My dad used to drive to the corner drugstore near our house on Sunday mornings to pick up the New York Times. Unlike the Boston Globe, the Times notoriously did not – and does not – have a funnies section. For a devout Peanuts fan like myself, this was pretty disastrous.

But sometime around junior high, my sister and I discovered Russell Baker's column in the New York Times Magazine, the closest thing to humor to be salvaged from the adult-oriented gloom of the Paper Of Record.

I've always remembered one column in particular, the time Baker wrote about how unfair it was to be a columnist rather than a hit songwriter. "If I were Hoagie Carmichael," he wrote, "instead of writing a completely new piece for today, I could just write, 'And now, I'd like to do my classic column of July 17th, 1968,' and everyone would give me a standing ovation."

Or words to that effect.

I do try and write each and every one of these newsletters from scratch, but this week I've gotten several of the same questions about the Fingerstyle Five membership that I got back in the fall. So here, without further ado, it a lightly edited reprise of my hit FAQ of September 26th, 2024.

FAQ: "How accomplished do you need to be to work on this material?"

The material in the membership is designed to work at whatever level you're at when you show up. A more advanced student could conceivably be playing through and improvising on a full-blown arrangement of the quarterly song by the end of three months.

But a relative beginner could spend those same three months focusing on mastering "just" the basic, "Fundamental" version of same tune and consider that time very well spent indeed.

Ultimately, whether the material is right for you does somewhat depend on what you're hoping to accomplish and how much effort you're in the mood to put into it.

The focus is definitely on playing solo instrumental versions of traditional blues tunes, though on more recent songs I have made a point of including lyrics and teaching basic accompaniment techniques for people who want to sing those songs as well (I'm one of them!).

So it certainly helps if you have an interest in playing blues-based material, although many members apply what they're learning to other kinds of songs. 

If your main exposure to fingerpicking up until now has been pattern-picking style accompaniment, you may have a bit of work ahead of you as far as unlocking the muscle memory tying your fingers to your thumb.

(Ironically, if you've primarily played with a pick up until now, you may have a bit of an advantage in that you'll have fewer reflexes to try and unwind.) 

You don't have to know how to put a melody over an alternating-thumb or steady bass pattern yet – one big reason the membership exists is to show you how!

But developing the kind of thumb-and-fingers independence required to play in this style is not something that necessarily happens overnight. That is another big reason the membership exists: to provide a community, an ongoing lesson scheme and a hand-picked selection of tunes on which to develop those skills over time.

If you're more on the beginning end of things, I recommend checking out a lesson called Fix Your Travis Picking In Six Steps on my Youtube channel.

I'll be re-introducing this Travis picking lesson to members this winter in a live stream format. We'll take apart the classic song "Freight Train," isolating the bass and then the melody before learning how to put them back together again. 

The membership version will include detailed tab for all of the examples and three hour-long live-streamed lessons where I'll answer any of your questions about technique, timing or anything else related to the song:

Fix Your Travis Picking In Six Steps

If you're more of an intermediate in search of new repertoire, here's a complete performance of "Zoozoo Bingo," the twelve-bar blues in A minor I'll be teaching this winter in the membership (I'll be teaching a Fundamental, or beginning, version of this tune as well):

Zoozoo Bingo

Sign up now to take part in this Thursday's opening lessons and get access to the entire Fingerstyle Five library:

Join the Fingerstyle Five

More soon,

David