Dave Wirth
The guitarist's left hand does half the work of playing guitar, or 1/8th the work if the person is a giant octopus. To be fair, a giant octopus can't play guitar. Neither can the Sharktopus. But the Sharktopus doesn't need a guitar to be awesome. It is awesome, obviously.
I digress.
It does us guitarists a lot of good to be selective about how we approach fingering the chords or melodies we play. Some folks, like Jack White for example, look at their fingering in a get-it-done-as-fast-as-possible-so-I-can-express-this-feeling-now kind of way. Classical guitarists, like Manuel Barrueco for example, take a bit more elegant and thoughtful approach to fingering so that they may convey subtlety. Neither approach is superior. Both of these two, very different, guitarists arrive at the top of the same mountain: Music.
The hierarchy of elegant classical guitar fingering
In a nutshell, most classical guitarists I have met on my journey have taken a very elegant, thoughtful, and systematic look at their left hand fingerings. This makes sense. Subtlety of rhythm, melody, feeling and emotion cannot be achieved without a somewhat careful investigation of their left hand work. It's a puzzle to them. The question is asked subconsciously: "How can I make this fingering so easy so that I can really play this music in a recital?" There is a three tiered hierarchy of fingering systems that helps classical guitarists achieve this elegance.
- Anchoring. Anchoring a finger between two chords is the simplest way to create an elegant transition. For example, a very common way to use an anchor finger is to play the D chord and the G chord in a progression. Try keeping your third finger anchored on the third fret of the B string and move between the chords. It works.
- Guiding. Guide fingers are pretty cool too. When your finger stays on one string but travels to a different fret, it helps to connect the chord and/or melody. This blog post can help you out immensely in learning how to utilize guide fingers.
- Jumping. Lease favorite of all of these options is to just jump from one position to another. There is nothing grounding one's fingers to the guitar.
Jack White just wants to have fun
Jack White, of the White Stripes among others, has a different approach. His way of making fingerings happen is to just do it and don't put any thought to it. Yes, it could be helpful to engineer fingerings. Yes, it could be easier to manage fingerings with more detail. But the point is not to look at the guitar as a puzzle to be figured out. It is to use the guitar as a megaphone, and megaphones are more like a sledgehammer than a scalpel.
I really like how Jack White approaches his music. It's extremely direct and intense. The fingering style reflects this. It's almost as if his idea of playing guitar is more akin to, "Get this done so I can play." It works, has worked, and will work for anyone who really pushes the idea. Furthermore, Jack White's approach takes the guitar and uses it as a means to what he wants to create, as opposed to getting wrapped up in details and possibly obfuscating the idea of playing music in the first place.
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus
Who wins at the end of the day? Neither approach. Depending upon my mood, I could just as easily listen to Manuel Barrueco's fantastic transcription of Albeniz's "Suite Hispanola" in the same hour as Hotel Yerba by The White Stripes. The trick is how to utilize either approach. If you are looking for subtlety and nuance in your creative musical expression, try experimenting with using the details you have in front of you to create an elegant fingering. If you are looking for an intense display of emotion and feeling, try bashing your guitar around and get the job done as fast as possible. If you are looking to be feared in all the ocean of guitarists, threaten all the shred guitarists in Guitar Center and tell them never to turn their amps up again in the presence of the Sharktopus.
