The way that the instrument is played by the musician is called Fingerstyle Guitar. The term fingerstyle describes a way of playing the guitar with out using a pick. It is a style of playing the guitar.
A guitar player might use all of the fingers on the right hand when playing fingerstyle. Using a pick is still the preferred method amongst gutiarists to sound the strings. Fingerstyle music can sound like a full band with several parts playing at once. You can play fingerstyle on any guitar but some are more preferable to to the design specifications. A fingerstyle guitar is usually but not always an
acoustic guitar. Electric fingerpicking was made famous by the late Chet Atkins. You will most often find steel strings used in music that is not classical.
Fingerstyle Guitar is often used as accompaniment for singing which makes it a popular form with folk, blues, country and pop singers because it works well for the solo artist that does not travel with a band.Jazz, smooth jazz, and new age music are all perfect for fingerstyle guitar playing. Classical guitarists have been playing solo instrumental music for centuries.
This brings us back to the question of the fingerstyle guitar itself. The instrument that would always qualify as fingerstyle is the classical guitar. This guitar was crafted to be played with fingers. The classical instrument has always been a nylon string (or cat gut before there was nylon) acoustic guitar. You can find a nylon string electric classical guitar being manufactured these days. Guitar crafters would use special exotic woods to make a classical insturment resonate from the fingerstyle playing. The neck is often much wider than that of a steel string guitars so that the artists picking fingers can grab
individual strings. Instruments made for playing classical music will often have a nut width of 2 1/2 inches. Many guitars that are made for steel strings have a nut width of 1 3/4 inches if it is meant for fingerstyle. The most common nut width on steel string guitars is 1 11/16 inches. You need to understand that there are no hard and fast rules to guitar construction for fingerstyle players. Hopefully this has given the reader an idea as to what constitutes a fingerstyle acoustic guitar.