Hi My name is Darryl and I am a guitar teacher from London in England and I just wanted to talk a little bit about Simon Candy’s new course The Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course. I’ve had a couple of products from Simon’s website AcousticGuitarLessonsOnline.net and I’ve been really impressed and have had the fortune to take a look at his new course.

What I really like is that he has gone for fundamentals skills. The great benefit of working on those fundamental skills is that it allows you to really learn how to play what you want and the music you like rather than being beholden to particular fingerpicking songs. This has always been a bugbear of mine with fingerpicking because often people learn songs and then don’t end up with a style that is their own. However when you work on fundamentals you end up with being able to pick and choose what you want to play. If you want to play songs, great, if you want to write music with it, great, if you want to play different styles not a problem because it’s a technical skill.

Simon has also made it really simple to follow, and for me thats what makes it quite different from other books that certainly I’ve worked with in the past, or other courses.

Simon has made it simple to get your foot on the ladder, and to keep going and not have that thing where you have a look at a couple of exercises and then run away, but rather keep progressing with your fingerpicking skills.

I think whether someones a beginner, or whether they have been fingerpicking for a long time, you are going to benefit greatly from this course because Simon has layered in some really excellent exercises, good technique habits, and some quite wonderful musical ideas, for example so you can play chord and melody at the same time.

You are going to get a lot out of The Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course and you can expect that you will learn great things, and I know I certainly have that is going to help me with my own playing and actually help me with my teaching too.

So well done Simon, I think it’s a wonderful course!

Darryl Powis
Owner and Director of Guitar Tuition East London

Hi This is Matthew Delage the owner and director of The Madrid Guitar School in Spain. I absolutely recommend Simon Candy’s Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course for different reasons. The first one is that Simon Candy has helped me a lot as a guitar player, as a fingerpicking guitar player both in person and through resources on his website AcousticGuitarLessonsOnline.net.

I’ve participated in seminars where Simon has actually helped me to improve my fingerpicking through new tricks that I didn’t know about before and new ways to fingerpick my guitar which I have benefited a lot from.

Why I would recommend this course in particular?

I think there are two things that are very specific to The Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course that I don’t really see in other courses or other ways of teaching from many teachers, and it’s really crucial.

The first is that Simon actually makes sure you’re going to practice, and know exactly what you are going to practice (regarding the course). He will help you out with actual practice schedules, telling you how to practice the contents of the course, in what order, and you can ask him questions on how to actually apply the things you are learning in the course. It’s not just like learning a bunch of things, a bunch of stuff and then not actually knowing how to apply it, which brings me to the other point:

Understanding how all these pieces fit together in a whole system that you can use to be creative on your guitar. It’s not just knowing one thing here, one thing there, a little trick here a little trick over there. It’s actually becoming a master at integrating everything so that you can fingerpick your guitar in many different ways, and improvise on the spot which I think is really important to be able to do as a guitar player.

So I would absolutely recommend jumping on The Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course. I’ve already tried the first few sessions and it’s amazing. The course has been really carefully designed. I know Simon to be very meticulous when it comes to planning and making sure everything is complete so that you’re not actually missing pieces.

So that is what I would say about The Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course and I hope you enjoy it as much as I am.

Matthieu Delage
Owner and Director of The Madrid Guitar School

Hi there, my name is Toby Weber and I've been taking lessons with Simon for about four months now.

One of the things I love most about these lessons is that I'm not able to jump ahead which is what I tend to do and then I miss out on very important things. So the fact that they are structured this way makes it where I'm going to be more successful with these lessons.

I think one of the things I love the most about this course is how he has structured it.

You get your lesson and it's very well written out, pictures, new chords, new progressions so you can pull it up and hear what it's supposed to sound like, and Simon does a short video on what it's supposed to look like too. So that is amazing.

I absolutely love that I can email Simon anytime and he is so quick to respond. That's one of the things that I love the most too.

He also gives you a very specific practice schedule. What to practice, when to practice, and how to practice.

That was huge for me. I would pick up my guitar and just noodle around and never make any progress because I didn't know what I was supposed to practice or what I should practice.

I have learned so many new chords, so many progressions and fingerstyle. I mean, the fact that I do know what to practice, I have learned so much in a very short amount of time and I can't even imagine what this is going to look like six months or a year from now.

I cannot recommend this course enough. Simon is awesome. He's fun to watch and work with and I love it!

My friends, when I pick up my guitar and show them what I've learned, they are blown away by what I can do.

You will not regret lessons with Simon.

Toby Weber
USA

My name is Ingjald, I am 65 years old and I first started fingerpicking guitar back in 1975.

I am mostly self-taught and have studied various books and courses throughout the years.

The past few years I have researched on how to train effectively in order to progress. In spite of this, I have often run into invisible walls and had to abandon attempts at songs and skills.

The lack of progress I guess, is due to not being able to break down the song or skill into manageable parts and to put them into the right order.

Since confidence in my finger-picking skills were diminishing and I was reverting to strumming more and more, I decided to go for a complete overhaul and signed up for the “The Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course“ in February 2021.

What sets this course apart from other resources, is the systematic and consequent way skills are introduced, built and applied over time.

So far, I have received compliments for my guitar sound being more clear, powerful and fluid.

Also, there are a whole bunch of approaches, patterns and chord voicing’s, which I couldn’t have thought up on my own.

Besides practicing 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week, I find myself improvising with the new tools and discovering ways to freshen up songs in my repertoire.

Signing up to the The Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course was absolutely the right decision and I am enjoying every lesson!

Ingjald
Friedrichsdorf, Germany

Hi, I'm Joe Carroll. I've been taking Simon's Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course for about a year now and I want to say a little something about what kind of value it's had for me, how it differs from other courses, why I'd recommend it and what I've gained from taking it.

The main reasons that I would recommend this course are that it's systematic, it's cumulative, and it's aimed at long-term success, at ultimate mastery. It starts in a more fundamental way than the other courses I've tried.

It begins with things like how to hold your hand, how to position your fingers, and even how to hold a guitar, which I needed. I'd been taking lessons for a while, but a lot of teachers just assume you know really basic things that you don't know.

One of the things to be said about Simon is that he's a real teacher. He envisions the student's own mind, his own learning process. He kind of thinks his way into where you are and is concerned to bring you up from there.

One thing to be said about his course is that it's for serious students. People who are committed to taking the time, spending the time, doing the work, commit themselves to a whole program for the long term and don't need just sort of short-term reinforcement constantly to convince themselves that they're having fun.

Though it is fun!

I've had more actual fun taking this course than anything else I've done with the guitar. That's partly because I feel that I am learning something, I'm getting somewhere. I can see that the whole program is designed constantly to reinforce old skills while introducing new skills. And it's also musically more sophisticated.

Simon is oriented toward jazz, though this course is not a jazz course, but one of the benefits of his immersion in jazz is that he introduces early on complex chords and chord progressions that a beginner would hardly think of and that other beginner courses don't provide.

He creates original pieces early so that you can begin to exercise your skills with them. And they're interesting and absorbing pieces. They're musically appealing.

I feel I'm learning to listen in a more subtle and nuanced way than I did before I started taking this course from other courses and the real student orientation, the orientation towards how students learn and its cumulative and systematic character and the musically sophisticated quality of its offerings.

The main way I think I've benefited from it in the year that I've been taking it is that at the end of that year, well of course I know more, and can do more, a lot more than when I started, but I also have an even firmer commitment.

I see that this is something I can do and the time I spend on it is going to have real benefits, real rewards that I'll get pleasure and satisfaction all along the way and I'll be able to look back and think yeah I've actually mastered some very difficult skills and done it with a new understanding, new musical appreciation.

So if you're the kind of student who like me needs to know what he's doing and why he's doing it and where it's going, Simon's course is a real standout. I couldn't recommend it more strongly.

I'm really just completely pleased with what I've learned and what I anticipate learning.

Joe Carroll
USA

Hi, I'm Casey. I have already recommended the Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course to a couple of friends, and I would recommend it all day.

First, the materials are clear and easy to use.

In the Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course, Simon doesn't just give you information and say, here are some things you could practice if you want as many teachers do in these types of courses I've found.

In the Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course, each lesson comes with practice schedules and step-by-step what to practice and how to practice.

I love Simon's approach to rotating your focus through different, very isolated pieces of your technique.

I love how this course has taught me to be more intentional in how to practice better on top of just gaining fingerpicking skills, which I've gained a lot of, I'm really happy to say.

I found that if I take the time to read through Simon's lessons carefully and follow them as he says, I gain the new skills in fingerpicking quite quickly without ever feeling overwhelmed or frustrated, which I have in the past when I've been trying to learn those types of skills with YouTube videos.

So it's been a really fun experience, easy, and not stressful at all.

I would say that I am an upper beginner guitar player and with Simon's course, I've gained excellent technique and ease with fingerpicking.

Ever since I first started listening to music on my own as a kid I love the sound of acoustic fingerstyle and this course has taught me how to produce those sounds myself, which feels great.

I have so, so many new tools in my guitar playing toolbox that I can be creative and mess around with now.

Simon is an intelligent, warm and thoughtful teacher, so I would definitely recommend taking advantage of the live opportunities to work with him and keep trying to incorporate the things that you're learning in the course into the songs that you're learning and trying to play.

I've loved the experience of learning with the Ultimate Figure Picking Guitar Course. It's been nothing but rewarding.

Casey McCurdy

Hello, this is Marvin Kreps from Stanfordville, New York.

I am a recently retired educational administrator who has had a life-long desire to learn the fingerpicking style on acoustic guitar. One of my goals upon retiring was to begin taking guitar lessons locally but decided to research my options for on online option. I spent over a month looking at every online option and finally found The Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course by Simon Candy. It is exactly what I was looking for. It is a complete curriculum for the aspiring fingerpicker.

The course contains everything a beginner-intermediate player like me needs to learn the fingerpicking style.

The lessons, etudes, and selected guitar pieces provide me with all the guidance required to make progress as a fingerpicker.

The Ultimate Fingerpicking Course teaches you how to play an instrument not just play a few songs, scales, and patterns. You learn the various skills in a musical context because each technique is immediately applied to a musical piece that is meaningful.

It is very affordable compared to other options for professional lessons by a master player and teacher. I have found Simon unique among guitar teachers as there are not many teachers who are skilled at teaching this style.

The Ultimate Fingerpicking Course stands out as a unique resource because it is a step-by-step guide that includes text, video, tab, and plenty of practice ideas to master the techniques used by master players. Stuff you simply cannot find in other resources. It is not just a series of lessons. It is a well-articulated curriculum with goals, methods and techniques that evince a plan!

The main benefit I am receiving from my lessons is making steady progress toward my goal of playing the fingerpicking style on acoustic guitar. This is not an easy style to learn and requires a step-by-step guide to help you understand how to play what seems very complex and undoable.

This course makes what seems impossible possible by giving you a roadmap. I often find myself saying, “Oh! that’s how a guitarist plays that”. In short, the course makes what is a mystery knowable and what seems undoable attainable.

Marvin Kreps

Stanfordville, New York.

Simon’s guitar course is excellent!!

Very quickly you will be fingerpicking seemingly complex patterns. He takes you up the neck of the guitar where you discover lots of different chord shapes and harmonies.

The course is structured so that improvement in playing happens quickly.

It is clear that an immense amount of work has gone into putting this course together. Nothing is left out. Chord charts, fast and slow audio and videos and all the written material which are yours to keep.

Simon himself is a delight and his teaching style is filled with warmth and humour.

I highly recommend this course!

Jane Pargiter

Tasmania, Australia

Just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying these lessons.

I really enjoy the exercises and pretty quickly picked up on the multiple string picking played all 20 versions in my first setting. Though I wasn't very proficient at the first piece, it really somehow joined my ear to the process of fingering and picking the notes.

I can now play with some facility the complicated songs I've always wanted to play such as highway song by Blackfoot, dust in The wind by Kansas, on my way home by Blind Faith and others.

Simon clearly has a very good gift for teaching!

It really shows how much work he puts into each lesson.

I really enjoy my guitar in a whole new way thanks to Simon!

Jim Carey

Hi, I am Rienzie Machado from Melbourne, Australia.

I am a retiree who has been intrigued by the sounds of fingerpicking and have taken the plunge to take lessons online.

I’ve been taking the Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course by Simon Candy since January 2022.

There are 3 reasons why I would recommend this fingerpicking course to other learner guitarists.

Firstly, the course assumes zero knowledge of fingerpicking.

The lessons and practice schedules I have been provided in the course have given me guidance to improve my skills, stepwise, one foot at a time.

Secondly, The Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course has not just taught me how to play songs and scales, but it has given me new skills I can apply to my existing repertoire of songs, such as new chords I have learned in my lessons.

Thirdly, this course takes a very systematic approach with achievable goals for each lesson.

Simon spells out what you are going to do at the beginning of each lesson and then reinforces the goals you have achieved at the end by following that particular lesson.

Simon also provides in each lesson, videos of all examples at two different speeds, so depending on your level of playing you can use it to play along.

Simon also has video tutorials of specific pieces he has created for the course that help train the skills you learn. The videos are very detailed showing you exactly how to play each piece regarding finger choices and ways to practice.

Furthermore, with these online lessons, you don’t lose any of them. They are in your account forever, and I can always come back to any of them in the future to continue learning as my skills grow and develop.

This course has removed many of the mysteries about fingerpicking for me as I move forward more confidently with my guitar playing.

Rienzie Machado

Melbourne, Australia

I want to talk to you today about The Ultimate Fingerpicking Guitar Course by Simon Candy from Acoustic Guitar Lessons Online .net

Now there’s lots of different guitar teachers teaching acoustic guitar and there’s lots of different lessons and courses and Dvd’s and products that you can buy online and even offline.

But there are two things I think are quite different about what Simon Candy has done here, and that is in his course you not only just get information or things to do or exercises to practice. If information was everything we needed, we’d all be billionaires with 6 pack abs right?

What Simon has done is that he has put it together into a comprehensive course that gives you not just the information, but the training, the coaching, and the mentoring of how to put it together, how to create practice schedules from it, what exactly to do with the information that you have even if you have little time to practice so you actually get results and become a better guitar player.

Now you would think that that’s what everybody should be doing, but in my experience of doing this for well over a decade I have seen very very few teachers, and really few courses that really get this and I think that Simon Candy has done a marvellous job here.

And the second reason is I’ve known Simon for many many years, I’ve seen him perform, I’ve seen him teach in person, and I know that his teaching skills are some of the best in the world. So I know you are going to be in good hands with Simon.

He is going to be giving you the support, the guidance, that you need every step of the way to make sure you get the results, and get the enjoyment, and the fulfilment that you are looking for out of your acoustic guitar playing

Mike Philippov
Professional Guitarist and Guitar Practice Expert