been made in open tunings
over the years but there are a few drawbacks to using them exclusively.
Standard tuning was developed for a few reasons- but the main reason is
that playing chords just works better under standard tuning. We are
going to look into open tunings to get you started on some basic skillsbut after this workshop I'm going to go right into standard tuning and
stay there for a while.
Ok, enough talking. Grab your guitar and lets get that puppy in tune!
In open G tuning
Your SIXTH string (the wound string closest to your chin) is tuned

to D

Your
Your
Your
Your
Your
tuned to

FIFTH string is tuned to G

FOURTH string is tuned to D
THIRD string is tuned to G
SECOND string is tuned to B
FIRST string (the plain steel string closest to the floor) is
D

6 5 4 3 2 1
D G D G B D
Note: Never just crank on your guitar tuners. Always play the open
string THEN tune it up. It'll save you from changing a lot of broken
strings.
I strongly recommend that you pick up a chromatic tuner. A standard
guitar tuner won't help with alternate tunings- but a decent chromatic
tuner can help you with open G and some of the other tunings I'm going
to talk about at the tail end of this workshop. Chromatic tuners can be
picked up for as little as fifteen bucks so shop around and find you
like. Also look around http://www.google.com for tuners you can either
download or use online with a microphone attached to your computer.
If you don't have a tuner you can tune the guitar to itself by following
these steps:
Assume (I know, makes an ASS out of U and ME) that the first string
is in tune.
Tune the second string so that when you fret the second string at
the third fret you get the same note as the open first string.

Tune the third string so that when you fret the third string at the
fourth fret you get the same note as the open second string.
Tune the fourth string so that when you fret the fourth string at
the fifth fret you get the same note as the open third string.
Tune the fifth string so that when you fret the fifth string atthe
seventh fret you get the same note as the open fourth
string.
Tune the sixth string so that when you fret the sixth string atthe
fifth fret you get the same note as the open fifth string.
Take this slow and easy. Tuning a guitar is a skill you have to develop
over time.
Once you get in tune strum down (from the sixth string to the first)
across the strings. If you are in tune you've just played an open G
chord.
Now let's get together on some kind of rhythm pattern.
Strumming
Hopefully you are holding your guitar so that it's balanced and your
left and right hands don't need to support the neck or the
body to keep it from falling out of your lap.
Place your right hand- or, to keep lefties from feeling left out, your
"picking hand"- so that your thumb is resting on the sixth string and
your little finger is resting on the top of the guitar after the first
string. I usually plant my ring and little finger when I am strumming;
some folks just plant the little finger. Either way works as we're only
using the little finger to give us a little bit more stability. Don't
press down with your hand or your fingers and don't get all tensed up.
Get comfortable and set things up so that if you draw your thumb over
towards your little finger you wind up strumming across all six strings.
Make sure the strings all ring out. If your little finger is hitting the
first string readjust things to that your fist string is freed up.
When you draw your thumb across the strings don't move your arm or your
wrist around that much. The movement here is more from your thumb than
anywhere else.
Try is lightly a few times and then give it a good hard strum once or
twice. Now strum across the strings four times fairly slowly. When I say
"slowly" I don't mean to drag your thumb across the strings so that each
string rings out individually. Make the brush fairly crisp and count out
loud each time your strum.
Count:

"One . . . two . . . three . . . four."

strum
strum
strum
strum

In order to make that a bit smoother start tapping your foot each time
you count and strum.
Count:

"One . . . two . . . three . . . four."

strum
strum
strum
strum

Foot:

tap

tap

tap

tap

Run through that five or six times in a row without stopping.

Make an honest effort to keep your speed the same all the way through.
Now run through the same exercise again, but this time lay the index
finger of your left (or "fretting hand" for lefties) across the fifth
fret. You might have to move your finger around a little bit to get all
six strings ringing clearly so take your time with this. I've found this
is easier if you position the ball of your thumb directly on the
centerline of the back of your guitar neck.
You don't need a death grip on the guitar. Just apply enough pressure to
get a clean note.
Bar across the fifth fret:
Count: "One . . . two . . . three . . . four."
strum
strum
strum
strum
Foot:
tap
tap
tap
tap
Open strings:
Count: "One . . . two . . . three . . . four."
strum
strum
strum
strum
Foot:
tap
tap
tap
tap
Bar across the fifth fret:
Count: "One . . . two . . . three . . . four."
strum
strum
strum
strum
Foot:
tap
tap
tap
tap
Open strings:
Count: "One . . . two . . . three . . . four."
strum
strum
strum
strum
Foot:
tap
tap
tap
tap
Run through this a few times and get things to the point where you can
make that barre chord (which is what you are making when
you lay your finger across the fifth fret) without slowing down the
tempo of the strum.
Once you can go back and forth from playing open strings to the fifth
fret at an even speed add in another chord by fretting across
the seventh fret.
Bar across the fifth fret:
Count: "One . . . two . . . three . . . four."
strum
strum
strum
strum
Foot:
tap
tap
tap
tap
Open strings:
Count: "One . . . two . . . three . . . four."
strum
strum
strum
strum
Foot:
tap
tap
tap
tap

Bar across the seventh fret:

Count: "One . . . two . . . three . . . four."
strum
strum
strum
strum
Foot:
tap
tap
tap
tap
Open strings:
Count: "One . . . two . . . three . . . four."
strum
strum
strum
strum
Foot:
tap
tap
tap
tap
Now let's play through this again- but now I am just going to give you
the count and the open or barre chords.
0 = open strings
5= bar the fifth fret
7= bar the seventh fret
0
7
1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4
0
7
0
1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4
What this is telling you to do is play two sets of four strums with the
open G chord, two sets of four strums with the barre chord at the
seventh fret and so on.
The "|" symbol is separating each set of four strums into measures. We
are going to get into measure and note values later on
in this workshop but for right now all you really need to know is that
we are playing four beats to each measure.
Run through that a few times. Keep the rhythm steady from measure to
measure. Sometimes beginners will make the mistake of resting for a
moment between measures and it plays holy hell with the rhythm of the
music. Think of the four count as a loop repeating itself over and over
again: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 34.
Believe it or not you've been playing the old folk songs Skip ToMy Lou.
Now try playing your strum and the chord changes while you sing.
Rather than write out the 1234 count I just used a "/" to lay out the
rhythm.
0
|
Lost my partner |
/
/
/
/
|
7
|
Lost my partner |
/
/
/
/
|
0
|
Lost my partner |
/
/
/
/
|
7
|

what'll I do?
/
/
/
/
what'll I do?
/
/
/
/
what'll I do?
/
/
/
/
0

Skip to my lou my | darling

/
/
/
/
| /
/
/

So it's two measures of the open chord, two measures barring across the
seventh fret, two measures of the open chord, one measure barring across
the seventh and one measure of the open chord.
Work on this for a while until you can strum and sing the tune without
too much trouble.
What's Going On?
The question running through your mind right now is probably something
along the lines of, "what the heck am I doing?" Well, you
have been playing a one-four-five chord progression as a series of
quarter note strums.
No, I'm not making this up. Let me explain starting with the chords.
When you made a barre chord on the fifth fret you were making a C chord
and at the seventh fret you were making a D chord. The way this works is
actually pretty simple.
In Western music (and when I say "Western" I don't mean cowboy music. It
refers to Western civilization there are twelve different notes. The
twelve notes are named after the letters A through G with a note or
half-step between each pair of letters except between B and C and E and
F:
A | B C | D | E F | G |
Your half step is either a sharp (#) or a flat (b.)
The half step between A and B can be called either A# or Bb.
A# means that the A note is raised one half step higher. Bb is the B
note lowered one half step. A# and Bb are the same note and the other
half steps follow the same pattern.
So with all twelve notes laid out you have the chromatic scale:
A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab
1
2
3 4
5
6
7
8 9 10
11 12
Once you understand the idea of half steps you can just write out your
chromatic scale like this to save space and make it a tad clearer.
The " | " symbol will be used to represent a half step.
A | B C | D | E F | G |
The frets on your guitar are laid out on half steps. When we tune a
guitar to open G the barre chords wind up following the steps of a
chromatic scale.
Fret: 0
G

1
|

2
A

3
|

4
B

5
C

6
|

7
D

8
|

9
E

10
F

11
|

12
G |

If your guitar is tunes to open G a barre chord at the first fret has to
be G#/Ab and a barre chord at the second fret has to be A. If you look
at how this is laid out your barre chord at the fifth fret is C and at
the seventh fret you get D. Since everything repeats itself after twelve
frets you can get another G chord by barring across the twelfth fret.
G-C-D is the I IV V chord progression for the key of G. To understand
that we have to take a quick look at how scales are constructed as well
as a little musicians trick called the Nashville number system.
Scales
A scale is nothing but a series of notes pulled out of the chromatic
scale. Beause we are working out of open G tuning for this workshop we
are going to build a G major scale.
To figure out the notes of the G scale we need to lay out the string of
notes starting with our root note. In this case the root
note is G:
G | A | B C | D | E F | G
Now if you notice we started on G and ended on G. That second G is
called the octave. It is the same note as the root but higher in
pitch. If we wrote this out to work the C scale it would look like this
with C as the root note:
C | D | E F | G | A | B C
What we have here is a chromatic scale starting on G and ending on G and
a second scale in C. In order to make the first one a G major scale we
need to pick seven notes out of the twelve notes in the chromatic scale.
In order to do that we just follow a simple formula: Root, whole step,
whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step
Here we go:
G
.
.
A
A
A
.

is the root. A whole step from G is A.

A whole step from A is B.
A half step from B is C
whole step from C is D
whole step from D is E
whole step from E is. . .F# or Gb. Well call it F#
A half step from F# is G which gives you the octave.

So your G scale is:

G A B C D E F# G
The Nashville Number System
Once you have your scale figured out number each note:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
G A B C D E F# G

The notes numbered 1, 4 and 5 (G, C and D) will be your major chords for
the key of G.
Go back and look at all the songs in the key of
you are already playing a couple of songs.) You
all of them use some combination of G, C and D.
have two of the chords but most of the time you

G that know (that is, if

will notice that almost
Some songs will only
will see all three.

The note numbered 6 is going to be your relative minor. In this case Em.
Every root chord has a relative minor chord. We'll go into this in more
detail later on, but every key has a unique number of sharps and flats.
The key of C has no sharps or flats and the key of G has one sharp (F#.)
The same rule applies to minor keys. Any minor key that has the same
number of sharps and flats as a major key is the relative minor of that
major key.
It is good to know your relative minor chords (the 6 chord in the number
system) because you can swap them around in some situations. If you are
playing a song and cannot remember how to make an Am chord you can just
play a C chord. It is different but it is close enough that you may get
away with it.
The note numbered 2 is going to be both a minor chord and a major chord.
In this case Am and A.
Number 3 is where it gets kind of neat because in folk music this is
often referred to as an "off chord." In the key of C your off chord is E
and you'll run into it in songs like Freight Train- if you play it in C.
Your 6 chord can be played as a major chord as well. But it is kind of
funky. You will really only use the major 6 once in a great while. In
some songs like "Little Maggie" you might run into what some players
call a mountain seven. That is when you flat the 7 chord. That is why
"Little Maggie" goes from G to F rather than G to F#. Some songs like
Cluck Old Hen do the same thing. The "weird modal tuned banjo thing" is
just that, a "weird modal banjo thing" that probably came about more by
accident (somebody is messing around with a banjo with an out of tune
second string and thinks, "Dude! That's kind of cool") than anything
else.
What's cool about all of this is that if you go to a jam session with a
Post-It note or something on your heel or the back of your headstock
with the number system laid out for a few keys you'll have an easier
time playing along with new songs because if the song is in C you can
run through the number system in your head:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
C D E F G A B C
and say to yourself, "Ok, in C my three most often used chords are C, F
and G." Right away you can start off in C with everybody else and figure
the next chord is probably going to be G or F.
So if we know that G is our open chord and D is the chord at the seventh
fret our version of Skip To My Lou could be written out like this:

G
|
Lost my partner |
/
/
/
/
|
D
|
Lost my partner |
/
/
/
/
|
G
|
Lost my partner |
/
/
/
/
|
D
|
Skip to my lou my |
/
/
/
/
|

what'll I do?
/
/
/
/
what'll I do?
/
/
/
/
what'll I do?
/
/
/
/
G
darling
/
/
/
/

Capos
One interesting thing about open tuning and bar chords is that you can
play in a new key by using a capo. A capo acts just like
your finger making a bar chord. You can pick them up in any music store.
If you capo on the second fret your open chord changes from G to A and
the chord at the fifth fret (it's actually the seventh, but we are now
counting the second fret as if it was the first fret) becomes D and your
chord at the seventh fret becomes . . . if you said "E" we're on the
right track.
Then again, you don't have to use a capo for that if play the starting
with a bar chord rather than the open G:
A (second fret)
Lost my partner
/
/
/
/
E (ninth fret)
Lost my partner
/
/
/
/
A (second fret)
Lost my partner
/
/
/
/
E (ninth fret)
Skip to my lou my
/
/
/
/

|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|

what'll I do?
/
/
/
/
what'll I do?
/
/
/
/
what'll I do?
/
/
/
/
A (second fret)
darling
/
/
/
/

What frets would you use to play this tune in C? Or D?

Changing the strum
The four strums to each measure pattern we have been playing is probably
getting a little boring by now. Let's take a look at how
the strum works and then we'll be able to mess around with it a little
bit.
I have been breaking up your strums into groups of four for a reason.
Each set of four strums is a measure in 4/4 time. When I say that a song
is in 4/4 time that four slash four or four over four is a time
signature. A time signature tells us how many beats are in each measure
and the type of note that gets the beat.

Notes can be divided in a lot of ways. A whole note in 4/4 time would be
one strum you hold for a count of four.
Strum
1

A half note is just that- half of a whole note. So you would hold a half
note for a count of two.
Strum
1

strum
3
4

A quarter note is, you guessed it, half of a half note. This is what
you've been playing up to this point.
Strum
1

strum
2

strum
3

strum
4

An eighth note is half of a quarter note and a sixteenth note is half of

an eighth note.
The cool thing about all of this is that you can use any combination of
note in a measure ass long as the beats add up to the time signature. In
other words in 4/4 time you could play four quarter notes, a half note
and two quarter notes, three quarter notes and two eighth notes or any
other combination as long as the values of the measure adds up the same
as four quarter notes.
For right now strumming four times in each measure is a good way to go
simply because it will force you to get used to the rhythm. As you get
more confident there are other picking patterns you can mess around
with.
Let's take a quick look at two other picking patterns- but first we have
to talk about reading tab
Reading Tab
Tab is just a way to illustrate fingerings on a fretted instrument. You
have six lines. Each line represents a string on your guitar. The sixth
string is at the bottom and the first string is on top. When any string
has a zero you play that string open. The numbers on a string tells you
what fret to play. So in this example you would play your sixth string
at the sixth fret, your fifth string at the fifth fret, your fourth
string at the fourth fret, your third string at the third fret and so
on.
|------------------1-|
|---------------2----|
|------------3-------|
|---------4----------|
|------5-------------|
|---6----------------|
A chord diagram is just a picture of the fingerboard. The "x" over some
strings tells you not to play that string and the "o" means to play that
string open. In the D chord above you don't play the sixth string. The

fifth and the fourth strings are played open. In plain text I usually
just write out all strings of the guitar with "0" for open strings,
numbers for fretted strings and an "x" for string that are not played.
Here are the three chords you have been using in open G tuning:
D
7-7-7-7-7-7

C
5-5-5-5-5-5

G
0-0-0-0-0-0

New Picking Patterns The easiest way to start is to let your thumb roll
off the sixth string on "one" and strum from the fifth string down on
"two":
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|--0-------0--------|--0-------0----------|
1 2
3 4
1 2
3 4
We are still playing quarter notes, but by playing the one and three as
bass notes we make things more interesting. If you practice that for a
while you can get an alternating bass by playing a different bass note
for the one and the three:
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0----0--0-----|-----0----0--0-------|
|--0----------------|--0------------------|
1 2
3 4
1 2
3 4
Or:
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|-----0-------0-----|-----0-------0-------|
|--0--0-------0-----|--0--0-------0-------|
|----------0--------|----------0----------|
1 2
3 4
1 2
3 4
Once you get this down with your thumb try messing around with a
flatpick.
Try playing The Wabash Cannonball on your own. Strart with the simple
four strums to measure pattern and change the pattern as you get used to
the feel of the song.
I have broken the first verse into measures with a rough count. You will
have to listen to the song a few times (look around for a recordingit's been recorded about a million times or more) to get the phrasing of
the lyrics right.
In the first like {from the} is only a partial measure to "kick off" the
tune. Your best bet is to sing "from the" and then start strumming.

Take your time with this and have fun with it.
"The Wabash Cannonball"
4/4 Time Key of G
G
{From the} | great Atlantic | Ocean
to |
1
2
1
2
3
4
1 2 3 4
C
the wide Pacific | Shore from the |
1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4
D
Queen of flowing | mountains to |
1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4
G
the South Belle by the | door
she's
1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4
G
long and tall and | handsome
well
1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4
C
known by one and | all
she's a
1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4
D
modern combin- |- ation
called
1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4
G
the Wabash Cannon- | -ball
1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4
Chorus:
G
Listen to the jingle
C
The rumble and the roar
D
riding through the woodlands
G
to the hill and by the shore.
G
Hear the might rush of engines
C
hear the lonesome hobo squall
D
riding though the jungles on
G
the Wabash Cannonball
The Eastern states are dandies so the Western people say
from New York to St. Louis and Chicago by the way
through the hills of Minnesota where the rippling waters fall
no chances need be taken on the Wabash Cannonball
Here's to Daddy Claxton may his name forever stand
he will always be remembered by the 'boes throughout our land
his earthly race is over and the curtain 'round him falls
we'll carry him to victory on the Wabash Cannonball

Give that some time. We have covered a lot of information pretty quickly
here. In the next workshop we will go over some new chord forms for open
G tuning, and take a look at other alternate tunings.
-Patrick Costello
3/21/04