Tune up

Experienced fingerstyle guitarists often convey an amazing sense of fluidity. Their fingers seem to effortlessly find the correct strings, and they never give the impression that they spend any time thinking about their next move. Most beginning fingerpickers quickly realize that, since they have fewer fingers than the guitar has strings, they'll have to come up with some method of easily determining which fingers to use where. Many methods and teachers advocate an approach that assigns each of the fingers to a treble string and lets the thumb take care of the bass strings. Typically, this means that the ring finger plays the first (high E) string, the middle finger plays the second (B) string, and the index finger plays the third (G) string. Depending on the chord and the progression, the thumb handles notes on the fourth (D), fifth (A), or sixth (low E) strings.

Assigning fingers to strings is a good idea when you're starting out, as it allows you to focus on important things like fretting, rhythm, and tone production. And there are countless examples of music in many genres that don't ever require you to stray from these comfortable finger assignments. As an illustration of this basic approach, look at Example 1 below. In this simple chord progression, the fingers continuously strike the same strings, while the thumb plucks the root of each chord.

Example 1

Getting this basic pattern under your fingers is essential, but it won’t be long before its limitations become apparent. For example, if you want to play specific notes in nonbarre chords up the neck, you may need to pick the strings in combinations that don’t conform to the basic finger assignment. For example, to play the Am7 and D7 chords below, which are commonly used in many styles of jazz comping, you’ll need to move your fingers down to the second, third, and fourth strings.

Simply move all three fingers over, so that your index finger strikes the fourth string, your middle finger strikes the third string, and your ring finger strikes the second string.
This same finger position can be applied to the basic pattern used in Example 1, but try using an F# on the sixth string (fret it with your thumb) as the bass note of the D chord, since your index finger is now playing the D string.

Example 2