Lindsey Buckingham

• No pick — play entirely with the right hand fingers. The index finger provides the attack for downstrokes; the other fingers pluck treble strings
• The right-hand thumb plays bass strings while fingers handle the treble — this enables simultaneous bass movement and melody lines impossible with a pick
• Percussive right-hand technique: strike the strings then immediately mute with the palm for a percussive, staccato quality
• Study "The Chain" bass run — even though it's played on guitar, the bass riff shows Buckingham's comfort moving into low register territory
• Clean amp is essential — the natural pick-free attack has a different transient than a picked note. Overdrive compresses and obscures this difference
• Acoustic guitar technique applied to electric — Buckingham's right-hand approach is essentially folk/classical acoustic technique transposed to electric
• "Big Love" (live solo version) is the masterclass — his right-hand creates rhythm, bass, chords and melody simultaneously on one guitar
• Moderate compression on the amp or a light compressor pedal evens out the finger-attack variations for studio consistency
• Tune to Eb standard for most Fleetwood Mac recordings — like many players from this era, Buckingham played a half step down
• Hybrid picking with a plectrum gives the rhythmic independence between bass and treble — the thumb and plectrum handle low strings while the fingers pluck treble strings independently, creating the impression of two guitars playing simultaneously on recordings like 'The Chain' and 'Go Your Own Way'
• The 'Big Love' solo is performed entirely with the thumb and one finger with no plectrum — developing consistent thumb and index fingerpicking as an alternative to plectrum-only playing opens Buckingham's complete acoustic vocabulary, including the intricate two-hand independence of his solo acoustic pieces
• Guitar parts are designed at the arrangement level, not added later — Buckingham's role in Fleetwood Mac was as producer-arranger as much as guitarist. Each guitar part is constructed to fill a specific harmonic and rhythmic gap in the arrangement without conflicting with piano, bass or vocal lines

Lindsey Buckingham is arguably the most influential fingerstyle rock guitarist — playing without a pick, his right hand produces simultaneous bass lines, chord stabs and melody on a Stratocaster with a rhythmic power and percussive attack that pick players cannot replicate.

Buckingham is the most technically advanced fingerpicking rock guitarist of his generation. His tone evolved from the raw Fleetwood Mac debut to the heavily produced multitrack approach of Tusk to the solo guitar album Gift of Screws.