Alternating Thumb Style
The most common fingerpicking style is the alternating thumb style. What is distinct about the alternating thumb style is that the thumb alternates between two bass notes within a chord on every beat of the bar. The pattern generally begins with the thumb playing the root bass note. On the next beat the thumb will play an alternative bass note from within the chord. On the next beat the thumb plays the root bass note again before moving to the alternative bass note for the final beat of the bar. These two bass notes are repeated over and over again for the duration of the chord. The important thing to remember with this type of picking is that a bass note occurs on every beat of the bar. This helps to give a solid beat to the picking sound.
Exercise 7 highlights the type of bass line that occurs when applying an alternating thumb style to a basic G chord. The root bass note appears on the first and third beat and the alternative bass note, in this case the fourth string bass note is played on beats two and four.
Boot Bass Notes
It will be necessary to know which of the three bass strings within each basic chord contains the key note. First ensure you know all the notes on the bass strings in the first four frets of the guitar. Study the following diagram.
Some common basic chords are shown here. The root bass note within each chord is highlighted with a box. It is important to note that the root bass note will be same for all types of chords. For example A major, A minor, A seventh, A ninth etc share the same root note (A).
A
C
D
E
F
G
The other chords in the key of G, C and D are introduced in the following example. The standard alternating bass line for the C chord alternates between the fifth and fourth strings. The standard alternating bass line for the D chord alternates between the fourth and third strings. To play example 8 the left hand changes between the chord shapes in the normal fashion as the right hand thumb picks the selected bass notes.
