Once you feel comfortable with the basic pattern, I want you to go ahead and try this tune. It is called Travis tune for obvious reasons. And what we are going to do is that it starts off on the same middle four strings that we have been using to learn the basic pattern. And then, we are going to move down and our thumb and the fingers are going to explore some other chords. And it goes like this.
(Music Demo)
The same pattern but now, you add some chords and it become interesting. So, I am going to take it again. I am going to slow it down. Watch my thumb. My thumb is keeping that
(Music Demo)
One, two, three, four. My fingers are doing the exact same syncopated pattern that we were doing when we warmed up here. So here we go. One, two, three, four.
(Music Demo)
Okay. A couple of things, once again, you are going to be doing the G with the B in the root which is this and you make sure that you use your 2nd and 4th fingers there.
(Music Demo)
A minor 7 is just an A minor minus your third finger, C with a G in the bass is just like a C chord with your 3rd finger hammered here on the bottom. Fadd9, once again, you need to work on playing an F position using your thumb because that is going to be absolutely essential in doing finger style music because you need to do that
(Music Demo)
Going and then you can do
(Music Demo)
All manner of melodic things on the top, in this case, you are doing an F chord but we are going to leave the 3rd string open which makes it into a Fadd9 which is just a gorgeous chord which goes
(Music Demo)
It is very kind of mysterious open sounding chord as opposed to the “more happy” upbeat F chord.
Other than that, be careful of when your thumb changes. Your thumb is going to change occasionally. Like the first time that it changes, it goes to the C with the G on the root. It goes from an Am7 like this. Watch
(Music Demo)
Your thumb goes to the 6th string between the 6th and the 4th string
(Music Demo)
The same thing when you go to the Fadd9
(Music Demo)
Other than that, just pay close attention to where your thumb goes. Make sure that you learn that initial pattern correctly and this song should be a piece of cake and you will be ready to go on to the next tunes using Travis Picking.
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