Hi there, I'm Tomas Michaud from Real Guitar Success you knew that. This is
where I help you to learn guitar and more importantly to love your guitar
playing journey. And learning finger picking patterns is certainly a part of
loving your guitar playing journey especially on acoustic guitar. This will
be considered a Travis fingerpicking pattern and of all the versions this
might be one of the simpler versions but still sounds great. Travis fingerpicking
is mostly known for this alternating bass.
It's actually keeping the beat but then the other fingers are adding notes in
between so this pattern is fairly simple. It looks like this in whole. You start
with the thumb and the first finger then the thumb again and then the second
finger. Now all the time throughout the pattern you'll hear this.
This is the basic pattern. You can add a lot of embellishments to it. We're gonna
start just learning this basic pattern today and then I'll give you an exercise
at the end then you can practice it to help you get it down. And it happens to
also be the basic chord progression for the verse of landslide by Fleetwood Mac,
a popular song so let's do this. Go ahead and make your C chord. I'm
making a basic C chord with my first finger 1st fret 2nd string then I
stretch over to the 4th string 2nd fret and 3rd fingers on that fifth string
third fret. Thumb on the fifth string put your first finger on the third string
and your second finger on the second string. So the pattern looks like this
and I'll call it the string names for right now and then I'll go back and make
sure you know which fingers. We start with a thumb that's five, fifth string
then to the third string now the thumb moves to the fourth string and then the
second string so again that's five, three, four, and two.
Five, three, four, two. Now a couple of things quickly so it sounds good. Start
slowly and just get the basic pattern. It doesn't really sound good so you start
speeding it up but you got to get the basic finger motion. The other thing is,
try not to yank out from the guitar. Push your thumb more down so it's okay if I pull
that a little bit like that but don't yank it out like that and it doesn't
make a good sound. And same with your fingers pull it into your palm more than
you're pulling out your hand. Try to keep your hand pretty well steady. The other
problem with pulling your hand out is that you have to keep coming back to the
strings and that little bit of distance will make it difficult to get back in
the right place so back to this basic pattern. We're going to tighten it up a
little bit now. Start with five, three, four, five, three, four and stop there.
We're gonna leave a little gap and you'll see why in a minute so that's the
whole pattern - five, three, four, two, five, three, four so now try it with me nice
and slow. First place your fingers. Thumb on the fifth string. First fingers on the
third string. Second finger is on the 2nd string. Here we go
I'll call it the strings. Five, three, four, two again five, three, four, and pause again start
over - Five, three, four, two - Five, three, four pause - Five, three, four, two - Five, three, four, two
Okay now I'm gonna do a little faster just to give you something to practice
with and then you'll want to do it on your own. Come back to the video. Do it a
few times till it gets smooth. Here's what we're after one two ready start
Okay now I'm gonna give you a little pattern with some chords to practice it.
Once you get it on one chord we're going to keep the right hand on the same
strings but I'm gonna go through three chords. The C is the first one then I'm
gonna take my second finger over to the fifth string second fret and put my pinky
down on the third string second fret No, second string third fret. I know it didn't sound
right. So that's the second string third fret, yes. And then finally the last chord
is called an A minor. I'm putting my first finger back like a C only without
the third finger. Second finger is on that fourth string second fret. Open A
string so the three chords are C. We'll call this one a G with a B - G/B
and then A minor 7 and then we'll go back so it sounds like this ---
So you can keep cycling through those three chords. It's the same as the basic
verse in Landslide by Fleetwood Mac and to play it with the CD you'd have to put
the capo on the third fret to raise the whole thing up so you'd play it up and
hear. I want to show you one little subtlety that you can add to this when
you're feeling ready so watch this for a minute.
That's the first one
now that's why I stopped and I'm gonna flick off with my second finger on the C
chord so it sounds like this ---
It does two things. The pull off which is what we call that makes another note
but it also gets you ready to move over to that G/B so it goes like this
the C - to the G. You don't pull off. To the A minor seven.
Watch. Same finger, same note.
I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, let me know in the comments and leave me
any other ideas of videos that you'd like to see me make of either techniques
or songs. I've enjoyed spending this time with you. Please remember learning
guitar is not a destination it's a journey and you deserve to love your
guitar playing journey. Thanks again for joining me today.