Basic Fingerstyle - Travis Finger Picking - Folk Guitar Lesson [FO-108]

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!

Find the related course notes on the following link

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

It's nearly all 100% free and card details are not needed to register. You have everything to gain, and nothing to lose! My theory course is the best on the web (and one of the very few paid parts of the site) and it's awesome - if your theory is lacking and you wanna fix it - that's the place to go! At my store, you'll find a huge range of super cool guitar themed t-shirts, all my (paper) books, merch and lots more 🙂 and we got proper fun backing tracks for you to jam along with too!

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Please watch: "The Justin Guitar Beginner Song Course by FourChords for iOS & Android JustinGuitar Easy Guitar Song"
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[Plushiedelude]

Hey Justin, great lesson mate.

One thing i might recommend is having your students learn "dust in the
wind" by kansas as theyre learning all this. it was one of the first songs i learned and ive never had trouble with separating my thumb frm my fingers

[Zsolto]

I love it when you begin to jam or play up-tempo at the end of the lessons. That is the part that gives me the most and the best ideas. Thank you also for that, Justin.
Zsolt

[SketchingRocks]

Love the BLUES part you do...thks for this. Hope to see more with this picking and blues etc.

[James]

Thanks for the lesson Justin. I took lessons for 4 years and these videos are like continuation of my lessons. You're awesome!!!

[DirtyCs]

Playing around with that C7 D and now cant get Harry Nilson's coconut out my head... Cool Lesson Justin.

[SeerWS]

An alternative for anyone struggling to maintain his chord is to use an open c major chord, using your pinkie to alternate the bass note on the 3rd fret on the low E string.

[crazyflod]

Great lesson
You make it look so easy

[galtun]

great for practicing right hand. thanks.

[GameLevelEditor]

I struggled a long time till that sounded somewhat like I was getting it. But its worth it. Merle is tricky. Thom Bresh says that Chet articulated Boom Chick / Boom Chuck individually to both the E and A strings because when he heard Merle thats what he thought he was doing. Either way both made great guitar music. Seems Merle thumbed across both the E and A strings together to get a heavier punch to his melody line. It sounded tight still though.

[javadude]

Great lesson. Merle Travis was an incredible guitar player and I hope this lesson will inspire some of your viewers to check him out. There are plenty of videos of him on YouTube.

[carlog]

Thankyou very much for this interesting and well explained "trick"! ;-)

[matejkrajnc]

The original Travis-picking is two fingers only. :-) The pattern shown in the video is more of a Chet Atkins style, based on Travis-picking, but elaborated with additional fingers. Another interesting, but less complex two-finger style is Cash-picking.

[Rodneyuplonka]

lovin the blues pattern at the end haha just got it under my fingers lolreally cool, thanks mate for another good lesson

[Tyt]

Justin could you please have a go at Mark Knophler - In the Heartland. It seems impossible 😢. Thank you

[mattstraszewski]

To be precise it looks more like Chet Atkins picking style. Merle Travis while picking used only his thumb and index finger. Other fingers were "glued" to the guitar. :-) But, that's not really important here and it's a very valuable lesson!

[eDiabRO]

Great vids...I've learned a lot.This one is a piece of cake for a classic guitar player

[DistortedV]

Can you do a tutorial on EJ picking as well?

[StevePhillips]

Great lesson. Good clarity too rare thing in such a Mad World dude, expect I will add your folk DVD to my collection of Justin's things soon. All your DVDs and book is good value for the money. Will you be making new album someday and another gig soon?

[Funtokill]

Justin! You should do a "Going to California" tutorial.

[GhostOfKratos]

I learned Julia by the Beatles a while ago so this wasn't so bad.