Fingerstyle Guitar — Week 2 — Day 8
2026-07-20 ma
Daily warmup (same every day for this week)
Part 1 (2 minutes): Week 1 open-string p-i-m-a — free stroke, dead even. You might want to try with right hand 4 on resting on the guitar and off of it.
Part 2: Rest-stroke C major scale — one octave, 1st position, alternate i-m strictly (never the same finger twice), ~60 bpm, one note per beat, 4 passes up and down. The notation starts with i, but you may start with m too. Do variations.
Builds on: Day 2’s i-m rest-stroke seed; fretboard track (these are the notes you’re memorizing).
Good for: apoyando as a daily habit, i-m alternation for future melodies, and hearing the note names under your fingers. This scale is the melody engine of Phases 2–3.
Theory: every chord you know this week lives inside this scale — C, Am, Dm, Em, G7, E7 (almost: its G# is borrowed to pull harder toward Am).
Day 8 — Thumb changes home (Em · Am · Dm)
Builds on: Day 1’s arpeggio; Day 3’s thumb reach to S-6; Dm from Day 5.
Good for: the thumb finding its root string by feel as chords change — S-6, S-5, and S-4. This is the prerequisite for every walking or alternating bass in later excercises (Phases 2–3).
Fingers stay on S-3, S-2, S-1 throughout; only the thumb’s target moves. ~60 bpm.
- Tune (~1 min)
- Warmup (above)
- Establish (3 min): Em only — thumb on S-6, groove it
- Vary (3 min): Am ↔ Dm every 4 bars — thumb hops S-5 ↔ S-4, smallest hop first
- Integrate (3 min): rotate Em – Am – Dm, new chord every 4 bars — thumb lands on the right root without looking
- Cooldown (3 min): the rotation once more, eyes closed if you dare
- Fretboard Notes (5 min)
Fretboard Notes – E
Method: take the current note (the first one being E) and find it on every string, frets 0–11 (ignore fret 12+). Say/sing the note name out loud as you play it, in time at 60 bpm.
You might want to start to read the notes too as we begin this journey. The tabs will dissapear in some point and you need to read the notes only. But that will be after several weeks from now.
We are doing just E for 3 days and then we move to A. Then D, F, B, G and finally C. And After that we do flats and sharps too. They will be easy as we get there. By doing this you will eventually learn all the notes on the fretboard.