Too Good At Goodbyes - Fingerstyle Guitar Tutorial

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In this fingerstyle guitar lesson we show you how to play “Too Good At Goodbyes,” by Sam Smith, exactly like the recording. That means we are doing a little bit of fingerpicking in order to mimic the piano part.

Also, I was lucky enough to be able to have my good friend Luca Fogale sing the intro! If you wanna check him out here’s a link to his music: http://www.lucafogale.com/music/

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Throughout the lesson I mention our free eBook that covers all the fundamentals of rhythm guitar, so if you need any help with the basics or want to build a solid foundation you can find it here – https://goodguitarist.com/learn-rhythm-guitar/

Also, if you’re interested in playing the F barre chord, I have a mini-series covering exactly how to play barre chords in an easy, safe (for your wrists!) way – https://goodguitarist.com/basic-barre-chords/
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The lesson begins with the chord shapes: Dm, F (easy version, C and Gm (easy version). This is a “4 chord wonder” so we’re just going between those 4 chords the entire time. We talk about how to play each chord properly and how to switch between them easily. Then we practice going through them, in order, using downstrokes only, just to get comfortable with the shapes.

After that we go over how to pluck them using our fingers. It’s laid out visually, and you can see my hands from a couple angles, so hopefully you have an easy time figuring it out. The one important thing to note is the transition from C to Gm.. that’s probably the toughest part, so practice extra hard there! We play the verse together, just like this and then move on to the next part.

The chorus requires us to use a strumming pattern. Since we were fingerpicking before, we used the “little F” chord. Now we are strumming, so I show you a beefier F chord that has some more bottom end and sounds better with the strumming pattern. The pattern is fairly simple and as long as you count it out, you should have no problem. Once we have it down, we play it together with the chord shapes.

As far as fingerstyle lessons go, this one is pretty simple. If you want to work on some more like it, I recommend taking a look at “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Perfect.” You can find a whole list of fingerpicking songs on my website: https://goodguitarist.com/category/resource/fingerpicking/

Enjoy the lesson! I’ll see you next week!
-James