Celtic Etude for Fretting with Your Thumb – Mini Lesson: 004

Helpful Tips

Learn to fret notes with your thumb in this Celtic inspired fingerpicking etude. 99% of the time, you can get away with using your index, middle, ring, or pinky finger to fret notes. But sometimes, you may encounter a musical phrase where traditional fingering fails at being the most efficient method to use. And that situation is exactly what you’ll encounter in this etude.

This lesson begins by teaching you proper left-hand form for fretting with the thumb. After that, we’ll dive into the A Melody. This melody is written in the Dorian mode and uses eighth note triplets to drive the rhythm. In Melody B, we’ll slow down the barrage of notes by switching to swung eighths.

P.S. Click HERE to learn another song that uses your thumb to play notes!

Part 1 – Performance & Free Lesson

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