DaveS--The problem that you, and everyone one else, has with tab, is that it is doesn't tell you how the rhythm of is played--this is a big problem, and it makes it impossible for anyone to learn how to play a song just by looking at the tab--you have to have heard the piece you are playing(and have kept it in your head)--and that assumes that you have mastered the finger movements-

To learn fingerpicking, you have to learn a collection of basic movements that require the coordination of your thumb and various fingers--Nothing that anyone has posted explains how to do them, and(this is the most important part) how to tell if you are doing them right--

The final bit in this is simply that the melody/lead/fill/whatever you want to call it line that the fingers play (against the thumb's bass line) is always a syncopated phrase, which is to say, it is staggered off the beat--when Patrick Costello says:

>Play around with the timing. Play around with the phrasing. Constantly screw around with it until >you can start using to to express how you feel at the moment.

he is saying "I can't explain how to do this, you'll have to work it out yourself." So much for written explanations of fingerpicking--


The way to learn this stuff is to listen to it til you are sick of it, then to find someone who knows how to do it and how to teach it to show you the basic movements.   It will take you a while to get it down--

The reason I am saying this, with no disrespect to any who have contributed, is that in my years of teaching guitar, the biggest problem I ran into was that students were overwhelmed because they'd been given more than they could handle, and what they'd been given hadn't been broken down so they could manage it--