Introduction to The One Finger Method
The One Finger Method is a guitar style that I discovered while noodling around in some obscure (to me) alternate tuning. I soon realized all the major chords could be played with just one finger. I kept my guitar in that tuning and checked out the practicality of such an arrangement by relearning quite a few songs to see how it would work to play them, and how it would sound. That was in 2015, and I still haven't found a reason to tune my guitars back to standard tuning. The Open C tuning truly is a powerful configuration which allows you to play hundreds of thousands of songs with only one finger! There just are two catches:
- You will need to re-tune your guitar to Open C tuning.
- Unless the songs you want to play are already written for Open C tuning, you are going to need to develop your ear a little to transcribe the songs on your own.
The good news is, I'm going to provide instruction guides to get you started and karaoke style videos which tell you exactly which fret to put your finger on and when to strum to play the songs I have transcribed for you.
Open C is a very popular open tuning for guitarists. If you’re thinking about trying the One Finger Method and you need to know more about Open C tuning, read through the rest of this guide to learn the simple theory and techniques involved. You will be pickin and grinnin in just minutes, even if you have never had any former guitar tuition before!
In this short guide, you will learn:
- How to tune your guitar in Open C
- Easy chord shapes you can play in Open C Tuning
- Scale diagrams for Open C
- Songs transcribed with annotations indicating which fret to put your one finger on and when to strum.
The tools, videos and lessons in this course are about how to play the guitar, not how to play songs. Many people and instructors are focused on the music, and learning about songs. This is not the most efficient use of your time. You need to learn how to play the guitar, really learn the instrument, and nearly all of the songs and riffs will become self evident. Becoming a guitar player song by song takes many years. This method I have developed takes you right to the core of what you need to learn to understand and have a working knowledge of musical theory.
I felt the need to make a very simple course to include everyone in music if they have any interest. Playing guitar with the classical tuning style is difficult, time consuming to begin, and requires near perfect strong, conditioned hands and fingers to make the complex chord shapes. It can take months or years to be able to switch between them quickly enough to play most songs. With the one finger method, children can learn this quickly, and advance rapidly. This also makes the guitar accessible to handicapped people, people missing digits, and also people who have no time in their busy schedule to learn a classical instrument from the ground up.
Don't misunderstand the idea about using one's finger. You can use all 4 if you have got them. The One Finger Method refers to the fact that all the chords we are going to be working with in this system can be played with one finger. To distribute the work, and increase your speed when doing your changes, use as many fingers as is appropriate. However, make no mistake, if you are fast enough, you can play most songs with just one single finger.
Ok, lets begin!
Tuning Your Guitar
To tune your guitar into Open C, you need to change your strings to
C G C G C E.
First, you need to lower the low E string to C. Then lower the A string down to G. Lower the D string to C. Leave the G string. Raise the B string to C. Finally, leave the high E string. Here is a video with the exact sounds each string should make:
Easy Open C Chord Shapes
Ok, now assuming you're in tune let's take a look at what we accomplish by retuning to Open C. In the Tablature diagram below you can see the original places to put your fingers with standard tuning, and how we simplified it with Open C Tuning.
As you can see by example tab #2, just by re-tuning to Open C we have reduced the guitar to something far less complex, very similar to the guitar hero game. The bar chords are the same positions, you just bar your finger right across the fretboard, hence the name One Finger Method. Check out the Chord chart below if you need further clarification.
If you are lost already and can't read a chord chart, check out the Guide to Reading Chord Charts.
Playing your first One Finger Method Song
Groovy, you made it this far! Now onto the fun part, Playing some music! As I mentioned earlier, there is no music written for this style of playing. There are many songs written in Open C, but few are of the one finger variety. Open C is not a new idea. However, transcribing standard songs to adapt to this style is not documented. This process is done by ear. One of the benefits of playing in this style, is you are going to need to learn to use your ears as much as your eyes for cues of what and when to play. Once you get the hang of this with a few songs, there is a good chance you will have trained your ears to recognize where to put your fingers when you listen to other songs on your own.
For the following songs, I have added annotations, I can't really call it tab. These annotations are conjoined with the lyrics and show you when to strike the chord. I use this style of writing music in the One Finger Method to take my cues when I am learning to sing the words to a particular tune. I synchronize my singing with the chord strikes. This is the idea behind how and why I have written the annotations in songs the way I have.
A great many bands have hits in Open C, some bands play exclusively in Open C or some variation
- Ramstein
- Type O Negative
- Toxicity by System of a Down
- Burden in my Hand, Pretty Noose by Soundgarden
- Bron-yr-aur, Friends by Led Zeppelin
- Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons
- All the King's Horses by Robert Plant
- Sister Awake by Tea Party
Given a little time and practice, I expect this style will help may people to learn to play, sing, and play by ear in the One Finger Method Style. These are the basics of the theory you need to know to play in this style. There is an endless pool of information regarding open tunings, and advanced techniques. Such techniques and other fun stuff can be found within the rest of the pages on the website. Read through the 25 Advantages of learning The One Finger Method if you are still not convinced...
Well, I expect that took you less than 20 minutes to read the Introduction to The One Finger Method. If this is all you need to get started, great! If you are new to the guitar, music notation, chord charts and the like, then I can walk you through the basics to the advanced with some more in depth lessons.
For more songs, requests, instructional pdfs and more, please visit my patreon page and support my work via that platform.