Truefire Richard Smith's Fingerstyle Horizons

A Video Masterclass on Fingerstyle Guitar
The polyphonic nature of fingerstyle is what lights up so many musical horizons for guitarists, across all traditional and contemporary styles. It’s also what makes it challenging to truly master. At the same time, if you learn and practice the essential components of the technique, your learning journey will progress quickly and you’ll be making great music along the way.

Richard Smith’s Fingerstyle Horizons will clearly light your path and accelerate both your understanding and development of essential fingerstyle skills.

”In this course, I’ll show you how I approach and practice finger and thumb independence, adding a melody with alternating thumb, harmonics, chord shapes, banjo-style rolls, and many other essential fingerstyle tips and skills.

We’ll also work on flatpicking with a thumbpick, choosing fingerings and tone, arranging for guitar, widening the practice loop, working with a metronome, and essential ear training for melody and harmony.

We’ll put all of these techniques and approaches to work across a series of performance studies to help you hone your fingerstyle skills and start to widen your repertoire.”

Chet Atkins calls Richard, “The most amazing guy I know on the guitar. He can play anything I know, only better.” Tommy Emmanuel agrees, “If you like my playing, you should hear Richard Smith! The world champion!” Doyle Dykes is likewise a fan, “Guitar playing at its finest. Don’t miss this one.”

We’re thrilled to finally welcome Richard to the family with his first TrueFire course, Fingerstyle Horizons. You will likewise be thrilled as you learn, practice and play your way through his insightful curriculum.

Fingerstyle Horizons not only reveals the core of Richard’s technique but also gives you a solid and clear path to get your own fingerstyle chops to the next level and beyond.

As you work through the curriculum, Richard will explain and demonstrate a series of key techniques and approaches. Along the way, you’ll put them all to work, in a musical context, across a series of performance studies: Freight Train, Upon a Star Etude, Banjo Roll Etude No. 1, Banjo Steppin', Doc's Dream, Easy Winners, The Entertainer - C Section, The Cherokee Shuffle, Pizzi Pickin', and Lullaby for Madeleine. A breakdown follows every performance study and Richard will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches in play.

You’ll get standard notation and tabs for all of the performance studies. Plus, you’ll be able to use TrueFire’s learning tools to sync the tab and notation to the video lesson. You can also loop or slow down the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace.

Grab your guitar and let’s explore our fingerstyle horizons with Richard Smith!