Common Fingerpicking Patterns, Part 3

In this third segment, we'll look at a pattern called Travis Picking. This is used in a lot of different songs, most notably Dust in the Wind by Kansas. That's a title that we have at iVideo Songs, incidentally, so if you wanted to apply this concept, you could check that video out. Travis Picking is a very busy kind of arpeggiated sound, so it has a real bass-heavy type of feel to it. So that should sound familiar to you. So let's look at the exact right hand fingering, and then we'll apply it to a chord progression. In this case, I'm still assigning right hand fingers, but rather than my index, middle, and ring fingers being on the highest strings, in this case, the ring finger is ending up on the second string, and that can change depending on the chord that you're on or the voicing that you want, but they'll still be assigned to strings, and the thumb will still be on the root note of the chord that you're on. So in this case, with a C major chord, I'll have the thumb on the fifth string, and the ring finger on the second string, and those will strike simultaneously. Then I'll go to the index finger on the fourth string, middle finger on the third string, then back to the thumb on the fifth string, then hitting with the ring finger again on the second string, and then hitting the index on the fourth, and the middle on the third. So slowly, it'll look like that. And then in some cases, you can shift these fingers back up, the ring, middle, and index fingers, to the first, second, and third string for a little bit of a different sound. So I'll start back here on the second string, and then as we get further in our progression, when I get to the E minor chord, I'll shift those fingers up. So the chords that we'll be looking at will be a C major, we'll then put a B in the bass, so C major over B, so this is like a bass walk-down figure, going to an A minor 7, adding a G in the bass for an A minor 7 over G, going to an F major, E minor, back to F major, and then to G major. So all together, that'll sound like this. And so you can hear that that's a nice busy sound that really accentuates the bass notes. So in our next segment, we'll look at some more patterns that use multiple strings at the same time. It always starts with the thumb on the bass note, which in this case is on the fifth string, and I'll pluck that simultaneously with my ring finger on the second string. So the first chord is just a C major, then we'll go to a C major 7. This is made by just lifting up your first finger.