Finger Picking

Learning to play the ‘ukulele with your fingers along with the thumb can be very freeing. Using just the thumb for picking works very well for some people, but the thumb and fingers together can give you more speed and precision. When you start learning how to play with your fingers it will seem near impossible, but it’s not.

Start with your index finger. Work on playing with different fingers one at a time, because the first finger will learn the motions. After that it’s easier to add more to the mix. Anchor your ring and pinky fingers to the soundboard below the strings and in between the sound hole and bridge. This lets you start the picking motion in the same place every time instead of floating around worrying about actually hitting the right string. Your fingers are going to rest at an angle to the strings, because your arm is going over the top half of the ‘ukulele. This is fine, you don’t want to bend your wrist sideways to keep your fingers perpendicular to the strings.

Now place the tip of your index finger so that it’s resting on the bottom of the A string. (This is a good time to mention that growing your fingernail out might make this easier.) Pick up and out. If you pick straight up towards the G string you might ring the E or C string on accident. That is the basic motion. Playing like this will feel weird and clumsy for a while, but practice and you will start to feel more comfortable with it.

Once you get comfortable using the index finger to pick, you can start working on picking with other fingers. I find that using my index and middle fingers gives me plenty of freedom, so I haven’t gone on to use my ring finger very much.

Pima is the system that is used to show what fingers to use for what notes. Each letter is an abbreviation of a Spanish word that stands for a finger.

P = thumb
I = index
M = middle
A = ring

Using this system, it is easy to show what fingers to use in a song. The pima fingering is usually shown above the notation or tab.

I play with whatever finger works with the note I play at that time. Not helpful info, I know. But if I had to pin down my playing I would say that I use my thumb for the top two strings, index for E, and middle for A. The only time I use my ring finger is when I play all the notes of a chord at the same time – one finger to every string – or do a fast roll starting with my thumb. This is just how I play; depending on how many fingers you use, something else might work better for you.

Just to give you an idea how you can use more fingers to your advantage:

    p i p i p i p i p i p i p i p
A |-----------0-2-3-2-0-----------
E |-----0-1-3-----------3-1-0-----
C |-0-2-----------------------2-0-
G |-------------------------------

Using both your thumb and index finger, you can play the C scale much faster than you could with just your thumb.