How many fingers are need to play fingerstyle and fingerpicking? @ GuitarNick.com - Free guitar lessons

The old European school of classical guitar teaches that fingers of the right hand to use for the fingerstyle technique are four, the little finger was excluded because it felt too weak compared to the other fingers. The little finger is sometimes used in some techniques of flamenco and even some musicians jazz fingerstyle use it.

So as a general rule we can say that with 4 fingers you get the best results for fingerstyle and this is confirmed by centuries of development of the technique on classical guitar.

For fingerpicking there are some different, for this style are usually used only three fingers, not including the ring. In this technique the thumb playing the bass while the index and middle playing the melody on the other three strings. The ring is excluded because many guitarists based this finger tigether the little finger on guitar for getting greater stability of the hand and power of sound.
Other guitarists instead use the ring to play fingerpicking but we can say that the normal fingerpicking technique includes the use of only three fingers.
We must also mention the case of the legendary Merle Travis with his very personal technique, only two fingers, thumb and index. His results were excellent.

This example teaches us that in reality is not the number of fingers that is important in fingerpicking but the passion and creativity that we put in our way of playing. You can play with two, three or four fingers, the important thing is that you playing is beautiful, smooth, original.