What we’ll be covering in this Series

This Series is a comprehensive dive into the wonderful world of fingerstyle guitar. Fingerstyle offers so many options when playing songs by yourself, accompanying someone else, performing a solo fingerstyle piece or playing in a group/band.

So far we have five Levels, each Level comprising three sessions i.e. fifteen sessions in total for the complete Series.

The sessions cover a syllabus of subjects, exploring core techniques, styles, exercises and pieces that you can build into your practice and repertoire.

The materials for each session can include: prep sheet, comprehensive lesson PDF, any relevant MP3s and access to a video recording of the complete live sessions.

COURSES ALREADY RUN BUT MATERIALS AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE

LEVEL 1  THE BASICS

Session 1 – Fundamentals and fingerpicking open chords  (completed) 

1. Posture, hand techniques, finger assignment 1234, pima)
2. Arpeggiating basic chords and how to change between them cleanly and smoothly
3. Song: Here, there and everywhere (Part 1 Rhythm)
4. Daily practice exercise(s): old masters and bespoke

Session 2 – Playing a melody and taking away the guess work (completed) 

1. Free stroke, rest stroke and alternating the picking fingers along with legato techniques
2. Playing through essential scale patterns and learning how to transpose
3. For the fretting hand: minimal movement, focus on finger choices and placement, thinking ahead
4. Daily practical exercise(s): chromatic scale, major scale in a closed position. We will adapt the scales so that you play them in a variety of ways, groups of 3rds, rhythmic variety, etc.
5. Song: Here There And Everywhere (part 2 Melody)

Session 3 – Putting it all together: keeping it simple and cool (completed) 

1. Basic thumb independence with ima variations. A daily exercise to get the fingers working
2. Melody arpeggio piece: Spanish Romance (section A – simple barres)
3. Adding the melody into your chord arpeggios to create a solo instrumental version of Here There And Everywhere (part 3 )
4. Home practice song. What can you do with three chords: A BORDERS WALTZ – A.J Moore. Celtic Folk (beginner to low intermediate. MP3 of A Borders Waltz provided)

LEVEL 2 – CLASSIC FINGERPICKING STYLES

Session 4 – Travis Picking (completed) 

1. We will be looking at
   1. Thumb independence revisited – Travis picking. We will look at the standard 1, 4, 5 walking bass pattern developed Merle Travis that became known as Travis picking. Travis adapted this style, which he sometimes called “thumb picking,” to achieve a sound that mimicked a stride piano with a steady alternating bass and syncopated melody.
   2. Daily practice exercise(s): five patterns which include, block triads and individual notes, alternating fingers and a basic chord sequence
   3. Songs: We will look at three songs, Amazing Grace so that we can try a chord sequence in 3/4, Freight Train so that we can do melody and chords combined, and The Boxer, so that we cover an accompaniment chord sequence with pass notes.

Session 5 – Acoustic Blues (completed) 

1. We will have a quick revision of a 12 bar form, the most useful barre chord shapes, dominant chords and caged triad shapes. This knowledge will allow you to take what we practice in the session and transpose the exercises into multiple key signatures. A home practice grid for the different keys will be supplied after the event.
2. Daily practice exercise(s) to include the following – a) The shuffle rhythm using the thumb and palm muting. B) Partial chord shapes and CAGED triads to create the harmony as well as pick out the melody C) The walking bass line D) Intro, turn around and outro lick ideas
3.  Piece: We’ve created a bespoke instrumental piece, based on some of the ideas in Eric Clapton’s acoustic version of Before you accuse me that combines all the above exercises.

Session 6 – Putting it all together: getting Groovy (completed) 

1. Fitting with the drummer – We’ll look at how you should adapt your playing to lock in with your drummer and play some groovy parts. Chords can stay simple, but how you approach it is what matters.
2. Percussive elements added – we will start adding thumb slaps/hits to add a percussive feel to your playing.
3. Building your parts to add in little licks so that the picking hand is doing two or three things at once. This helps to create variety between sections in your arrangements.
4. Double stop scale exercises in 3rds and 6th’s using two iconic songs as practice.
5. Mix in slides and palm muting.
6. Play some iconic acoustic song examples that highlight the above techniques

LEVEL 3 – BECOMING THE PRO!

Session 7 – A focus on Bossa Nova and Samba fingerstyles (completed) 

In this session we explore the fundamentals of two of the most loved grooves in guitar playing, the Bossa Nova and the Samba. Originating from South America, Bossa Nova is a calmer, more modern subgenera of the classic Samba. Samba is a lively, percussion heavy Brazilian music style with roots in Afro-Brazilian traditions, often associated with energetic dancing and Carnival celebrations. Bossa Nova emerged in the late 1950’s and was prevalent throughout the cafe scene blending in samba rhythms with Jazz harmonies, emphasising a smoother, softer sound with instruments like the acoustic guitar, piano and double bass.

For those of you who have done classical guitar or even studied basic Jazz, you will likely have come across these styles. For those who have not, this will be an enlightening evening where we can delve into some great rhythmic and chordal exercises and then put them into practice using some well known songs.

LESSON MATERIALS

Two pages of exercises showing a variety of Bossa and Samba patterns that you can weave into your own playing. The third page shows you how to create your own piece from these patterns by weaving in a melody.

Please be confident with your barre chords especially Dm7, Em7b5 and A7(b13). 

BOSSA NOVA SONGS

1. Girl from Ipanema – Carlos Jobim – We will focus on the chordal accompaniment.
2. Blue Bossa – We will focus on playing the melody and then adding the chords to create a solo instrumental version. It’s important to understand how to piece your arrangements together so we will discuss the fact that the melody notes often sit within the chord shape. It’s all about keeping the Bossa feel while pulling out the melody notes with the picking fingers. 

Session 8 – How to accompany a singer/solo guitarist (completed) 

Out of all instruments it is probably the piano and guitar that most often accompany a solo singer. And out of those instruments it is the guitar that comes up top trump in terms of its complete flexibility of being used in any location.

The best accompanists know exactly how to showcase the singer. We do this by arranging our parts to weave around the singer, to add dynamic and harmonic variety, or to piece together all the integral parts of the original track into a duo situation. In this scenario it is often important for the guitarist to be holding down not only the chordal groove but also adding in the bass guitar melody and even having solo sections where the vocalist gets a break.

We will focus on three songs in this session

1. BILLIE JEAN – This song is nothing without the famous bass guitar line and the stab chord voicing. Without both it simply doesn’t work. You can play it finger style or with a plectrum. We will show you how to piece it together.
2. MY BABY JUST CARES FOR ME – This song has to contain one of the most famous walking bass lines of all time. But like Billie Jean, we also need the chord voicings or our song won’t work. So it’s our job as the accompanist to build our parts around this. You’ll need to think carefully about how you voice the chord so that it moves with the walking bass.
3. SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW – Sometimes your job is to simply create something beautiful. In this piece we will look at how I arranged the chordal accompaniment to weave around the vocal of soprano Laura Wright. I use arpeggiated patterns and the whole length of the neck to create variety and thickness to the sound. The choice of notes adds interplay between the vocal melody and ourselves, sometimes using call and answer, sometimes creating a secondary vocal harmony.Doing too much can often not allow the vocal space, doing too little can feel empty. It’s really important to use your ears and listen.

Session 9 – Putting it all together: becoming the solo player (completed) 

We’ve covered many solo arrangements over the years, this time we are doing a high intermediate arrangement of Summertime.

Summertime is an aria composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess.

The song soon became a popular and much-recorded jazz standard, described as “without doubt … one of the finest songs the composer ever wrote … Gershwin’s highly evocative writing brilliantly mixes elements of jazz and the song styles of Black people in the southeast United States from the early twentieth century”.

We will be giving our own bespoke arrangement for solo guitar that interweaves the melody of the vocalist into the arpeggiating guitar. We’ve kept it traditional, utilising the original orchestration chord voicings. The whole neck is utilised to give dynamic variation.

This is definitely one to practice and bring out as a show piece in your sets. If it was a grade piece it would be a high level grade 5 classical guitar arrangement.

COURSES CURRENTLY RUNNING OR YET TO RUN

LEVEL 4 – ADDING THE GROOVE

Session 10 – Ragtime fundamentals (February 4th 2026) – more info

Ragtime finds its origins in the the 1890’s to 1910’s American music bars and halls. A lively, syncopated musical style known for its “ragged” rhythms where the melody plays off the beat against a steady left-hand accompaniment, Ragtime was mainly popularised via piano players. Originating in African-American communities and famously featuring composers like Scott Joplin. It’s characterized by its catchy, march-like feel, blending European traditions with African rhythms, and served as a vital precursor to jazz, though it was typically written down rather than improvised. 

While starting on piano, guitarists begin to bring those elements onto their own instrument, using techniques similar to travis picking (covered in session 4). Players such as Blind Blake, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, and William (Bill) Moore, alongside modern players like John Pizzarelli, blended the traditional piano ragtime music with blues and early jazz to capture a unique ragged rhythm sound and complex bass lines. 

In this session we’ll explore the core techniques you’ll need to master for the style as well as useful knowledge to help apply them before finishing with a full piece and some fun flat picking licks.

Session 11 – Levelling Up Your Fingerstyle Blues – (February 18th 2026) – more info

One of the favourite sessions from level 2 was the acoustic blues. Many of you requested having more solo blues pieces to play. So we’ve taken your request and put together a new evening. This time we will be working in the key of G Major and the whole lesson will gradually develop a simple sequence of chords from first position open chords to barre chords in three positions across the neck. Within these chord sequences will be added little musical embellishments that will show you in one session how to take your playing from basic to kick ass. The first part of the lesson will be doable for all high beginner upwards players. By the end it could be tricky for some, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a go. The beauty of these sessions is that you will have a recording from the lesson that you can then watch back and practice at any point in the future.

Here is how the lesson will be built.

1. 1st position open chords using G, G7, C, Cadd9, D, D7 and Ebmaj7. A basic finger style pattern showing you how to get the blues feel and also how to accurately assign picking fingers for the perfect flow. This is another opportunity to nail home the point that we don’t need a full chord shape when doing finger style guitar
2. Here we add in passing chords and decending/rising melodies into the sequence. These are all taken from the diatonic scales and chords. This type of development can move you away from your static shapes while also working nicely under a vocalist.

3. Adding in barre chords and mixing strumming and finger picking. Moving away from open chords gives your playing a totally different vibe both in timbre and note choices. When playing the stacatto stabs on the 2nd dotted crotchet beat of the bar we bring in a percussive feel as we emulate the drummers snare drum.

4. Now we can add licks in between chords. Often this is done on beats 3 and 4 so that the chord harmony is established first. We will explain how your lick should work over the top of the current chord while leading into the next. We will also show you how fretting hand fingering choices for those scale runs will also help your movement into the new chord. This section is done with open chords and caged triads and should therefore be doable to most low intermediate players.

5. We will finish with a high intermediate example of point 4

As an extra take away sheet you’ll be supplied with a 2 page scales and licks sheet. You can use this information and the knowledge gained in the lesson to create your own.

SESSION 12 – GROOVE MASTERY – (Mar 4th 2026) – more info

Session 6 turned out to be probably the most loved session from levels 1-2 with many of you highlighting it as a favourite. So we’ll be looking at this further giving you a suite of chord sequences that you can play in multiple keys (yes, we’ll provide a sheet with all the keys and chords for you to reference) and showing you how to build from something simple to something simply darn right cool. If you have an electric guitar, then this is the course to get it out on.

This is how we’d build our parts. Each step adds onto the previous

1. Basic pattern
2. Adding syncopation
3. Mixing chords and licks
4. Adding in the percussive hits and fret muting
5. Developing your harmony and chord voicings
6. Adding in passing notes
7. Creating break down sections
8. Transposing the above into multiple keys (we will use 3 keys) and showing you how you can do this on the spot live in ANY key.

LEVEL 5 – NEXT LEVEL PLAYING

Session 13 – Classical Classics – (April 1st 2026) – more info

One of the most important techniques classical guitar can give you is the ability to really master a flowing arpeggiating picking hand. You can create fantastic rolling sequences that are full of beautiful harmony, lilting melodies captured within the chords themselves and emotion that feels almost film like. Whenever I am asked to write something that encapsulates emotion and can be used in a film or for a soaring classical vocalist, this is the technique I come to.

We will be focusing on one of the world’s most famous versions of AVE MARIA, the Charles Gounod and Johann Sebastian Bach composition. The chords move through a delightful sequence soak in tension and resolve. The use of diatonic chords mixed with passing diminished chords and 7ths leads to something truly spectacular. I’ve performed this version so many times across the past 3 decades and it always brings a quiet to the concert hall. As a take away you’ll also get the lead melody for a second guitarist. This will allow you to record the arpeggio sequence and then try laying the melody over the top.

If there is time we will also look at the first page of one of my own compositions ‘Hints of Autumn’. The piece shows you how you can write your own sequences which contain the melody within the chords.

Session 14 – Playing a beautiful melody using fingerstyle technique – (April 15th 2026) – more info

Nothing beats playing a stunning but fun melody over the top of a band, duo accompanist or backing track. But to play it well you need to have a good control of your picking techniques, dynamics and fretting hand vibrato. We will utilise both apoyando which stands for rest stroke and tirando which stand for free stroke techniques.

The melody we will be learning is one of the most recognised and loved from the Bossa nova and jazz communities, WAVE by Antonia Carlos Jobim. We’ll be providing you with a bespoke backing track so you’ll be able to play along properly once you’ve mastered the melody. I’ve added a cool extra solo section in the middle which will walk you through.

The great news is that the main melody is not overly complicated and is really made up of only 3 parts

1. The intro/out
2. Section A
3. Section B

Session 15 – Drop D tuning – (April 29th 2026) – more info

Sometimes you just need that low end to be a little bit lower. In this session we will be doing exactly that, lowering the low E string down a whole tone to D. Using drop D tuning is one of my absolute favourite things to do. Yes it changes the way you can play your chords, you have to rethink where your bass notes are, but it also lets you move around the guitar neck in a different way and lets you use caged train shapes over the top of three open bass strings. We’ll delve into a selection of famous songs including

1. Sea Breeze – A.J Moore – A little piece by me that is great for those of you that are less advanced but want to develop your knowledge of the fretboard.
2. People Get Ready – Curtis Mayfield
3. The Chain – Fleetwood Mac
4. Bachs Cello Suite Number 1 BWV 1007

Each piece highlights differing techniques and styles and therefore there will be something for almost all fingerstyle lovers.

Each course is nominally 1 hour long (usually they overrun!).  So the Complete Series means 15+ hours of interactive tuition, lesson PDFs, and relevant MP3 backing tracks and access to the 15+ hours of video recordings.

Who’s this session suitable for?

Each level requires different levels of ability. Level 1 is more for high beginner players, level 2 for intermediate players, levels 3 – 5 for mid to high intermediate. However, everyone can gain something from every level and the exercises and song examples all provide a fantastic framework to work to.

The Series is ideal for players who want to:

• start fingerpicking
• correct/tweak existing fingerpicking skills
• take fingerpicking to totally new levels

As a guide here are the basics:

You should be familiar with:

• Fretboard knowledge – basics (E and A strings but all strings should be the target)
• Reading TAB Yes (including basic rhythm)
• Chords – Open (and ideally basic barres)
• Ability to change between chords
• You will need some scale and melody experience for higher levels

Things you won’t need to know (but you should definitely not ignore them):

• Theory – although it’s so useful to understand the essentials as it makes learning things much faster and better when playing with others
• Reading music – this is something to strive for as a long-term project
• Scales – if you read TAB then learning the scales will naturally come as part of doing the exercises. (It would be great if you know: chromatic, major and at least one pentatonic pattern)

Materials

Each session has its own set of materials:

• Lesson PDF
• Any relevant MP3s used in a session
• Access to a video recording of the complete live sessions

So even if you can’t make a particular session you’ll have more than enough for home practice.

Buying a place

For sessions that have already been run, you will be sent the relevant video lesson link and the session PDF after you make the purchase.

For sessions that are yet to run, you will receive the Lesson PDF prior to the live zoom lesson. The video link will be sent out after the session has completed.

There are five buying options:

• Level 1 Sessions 1, 2 & 3  (£45)
• Level 2 Sessions 4, 5 & 6 (£45)
• Level 3 Sessions 7, 8 & 9 (£45)
• Level 4 Sessions 10, 11 & 12 (£45)
• Level 5 Sessions 11, 12 & 13 (£45)
• The complete series so far – Levels 1 – 5 (£225)