How to make progress in fingerpick

I seems to be having trouble with fingerpicking. The position of the fingers has to be positioned accurately to pluck the strings.

Should I just start with basic plucking instead of trying to play fingerstyle?

Strumming to sing along with a song is just so much relatively simple compared to fingerstyle

Depends how much you want to do it.
(I only fingerpicking. I will only sing under very certain circumstances.)

It takes, well......practice. Find some tutorials. Check out what Aldrine might have. Maybe start with arpeggios until you like what your fingers are doing. It'll come.

What do you mean by 'fingerpicking'? Do you mean playing patterns, like banjo, on the strings whilst singing? Or do you mean playing fingerstyle arrangements of songs in a solo style?

Christon Abike said:

What do you mean by 'fingerpicking'? Do you mean playing patterns, like banjo, on the strings whilst singing? Or do you mean playing fingerstyle arrangements of songs in a solo style?

Click to expand...

Fingerstyle arrangement for solo performance

Aaron has a couple good tutorals on HMS's Ukulele Review site http://www.theukulelereview.com/styles-technique/

Hopefully this will help

Practice, practice, practice. It becomes automatic after a few years. The main challenge is developing a steady thumb rhythm. Then get your one or two or three fingers to work in coordinated patterns. Yes, you must learn to position your hand -- I usually rest my palm just behind the bridge, or anchor my picking-hand pinky near the soundhole.

I made a start by trying out Samantha Muir's Little Book of Right Hand Technique, here: http://www.samanthamuir.com/ukulele-2/free-the-art-of-arpeggios.html This was great for me as a total beginner because it focused exclusively on the right hand.

After gaining confidence with this, I started playing pieces from Rob McKillop's 20 Easy Fingerstyle Studies. I found that Sam Muir's book had prepped me well for it, and I'm enjoying working on Rob's Fingerstyles book a lot.
Hope that helps!

When it came to learning for solo performance I basically got the tabs for what I wanted to play and then persevered for months whilst listening to the originals. As with anything, it is awkward to start with but you get there in the end. You'll then find that little bits of one arrangement help in others and the more you build your repertoire the easier it gets right up to the point that your fingers play strings in different patterns that you never consciously learnt.

There is value in learning some patterns, but it's such an open ended subject that you may get bogged down turning to learn certain ones that you subsequently find aren't too handy or find it difficult to break out of.

If you find a passage in an arrangement that has a certain pattern you may pick it out and practice that in isolation until it becomes second nature.

2 other things that I've recently started doing are finger exercises on my fretting hand to build individual finger articulation and independence, concentrating on getting good, accurate clean notes. Along with this I've started moving my thumb to the back of the neck as opposed to hanging over the top. This does make a difference, but I'm not rigid with it, I still use my thumb over the top to fret the 4th string.

As with all things, play what you enjoy and try to play things that are beyond your self acknowledged capabilities. If it's fun (and challenging), you'll learn.