Fingerpicking guitar is a great way to become a "real" guitarist reasonably quickly. You are playing the melody of a song as well as the bass line and the chord accompaniment. This not only helps you develop a deep understanding of guitar playing, but will help to give you a repertoire to impress your friends with.

With the range of beginner fingerpicking guitar tutors available the learner guitar player can be left puzzling over where to start. Which fingerpicking guitar style should I learn? How long does it take? Which is the best guitar tutor for me?

There are lots of ways to go as a beginner fingerpicking guitar player. There's classical guitar, Travis picking, folk guitar, plus the variety of fingerpicking styles used in rock and jazz. One of the best ways to decide which style of fingerpicking is for you is to look for guitar tutors that contain songs you are familiar with.

Songs like "On Top Of Old Smokey" and "Skip To My Lou" might not be the kind of songs you had in mind when you decided to learn fingerpicking guitar, but you will find great satisfaction in watching you fingerstyle technique develop as you learn some of the old favorites. Once you have your right hand fingers working independently and you are getting the hang of hammer-ons and pull-offs as they relate to fingerpicking, you will be looking forward to your guitar practice time.

"Mel Bay's 101 Easy Fingerstyle Guitar Solos" contains lots of songs you will have heard before. These songs originate in a diversity of cultural backgrounds but they all have found a place in American culture. The book does not have lessons on how to begin fingerpicking guitar but the arrangements of the songs are easy enough for the beginner to make some progress with in a short space of time. Listening to yourself play a familiar folk song or Christmas carol using fingerstyle guitar techniques adds a new dimension to music you might be very familiar with.

"Stefan Grossmans's Beginners' Fingerpicking Guitar" is a book with a CD that together make a great intro to fingerstyle guitar. If you have been looking around for fingerstyle guitar music you will most likely have seen Stefan Grossman's name before. He is not only a great teacher but also a great guitar player. You will need a little experience to get the most out of this book, but there are some songs the rank beginner fingerpicking guitar player can tackle.