Guitar Travis Picking

Hi! Jim here from learnfingerstyleguitar.com. Today, we are going to take a look at Travis Picking. Now, Travis Picking is a form of alternate bass picking. Its like characterized by having a muted, kind of, driving bass on note going on, with the melody being played on the top. It was named for Merle Travis, who was a pretty big star in his days. He wrote a lot of great songs, both instrumental and vocal, and has had a big influence on that, probably just about everybody that finger picks whether they know it or not. Merle had some real unusual characteristics to explain, you want to take a look at and then we are going to talk about, how even though we are Travis Picking or not we are going to do quite like Merle, okay. One of his idiosyncrasies, if you will, is a fact that he chorded with his thumb, on his left hand. Now, you and I might play a ninth chord, like this, or even like this, Merle would hook his thumb over and play it more like this. This will allow him to use his thumb, third and fourth fingers to play the melody with melody length. Now, some people have pretty good thumbs, and can do it, but I don't think, that works quite that well. So, that's a kind of stretch for a lot of this. Another thing that was unique to his style was he played all those notes and all that music, with just his thumb, and his first finger. The thumb, hitting that only the bass notes with some of the melody notes. Really quick strong, right hand. When Merle played his alternating bass or Boom Chick, a lot of people called it. The boom B on the a beat and a Chick on the offbeat, like that. He would play his Boom on a single string but his Chick would be on several muted strings together. It would be more like -- so, pretty powerful sound, but it's not quite as clean and well defined a sound as what we now think of is Travis picking. One of the function, Travis's the biggest devotaries was Chat Atkins and I think of what a lot of is considered to be Travis Picking now, will more rightly be called Atkins Picking. Because Chat is the one that helped popularize the Chick being on single string too. So, you have got a lot of, got more clarity too it. To get that trade more bass note sound, you have to mute the string with probably your right hand thumb and the area you are going to use is right in here. You will have to come, pull around with a little bit of your self, to get it lined up just right. But what you want to do, is take that thumb heel and lay it across the sixth, fifth and fourth strings by the bridge. That allows the strings to become dead like that, so you get that muted note, okay. Now if you go to learnfingerstyleguitar.com, on to the Travis Picking page, you are going to see, some tab and some exercises there. The first one is just going to be using the thumb, we are not going to use the fingers. To make sure, that we are on the same page, as theirs let's talk about what strings we are on okay. Let's say we are in the sixth string, for example, I am talking about biggest string. One that's closest to your chin. And so the biggest number string, sixth string, is the biggest string. Our first string is going to be the skinniest string. So, the littlest string gets the littlest number and of course the first string is one that's closest to the floor. So, we are going to take a look at example one. For example one, we want to rest our hand on the six, five, and four strings, by the bridge. We are not going to do anything with our left hand here. Just going to work our right hand. And we want to go six ,five, I am sorry; six, four, five, four; six, four, five, four, in an alternating pattern like that. You want to do this until that you can pretty much do it in your sleep, and until you have driven yourself, and everybody else is throwing out nuts with it. Now, on that point if you can do it on a over power it, you have got it down pretty good. But, it's crucial to be able to do that to play that style. For example, today we are going to play a C chord, just a regular Garden variety C chord. And we are going to play a pattern like this, this string and the second strings together. The fourth string by itself, the sixth string and the third string together. Now, when you do that, you are going to have to take your ring finger here and bounce it up to the G on the sixth string. I guess, if you wanted to, you could play with your thumb. It depends on what's the easiest for you. In my book, there is not really right way for this. It's whatever you are most fluid with, and most comfortable with. So we are going to play a pattern. Example three, is going to elaborate on that song. We are going to play a pattern of five and one together. Four, six, and three together. Five and two together; four, six, and three together and four. So, it goes something like. So those were some good patterns to start developing right hand independence with. And the other thing that you might do it on that some people find beneficial is you might kind of sync a pitch or single notes on here. The notes, that you are playing with your finger like, something like that. Just play around with that a little bit, so that once you get the thumb going, you can start to have some independence in your fingers, because, while it's great that the thumb is an autopilot. For this kind of stuff, you don't want your fingers to beat so much, because you want them to kind of have a mind of their own so they can play the melodies and that's what it is. Of course, the thumb pick is crucial deploying this stuff. Some pointers as far as, what you look for in the thumb pick, is you want something that has a good fit to it. You don't want it to be so tight, it cuts off the circulation. And you don't want it so loose, that it's rolling around on your thumb. The type of plastic is important. Different plastics have different sounds. I like Delrin. They might get in line some pig manufacturers make flag pigs out of Delrin also. But to me, it's got a smoother, warmer, rounder sound. Also they don't crack on the spine like this. The other types of plastic I have used, you have to keep jamming upon your thumb, over a period of time, like crack along the spine, and they have loosen up so much that at times I get fatigued in my crack there. The other thing is the length of the blade. My personal preference is for a shorter blade like this. I wanted to kind of be in line with my finger tips when my hand is in playing position. And that way I don't have to roll my hand outward so that my blade or my pick doesn't get tangled up in the strings. Those are all the things that appealed me. I would suggest you go to the store and buy a dozen of them, different kinds, they are pretty cheap and experiment with them and find out which one is -- so you choose a bass that's -- that's a great thing about his finger style of playing. It allows us to express ourselves in all kinds of ways and the equipments is one of them. I hope this will be beneficial to you, you have learned something, and I will look forward to seeing you again.