Ancient Web: Dan Smith Taught Fingerpicking on an 800-by-600 Homepage

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Dan Smith's guitar site gives visitors a warning that modern web designers are unlikely to print: use an 800-by-600 monitor setting or you will miss some of the page.

Visit Dansm's guitar homepage.

The surviving page introduces Smith as a first-year Harvard graduate student in molecular and cellular biology, formerly a Cornell student in genetics. His real subject here, though, is the acoustic guitar. He also lists canoeing, golf, skiing, model railroading, and an affection for the Eagles. There is no attempt to split these interests into separate brands. It is one person's corner of the internet.

The footer dates the page to 1998, with an October 1999 update. It even identifies the tools: Netscape 4.0, Windows 98, and a Dell P75. Smith was writing guitar lessons on a machine that now reads like a museum label.

A music classroom built from linked pages

The homepage branches into fingerpicking, chord theory, scales and modes, notation, technique, warmups, chord diagrams, Eagles material, and more general guitar links. Smith explains slash chords and suspended chords alongside practical matters like which finger should strike which string. He describes audio examples for basic techniques rather than assuming a video platform will demonstrate everything.

His warm-up page is particularly revealing. It adapts exercises for players who use their fingers rather than flatpicks, and assigns thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers to patterns. This is personal teaching, not a list of links masquerading as a tutorial.

The site also has a guide to fingernail care, where Smith admits wearing down a fingernail by using it as a pick and recounts trying nail-strengthening polish. That tiny practical detail makes the archive feel lived in.

Smith calls his own pages the largest or best of their kind in several places. Those are his promotional judgments, not verifiable rankings. The surviving accomplishment needs no ranking: a full learning environment made by an enthusiast, complete with diagrams, opinions, broken-era assumptions, and a very specific screen resolution.

Explore Dan Smith's surviving lessons.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.