About
Master fingerstyle guitar with learnfingerpicking.com
PATRICK O'MALLEY GUITAR TEACHER
ABOUT PATRICK O'MALLEY
My name is Patrick O’Malley and I have been a fingerstyle guitarist and teacher for over 20 years. I started off teaching guitarists in person when I lived in Dublin, Ireland. I realised that my fingerpicking students learned faster, developed more creatively and generally stuck with it more than other students. This was particularly true for beginners.
This inspired me to create a course called From Zero to Guitar Fingerpicking in 30 days. This course is a huge success with over 50k students. The course had a 4.7 rating (out of 5) – the course worked and students were learning effectively. Many of them had tried to learn guitar several times and failed – but no more
Resources
This website share loads of learning resources for free to help aspiring fingerpickers. In particular, the learnfingerpicking.com website will:
- share best advice for practising
- offer lessons and exercises for beginners
- offer lessons and exercises for intermediate guitar players (like travis picking)
- explain music theory to guitarists (music theory for dummies if you will)
BUT WHY FINGERPICKING?
IDEAL FOR BEGINNERS
I have taught dozens of students to go from never having picked up a guitar before to being really accomplished players.
Over the years, I have experimented and realised that there is a way to teach students that seems like starting with what many would believe to be a ‘complex’ or ‘advanced’ style – fingerpicking using the thumb and three fingers – is actually the best way for a complete beginner to learn.
- Learning to strum chords takes a huge amount of practice to create a nice sound
- It’s hard to sound good strumming chords after just a few days/weeks
- With fingerpicking, you hit each note individually and you can sound great after a few days
- Students can play really nice pieces after a few days when fingerpicking
- Because of this, students tend to STICK WITH IT – the real key!
- I have seen this work, time and again with now 50k+ students
MY APPROACH
I have a few principles which help students learn effectively
- ask students to commit 15 minutes per day
- deliver a lesson in 5-10 minutes which leaves the same time to practice
- structure lessons so that each little bit builds on the previous
- build-in ways to help students who get stuck
- deliver quick wins so that a student can be creative even with one chord
WHY LEARNFINGERPICKING.COM?
Playing open strings
The cost of choosing the wrong teacher isn’t that you lose out on $50-100, it is that the teaching may not stick for you and you may end up with a life where you never learn guitar, rather a life where picking up the guitar is a huge joy and pleasure for you, whether just on your own or playing with other musicians.
For a complete beginner, there is no more effective and no more enjoyable, musical and confidence building way than to start with a couple of chords and a fingerpicking technique. For intermediate and advanced players, there is no better way to learn rhythms, polyrhythms, voicing, composition and melody than to play in a modern acoustic fingerpicking style.
I promise that if you spend 15 minutes a day doing any of my structured courses, you’ll notice a huge improvement.
Get the Learn Fingerpicking Book
Register for the newsletter and I will send you this book (105 pages) and a free lesson once a month.
This is the ideal resource for complete beginners who wish to learn guitar.
