7 Fingerstyle Songs You Need To Know

There are hundreds of excellent fingerstyle songs you could learn! In this lesson, we’ve narrowed down that list to our top seven so you know the essentials. Download the PDF and follow along!

The fingerstyle songs we’ll be learning are “Blackbird” by The Beatles, “Tears In Heaven” by Eric Clapton, “Hey There Delilah” by The Plain White T’s, “Dust In The Wind” by Kansas, “Fire & Rain” by James Taylor, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, and “Stairway To Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. All of these songs require basic fingerpicking skills, so check out our other lessons to get the technique down first.

Playing the guitar is supposed to be fun, and learning songs is the best way to keep things exciting. So even if you’re working on other exercises, add a few of these tunes to your practice schedule to keep things musical.

Download the PDF sheet music here:

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Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:41 BLACKBIRD THE BEATLES
1:40 TEARS IN HEAVEN ERIC CLAPTION
2:07 HEY THERE DELILAH
2:33 FIRE & RAIN JAMES TAYLOR
3:17 DUST IN THE WIND KANSAS
4:03 HALLELUJAH LEONARD COHEN
4:56 STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN LED ZEPPELIN

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[MusoraMedia]

Ready to level up your playing? Get personal coaching tips and structured lessons: enjoy your free 7-day trial to Guitareo!

[polomulder]

Nice vid but please slow down Blackbird and dust in the wind, this speed takes away some of the magic

[MusoraMedia]

Enjoy the lesson! And let us know which fingerstyle tunes shoulda made the list. Here are the timestamps. :)

Blackbird - 00:40
Tears In Heaven - 01:39
Hey There Delilah - 02:06
Fire & Rain - 02:31
Dust In The Wind - 03:16
Hallelujah - 04:02
Stairway To Heaven - 04:55

[guitarvicg]

When I teach fingerstyle, I always start off with Fleetwood Mac's Landslide. It's a clinic in the basic fingerstyle pattern. There's even a Lindsey Buckingham YT video with him demonstrating his picking pattern.

[RingsOfSolace]

I've been playing just shy of a year and I gotta say dust in the wind was a real confidence booster and probably why I've stuck to it so much despite my personal opinion being that I suck compared to where I wanna be. It's an easier song, sounds more complicated than it is, everybody and their mother knows it. If you haven't learned it, put the time it, it will be worth it.

[oneeyemonster]

Operator by Jim by Jim Croce....not super hard but it has a different picking pattern.
Hotel Ca ( all of it)...so you'll learn F# 7 into B min..and the concept behind it.
Tears in the Rain by Joe satriani....So you learn the harmonic min and the full diminished.
Dee by Randy Rhodes...becuase it's in D
Love is on the Way by saigon Kick...it's E Major/C# min. Which is beautiful key to play in
or the guitar. it'll help on finger stretch and drone against open strings.

[araciao]

8. Shape of My Heart - Sting
9. Sweet Creature - Harry Styles

adding some of my favorite fingerstyle songs to play

[joshsylvester]

Play dust in the wind with a capo on the third fret it sounds amazing

[chaddhendrickson]

Love that two of the first finger picking songs were included in this song. Blackbird and tears in heaven have been my favorites over the year of learning. Thanks for sharing.

[scott]

I like Babe I'm Gonna Leave You better than Stairway, personal preference. also Crazy on You from Heart is a monster song.

[markbrown]

Fire and rain by James Taylor is a beautiful song I actually play at solo instrumentally from start to finish and it is what are the best songs I play I love this song when I used to play it out in public but I don’t anymore because of Covid but I must say it and stairway to Heaven are too I do and actually the crowd goes crazy thanks for the video that’s a good way of playing it I play it a lot different have a great day again thanks for the video I give you thumbs up on this one👍🏼👍🏼🎸🎼🎶☮️💖

[stonedcrow]

FM's 'Never Going Back Again' is another essential, although I'm sure it has been mentioned already. Definitely more of an advanced level fingerstyle song and can be a little tricky to get down, but it's essential nonetheless. I believe a guy called Joe Murphy has the best lesson on YT for anybody interested.

[benpidgeon]

Blackbird was the first fingerstyle song that I learned!! It was the song that made me fall in love with guitar

[Amy-stry]

I had learned all these amazing fingerplucking songs except for Black Bird. It was such a good feeling knowing and wanting to learn more. I completely have forgotten how to play these songs now after my cat passed. She was my best friend. 😓 😓 She would ALWAYS sit next to me when I play the guitar or practice a new song. She really enjoyed the music and would sleep beside me. Her passing really affected me. I miss her so much. It's been 4 years now, I've finally mustered some guts and picked up my guitar and I'm ready to learn again. Just a sweet and bitter feeling. As I type this, I'm literally in tears. 💔

[RockOn]

Lol, excellent list! Just found this vid, but these 7 songs are quite literally my favorites to play (plus classical gas), and half of them were the inspiration for me picking up the guitar a few years ago. Just wanted to say fantastic vid, and perfect selection! Cheers!

[mattblack]

For a sec I thought my playback speed was in 1.25x....XD

[AntonBetita]

Great video! I would have loved to see "When the Children Cry" by White Lion in that list. That was the song that started me off on how to play in fingerstyle. I didn't realize the song was more popular than I thought until I uploaded an instrumental fingerstyle cover of it on my channel and it quickly became my second highest viewed video. It's a good song to learn in fingerstyle!

[MartinRajdl]

Oh man, great way of making a video, showing the tabs bellow you displaying the whole guitar while ;playing it

[charlesclawson]

I grew in the 70s alot of people were learning "Stairway to Heaven" I think it's great song to learn! It has finger picking, strumming, regular picking and power chords and cool finger postions. Just my opinion

[baalpong]

Funny on the last clip, taking away the guitar because... “no stairway” 😁😁😁