I wanted to write something about my personal experiences with guitar fingerpicking. Most of what I read about it or see in videos on the Internet shows people playing arpeggios. (Arpeggios are when notes are played in a progression - one note after another.) The type of finger picking (also called fingerstyle) I first learned was not the arpeggio style, it was a method of plucking the strings with a definite, repeated pattern. The first finger picking song I learned was Railroad Bill. And the second was Freight Train (both of which sound very similar).

I never knew who wrote these songs, so I did some research on them today. I am so impressed that both were written by women - and both women were African Americans born in North Carolina. I thought they were categorized as folk songs, but they may be included in the blues genre, too.

For those who have never heard this song, here are a few lines of Railroad Bill:

Railroad Bill, Railroad Bill,

He never worked and he never will

I'm gonna ride old Railroad Bill.

The author, Etta Baker, can be heard playing her song along with the musician Taj Mahal in audio files online.

That song was good, but found I liked Freight Train even better. In looking up the song Freight Train I found out about the woman who wrote the song. Her name was Elizabeth Cotten and she wrote the song when she was 11 years old. This kind of blew me away, since I have played that song forever and never knew about her! She taught herself to play the guitar - it's quite amazing to see her play because she holds the guitar upside down. You can watch her play her song (in the last part of the Youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm5-WdB_aVE) and her version is really beautiful. People have even given a name to her style of fingerpicking - Cotten picking.

Here are a few lines of Freight Train lyrics:

Freight train, freight train,

Run so fast

Freight train, freight train,

Run so fast

Please don't tell what train I'm on

They won't know what route I've gone

So, Elizabeth Cotten's style of fingerpicking has a sort of syncopation to it. If you notice, it really isn't like an arpeggio. I learned to play her song with a pattern that I will call Pinch-4-2-5-1-4.  What that means is to play this fingerstyle pattern, you pinch one of the bass strings and one of the top 3 strings at the same time, then you play the other strings in this order - the 4th, 2nd, 5th 1st and the 4th again. I have used this same fingerpicking pattern on many other songs - and I improvise or change it as necessary. It will work for blues and folk songs. It also works on a banjo (but you have to modify it a bit to fit the fact that a banjo has less strings.) Try it out and see if you can get that picking pattern to work for you.

I am so impressed by both of these pioneers of American blues music that I wanted to write this article as a tribute to them. I'm grateful for their influence on my guitar playing and on my enjoyment of folk and blues music.