When you think you have a little independence going on, try to put a little attack, pumping the chord in an up tempo like this: PDF | Audio $A.0.$G.2.$B.1.$e.0 $D 2 $G.2.$B.1.$e.0 $E 0 $D 2 | $A.0.$G.2.$B.1.$e.0 $D 2 $G.2.$B.1.$e.0 $E 0 $D 2 | repeat.
This can also take a while, until your thumb learns to do what you want it to do. You do that by pumping the A minor chord on the remaining strings (the 3 high strings) in the 1st beat, while keeping that "boom-chick" with your thumb. Now that your thumb is alternating fine, you want to bring the other fingers to the dance. Remember, you're training only your thumb for now! You may find helpful resting the other fingers on the body of the guitar, to make sure you won't use them while you get your thumb groovying. So, for the first exercise ( PDF and Audio available), you'll just fret a plain old A minor: AmĪnd play with your thumb: $A 0 $D 2 $E 0 $D 2 | $A 0 $D 2 $E 0 $D 2 | repeat. This may take a while to get it working well, but don't worry to get it perfect, with time and practice you get better at it. So your first exercise is, with the open A minor chord, get your thumb alternating between the 5th-4th-6th-4th strings, while palm-muting the same strings. I'll try to write a condensed version here: Exercising the thumbįirst thing to do is exercise your thumb a little bit, to get that "boom-chick" sound.
There is a video of Tommy Emmanuel on Youtube explaining how to do this, and it's actually what got me started.īack ago, I wrote some sort of thumbpicking tutorial, in Portuguese (with examples in a SoundCloud set), which tells you to do more or less the same things that Tommy says in that video. The first thing you want to work is the independence between your thumb and fingers. In particular, Mark Hanson has an excellent reputation for putting out solid books on fingerstyle guitar. The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking by Mark HansonĪll of those books are in my 'learning queue', and have come highly recommended.Beyond Basics Fingerstyle Guitar by Mark Hanson.The Acoustic Guitar Fingerstyle Method Book by David Hamburger.In that case, you might try one of these book/CD combos: While it's an excellent book, it is likely too bluesy to catch your interest (based only on the information in your question). With that said, the only fingerstyle book I can recommend from personal experience is Beginning Fingerstyle Blues by Arnie Berle and Mark Galbo. There are a few skills you need (in my opinion) to become a good fingerstyle guitarist, and if you master them you'll be able to mimic Sungha Jung or develop your own style: I don't know of anything that will target Sungha Jung's style specifically, but I don't see that as a problem.