Basic Fingerstyle: Travis Finger Picking (Folk Guitar Lesson FO-108) How to play

This is the 9th lesson in the folk fingerstyle module and we look at "Travis Picking", a kind of alternating bass fingertyle technique first made popular by the great Mearle Travis. TAB is on the web site!

Whole series will be on the web site and a DVD is available with some bonus material! See the web site for more details!

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

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Have fun :)

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Hi, how'ya doing, Justin here.

Welcome to this lesson on
basic Travis picking.

Now Travis picking gets it's name from
the great Merle Travis,

a country guitar picker and his
picking style was subsequently stolen

by anyone who played fingerstyle
accoustic guitar. It sounds really cool

and it's a great technique to learn.

Now it's basically a little bit more
complicated version of the thumb

moving around that we've looked at
previously, but in order to help your

development overall as well, we're now
going to be applying this to

some barre chords. To really make sure
that you got your barre chords good as well.

So, let's get to a close-up, we're gonna be
using a C, A-shape barre chord.

Which is (plays) this one,
you're gonna see it in the close-up

in a second; I'm gonna show you a close-up
first of all of the fretting hand and then

we'll go to the close-up of the picking
hand to see what all the fuss is about.

Ok, here we are for our C chord.
Now this is of course an A-shape

barre chord,-with the 1st finger on the
root note C,- at the 3rd fret,

you don't tuck your 2nd finger like that,
I'm just doing it to keep things nice and

simple for you to see. Now, what we want
to get used to the idea of here is the 1st

finger moving between the note C and the
note G. The pattern we're learning is this:

♪

So, just get use to the idea of this 1st
finger moving

♪

Let's check out the picking hand!

The big deal with this Travis picking is
the movement of the thumb.

And instead of just alternating between
two strings that we've had before

when we looked at our pattern, (♪)
our thumb is now gonna go:

5th string, 4th string,
6th string, 4th string.

♪

Which is why we had a look at the
1st finger moving over between the

5th string and the 6th string.

Now but don't use a barre, move
your 1st finger!

♪

So, the 1st pattern we're going to look at
is basically our very simple pattern 1:

♪

That was the original one,

but now we're gonna be going:

♪

Again, you'd gonna have to probably do
this very slowly, I really struggled

the first time I learned this, so I'd
expect you guys, to at least have a

bit of fun with it. Really slowly:

together:

Thumb, 1, thumb on the thickest string,
2nd finger, thumb back on the 4th string.

♪

If you're really struggling to hold your
barre chord down, and you see a barre chord,

just use our regular open A chord:

♪

you will get the kind of the bottom 2
string ringing out a little bit,

which sounds a bit funny to my ear,
but at least you can kind of get used to

the thumb movement there, that's what's
really important is,...getting this:

♪

you know, just practicing that is a really
good idea for this kind of pattern.

♪

Then introduce the other fingers.

♪

So that's pattern 13.

Pattern 14:

♪

Exactly like our pattern 2,

but with this new Travis Picking.

♪

And of course, you would then start to
merge 13 and 14 together.

♪

You can really hear...

♪

just sounds cool.

A lot of the times these guys have a
little bit of kinda mute on there as well.

♪

So you get that... I'm just resting my
palm of my hand there:

♪

Ok, pattern 15 and 16 where I'm to now,

I'm using a G barre chord

An E-shape barre chord at the 3rd fret.

Hopefully you know how to play that,

now, all of the 6th string root patterns
we've checked out so far,

had the thumb bouncing between
the 6th string and the 4th string.

♪

Now what we're doing for our
Travis picking is, we're going:

6th string, 4, 5, 4
6, 4, 5, 4

So that's where it starts
to get a bit more complicated.

♪

Again, you gonna have to just do these
really slowly.

It's still then same pattern with the rest
of the fingers as we've been looking,

as same as pattern 1 for the C chord, or
pattern 3 for the G chord would've been

having this 2nd finger on the beat and
then the 1st finger on the end after 2 and then

back to that finger; That pattern.

♪

That's the original pattern we would
have had on the G.

Then just try and break out that...

the thumb, into moving over doing
to the 5th string.

I would highly recommend doing
what I'm doing now.

I've just...doing 6th, 4, 5, 4

Just doing that quite a few times
to get the thumb used to moving

onto the 5th string.

♪

And then introduce those other notes.

♪

Again, really slowly and gradually
build up the speed is what you want.

Now, pattern 16: exactly the same as
our pattern 4 was originally.

There's pattern 4: ♪

And 16 now, we're now just again

moving it onto our Travis picking

♪

I'm sure you're gonna have a whole
lot of fun with your Travis picking,

It is a little bit tricky and it takes a
little bit of practice, but nearly all

of the things that sound really cool
require quite a bit of practice and

this is one of them. I'm gonna show you
a cool little country trick as well,

that I think you might enjoy.

I was really stoked when I
discovered this thing.

Hopefully you remember your C7 open chord.
Right? If you move that C chord up 2 frets

you're on a D chord.

♪

Now, if we use pattern 2:

♪

what I'm doing is moving my 3rd finger

over to the 6th string.

♪

5th string:

♪

6th string:

♪

Sounds pretty cool.

Now, you can do it with the Blues.

Using D, G, back to D

♪

G

It's a really fun little pattern.

A

G

Back down to D

♪

And you can kind of develop this
idea quite a lot.

Hope you'll have fun with that,

take care, and I'll see you for

the last lesson in this series,

which is adding in hammer-ons
and flick-offs to our patterns.

Just kind of tricky enough already.

And now we're gonna b introducing
some new stuff.

So, I'm sure you're gonna enjoy that too.

See you very soon, bye-bye!