August 07, 2024
Andrew Kasab’s Fingerstyle Foundation
The harp-guitar master and Music & Arts instructor unpacks key concepts for players looking to lose the flatpick.
The fingerstyle guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and veteran instructor Andrew Kasab, who teaches at the Music & Arts in Cary, North Carolina, doesn’t seem like the sort of guy who does anything half-heartedly—starting with choosing an instrument.
As a performer he’s earned recognition on the harp guitar, an outsize, orchestral behemoth that melds six bass strings with a dedicated soundhole to a conventional steel-string acoustic. He enjoys lugging his Timberline harp guitar and Martin OM-28 across the country to all manner of gigs, from breweries to coffeehouses to performing arts centers and the NAMM Show. His catalog of over a dozen self-released albums, available to stream, highlights his ambitious stylistic range: progressive folk, bluegrass, classical, original compositions combining sparkling natural harmonics with creative chord voicings—Kasab appears to play every acoustic style, exceedingly well. He also prides himself on performing without the looping technology that other contemporary acoustic players rely on to fill out their sound.
“I took two students to an open mic and we did a 15-minute-long version of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Dazed and Confused.’”
In chatting with him, you come to understand that he functions so efficiently as an independent artist because he’s been immersed in seemingly every element of his profession. He’s worked as a recording tech and as the stage manager at a venue hosting high-profile touring acts in the D.C. area; today, his pro-audio skill set is invaluable on the road and when he’s recording. “I realized pretty early on that if you as the artist are able to not only establish an original idea on your instrument, but can also make sure that your ideas sound great to your audience on a consistent basis, then you will win,” he says.
He’s equally thorough as an educator, if not more so. When Kasab speaks about music and the guitar, he constantly references analogies and wisdom he’s gathered through years of researching his craft: an insightful observation on Segovia, Michael Hedges or Tommy Emmanuel here, a smart assessment of Metallica or Green Day there, followed by a funny anecdote about John Fahey or the Reverend Gary Davis. The scope of his knowledge allows Kasab to build a unique curriculum for each and every student, folkies and metalheads alike.
Regardless of a student’s age or tastes, Kasab tries to instill the idea that learning to play guitar is a series of “little successes”—those small victories that accumulate over time, through diligence. “Every once in a while, I’ll have a student who can’t understand how the guitar just doesn’t play itself,” he chuckles.
Kasab also goes the extra mile by accompanying his students at in-store events and open mics in the area, exposing them to both the joy of performance and the on-the-spot troubleshooting that gigs require. And once again, this guy doesn’t dabble. “I love doing the ridiculous stuff,” Kasab says, cracking up. “I took two students to an open mic and we did a 15-minute-long version of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Dazed and Confused.’ With the violin bow, improvised solos and everything. Ridiculous. We just had a blast.”
We recently talked to Kasab about his teaching philosophy and concepts, with an emphasis on guitar students who are making steady progress on the instrument and want to check out fingerstyle. Below are highlights from that conversation.
Singer-Songwriters Are a Great Start
Students who want to try out some fingerpicking don’t need to go straight to Julian Bream and Michael Hedges. Often, the singer-songwriters they’ve already listened to employ modest, homegrown fingerstyle technique with beautiful, lyrical results. Kasab points to James Taylor, who developed a functional yet soulful approach to fingerpicking that, while it won’t win any international chops contests, works perfectly for his songs.
Kasab also cites the Fleetwood Mac classic “Landslide,” performed by Lindsey Buckingham, whose Travis picking technique—thumbed bass lines alternating with melody lines plucked using the index and middle fingers—is an excellent bedrock from which to build a personal fingerstyle approach.
There’s also plenty of non-guitar music that makes fantastic early source material for fingerstyle arrangements, Kasab explains. He points specifically to the arpeggiated synthesizer lines he hears in current indie music, like the enigmatic dream-pop duo Beach House. “Now all of a sudden you’re making the song different,” he says. “Now it’s your version of the song. And I love that.”
Sit Around and Just … Play!
After exploring fingerstyle via some songs they already love—whether that means Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” or Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters,” or possibly both—students will gain a better understanding of the orchestral concept that fingerpicking offers. Arpeggiated chords and alternating bass patterns provide a widescreen soundscape that all those power-chord riffs just can’t compete with.
To begin to really understand the expressive range at play in fingerstyle, Kasab encourages students to simply spend more time with their instrument. Take chord forms from the songs you’re learning and move them around the neck; practice right-hand patterns and chord inversions higher up on the neck, as in so much of today’s indie and alternative music. Grab a capo and get comfortable using it as both a tool for transposition and for texture. “Don’t feel [obligated to] play exactly what you see on the page,” Kasab says.
The scope of his knowledge allows Kasab to build a unique curriculum for each and every student.
When it comes to open tunings, which are crucial in various fingerstyle traditions, students should feel equally free to “have a little fun, be a little creative,” says Kasab. Move chord voicings to various positions, discover how certain scales and melody lines fall on the fretboard in a specific tuning, and map out familiar chord progressions, like I-IV-V.
Essentially, Kasab wants his students to loosen up and see fingerstyle as a zone for exploration. By allowing their hands to lead the way, they’ll gain comfort and technique that can be put to more focused use later.
For players who’ve already made progress using a pick, another effective way to become acquainted with fingerstyle technique is to essentially restart their method book without the plectrum. They can begin by using their index finger to pluck those same nursery-rhyme single-note melodies they tackled in their earliest lessons. In the way of classical methods—as Kasab says, “classical guitar is the original fingerstyle guitar, right?”—he likes the trusted Christopher Parkening books.
Kasab is a dedicated music educator who also maintains a steady live schedule. “Maybe you can open somebody else’s mind up,” he says of performing.
Which Right Hand Are You?
As they experiment more with fingerpicking, students will fall into one of two main right-hand “postures,” as Kasab puts it. One is more classically derived, with your hand suspended firmly over the soundhole, and the other is more intuitive and better associated with folk music. In the latter position, the right hand will rest on or closer to the bridge, and the thumb will thump out steadily percussive bass notes to support fingerpicked melody lines. Both approaches are equally valuable. For the student, it’s more a question of comfort and what you’re looking to play: For classical, flamenco and tight, crystalline arpeggios, strive for the first option; if you’re looking to dig into country-blues or folk, the latter will suit you.
Keep Those Strings Fresh
When it comes to right-hand technique, Kasab is easy—a thumbpick or fingerpicks are terrific, or fingernails if you can maintain them, or calluses on the fleshy part of the fingertips. And the more you work those calluses, he explains, the stronger and more brilliant the tone you’ll achieve.
His advice for maintaining your instrument is more absolute: Wash your hands before you play, wipe down your instrument after you’re done, and change your strings every one to two months. “All of a sudden,” Kasab says, “it’ll feel good to play.” The calluses on both your right and left hands will fare much better with new strings, you’ll experience less discomfort, your tone will be radiant … the experience of playing your instrument will simply be more fun. Recently, Kasab helped his Music & Arts location in Cary, North Carolina, hook up with D’Addario for a series of successful string-changing clinics.
Get the Instrument You Hear in Your Head
When students or their parents stand in front of the guitar wall in Cary and begin to ponder a purchase, Kasab has some wise advice at the ready: “You want to get something in hand that’s reflective of the music you’re hearing in your head that you want to play,” he says. “So if you hear an electric guitar, get an electric guitar. If you hear an acoustic guitar, get an acoustic guitar. If you’re not sure, start on the acoustic, get some discipline and switch to an electric—or just start on the electric.”
He likes to remind parents that if they’re going to spend hard-earned cash on an instrument, they should choose something that will motivate their child to learn—an instrument capable of recreating the actual sounds that have attracted their child to music.
Occasionally Kasab will teach a child whose instrument doesn’t really match the music they’re passionate about—most often, it’s an acoustic player whose tastes skew electric. In those instances, he’s happy to make the best of it, reminding students of the steel-string acoustic’s remarkable versatility. Kasab will also point to a songwriter like Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, who wrote many of his band’s loudest, most thrilling pop-punk anthems on acoustic. Now, if a student brings in a nylon-string classical guitar and wants to learn Slayer riffs, Kasab will probably want to give their parents a tour of the guitar wall.
Check Your Tuning, Check Your Timing
Lousy rhythm ranks among any music fan’s biggest pet peeves, but fingerstyle playing that’s not in time can be especially painful to hear; arpeggiated chords need their individual notes to be plucked in the pocket. For rhythm training, Kasab recommends his students utilize their metronome in the same way they would their digital tuner—as an indispensable component of their daily practice routine. “You tune your guitar so that when you’re in tune you also know when you’re out of tune,” Kasab says.
“You want to get something in hand that’s reflective of the music you’re hearing in your head that you want to play.”
Similarly, he continues, students need to get their “timing in tune. So if you start off with a basic warmup—scales, arpeggios, pieces you already know well—you’re using that metronome to set your timing for the day. And just like you tuned your guitar, you can turn the metronome off after that warmup. Now that timing is going to stick with you.”
Further, Kasab explains, this routine will help students gain a natural, human, fluid feel for musical time, rather than if they practiced absolutely everything along to a click track. “It’s going to lead them into understanding how they can manipulate the rhythm better,” he says. Kasab will turn his metronome back on when practicing new and unfamiliar passages that need disciplined attention, but for the most part, he tunes his rhythm early in the day and lets it ride.
Theory in Practice
Kasab enjoys teaching theory, but what he digs even more is finding practical, usable applications that illustrate why music theory is so important. For example, while he was working with one adult student, an explanation of diatonic chords became a lesson in transposition—which allowed a sixtysomething singer-guitarist to move previously irksome songs into his comfortable vocal range.
And while Kasab appreciates and teaches tablature—“it’s been around since the 1500s, so why would you ignore it?”—he also admits that it’s “the TikTok of music reading”: an instantly gratifying system, devoid of context.
“I’ll teach metal guys who are looking at the tablature,” he explains, “and I say, ‘We’re gonna look a little bit into what this guy is playing. He’s in Dorian, he’s in Lydian. Let’s do a little scale work.’” It’s a process that allows the student to experience a song “through the lens of the songwriter or player,” says Kasab, “rather than ‘They pressed 5 and then 8 and then 7.’”
“They come back the following week,” he continues, “and they say, ‘I see where this guy is putting his hands; I understand why.’”
