"I'M STILL LEARNING.HONESTLY!”

Matteo Mancuso's guide to mastering fingerstyle and unravelling the mysteries of jazz

Matteo Mancuso is one of the most astonishing young guitar players on the planet. The jazz virtuoso's flawless electric guitar skills and jaw-dropping fingerstyle techniques were first observed by thousands on YouTube and Instagram, before his debut album The Journey made him one of the most talked about players of 2023.

He's won the admiration of masters like AI Di Meola, Joe Bonamassa and Tosin Abasi, and Steve Vai has declared the future of guitar to be safe, so long as people like Mancuso are around to keep the evolutionary wheels turning.

As Matteo himself says: "Jazz can be extremely simple as well as extremely complex. Complexity doesn't mean that it's good." But as a player who combines elements of shred, jazz and classical styles, a lot of what he does is complex. In fact, his playing seems almost superhuman at times.

However, he utilises smart time-saving tactics rather than heavy theoretical principles to help him traverse the fretboard in show-stopping style. His motto: "Think less, play more..."

What are the fundamentals of your fingerstyle technique?

I basically have two main positions. The first one is the appoggiato playing style, which is like the thing you see with most bass players. Then, there's the straight classical guitar technique that I use more for arpeggio-based stuff, or if I have to do some string skipping arpeggios and things like that, because it's easier to move across the strings if you also have your thumb available.

When I'm playing appoggiato, I'm holding my thumb on the pickup most of the time, so I only have three fingers available. I can't use my pinky so it's always the index, middle and ring fingers. When I'm playing the other way - in Italian it's called tocco libero - I can also use my thumb but I have slightly less volume. That's basically how I play everything. It's 100 percent fingerstyle!