I have been using my right hand fingers to pick the strings almost from the start of my guitar playing. I first got the idea from watching John Denver and the banjo player in the first group I played in as a young teenager.

Using the right hand fingers to pick the strings can add a whole new dimension to your guitar playing and sound. This can add a wide variety of melody and chordal opportunities, making arrangements sound much fuller.

Rather than just strumming the strings with a pick, using the thumb and first 3 fingers of the right hand to play the strings allows many different patterns to be achieved that would be impossble with just a pick.

The standard abreviations used for the right hand fingers are as follows.

P= thumb, I= index finger, M= middle finger, A= ring finger. These are taken from latin or spanish abreviations.

Although many great fingerstyle players may use non standard techniques, I recommend using a classical guitar approach to right hand picking. This approach has been taught and refined for centuries it should be learned first and if you wish to learn other approaches afterwards, these can then be experimented with.

Play each measure slowly as a seperate exersize with the metronome until you can play them without mistakes.

The following exercises can be played with any chord and are given in PDF format as well as guitar pro.