travis picking??

[jackleg]

i love music...all kinds of music. but the style that blows my mind the most is bluegrass/fingerstyle. ive not been playing long and i wouldn't say i'm a guitar player at all...but i really like to play with guitars :D .

i'm interested in learning some more technique when it comes to fingerstyle but im lost when it comes to getting started. i have fooled around enough that my right hand fingers know where "home" is (thumb for lower three strings and high three with middle, index, ring) but i could use some advice on where to find lessons a little more in depth and explanatory than jus looking at some tabs and listening to chet atkins and tommy emmanuel...i can see and hear what is going on but i am far too hackish to break it down and do it myself yet.

my biggest worry is that i'll fool around too much and wind up with bad habits that i'll have to spend months breaking before i can make more progress. i've already noticed some and i am in desperate need of some fundamental fingerstyle advice before i end up getting frustrated and throwing my baby across the room.

[ghandi234]

look no further! solo guitar playing by frederick m. noad. this is one fantastic book. you also gain the ability to sight read while practicing correct finger picking techinque. (classical approach) i really enjoyed this book, it is really worth getting.

[JohnJumper]

My advice is to get a teacher and take some classical lessons. I took almost 3 years of classical pretty late in my guitar playing years and it corrected a lot of bad habbits. Additionally, once I nailed down some of the classical technique the types of picking you are interested in are pretty easy to learn.

There is also a good magazine "Fingerstyle Guitar" - I am not sure if it is still being publish - but it has a lot of great stuff for the type of stuff you are interested in. Each issue comes with a CD and the tab...

[Malcolm]

If you are into Bluegrass, perhaps Frailing the Guitar, Unleashing the Clawhammer in Guitar Fingerpicking by Steve Baughman - Mel Bay Publications is worth a look see. Lot easier than Travis picking and would make a good first step into fingerpicking.

Not exactly clawhammer, but about as close as you can get on a guitar. Comes with a CD and gives you several basic bum-dit-di licks then shows how to use them with the classic banjo songs. Shady Grove, Go Tell Aunt Rhodie, Cripple Creek, etc.

[psiXaos]

You should keep an eye on some things when you finger-pick:





First of all, try to develop 'light-finger' on your 'picking-hand'. That's the single most important thing to do, in fact. I believe there is a great article about 'light-finger' here, although its for fretting-hand, you can apply the concepts to your picking-hand. While doing this, be sure that when you pick a string with your right hand finger it comes back to its initial position naturally (try to keep your right hand in front of you in the air, and completely relaxed. Then with your other hand push it in its picking direction and quickly let your pushing finger slide-off of the light-finger. The light-finger should come back to its original position pretty quickly without any muscle movement on your own. That is the 'light-picking-finger')
Practice with your right hand fingers to separate their movement like you do with your left hand. The fingers are called starting from thumb as: p-i-m-a (some maniacs use the pinky as the fifth finger but I don't know its letter). Practice with sequences like i-a-m-a, a-m-a-i, a-i-a-m both on their respective strings and on the same string (There is an amazing etude book which helped me a lot, but I couldn't remember its name now :rolleyes: ).
Try to keep the line from your arm to your hand straight. Your wrist shouldn't bend parallel to the guitar board. You can keep a small angle perpendicular to the board, but wrist movement should be at minimum for speed picking.
Keep all your muscles relaxed. This may take some time, I was getting stressed like a stone statue at the beginning.
Like others have said, I too recommend finding a good teacher. A teacher can correct mistakes you are not aware of or didn't find important.
Also left hand in classical guitar is different from what we do in electric. Try to keep your palm as parallel as possible to the neck and make sure that your fingers are fretting perpendiculat to the board. 2nd and 3rd should be really perp. 1st and 4th can have an angle (opposite to each other if you can visualize what I am saying).
Hope this helps jackleg, keep playing with your guitar :D .

[DanF]

Quick answer: the little finger is 'c' giving you pimac: pulgar, indicio, medio, anular, and (alternately) chico, chiquita or cuñeo.

As far as that "light finger" thing goes I would just add that that approach depends on what kind of stroke you're playing. If you are playing rest strokes that is counterintuitive (actually you can't play a rest stroke with the finger returning to it's beginning position because that's what makes it a rest stroke).

Although, travis picking is essentially all free stroke (not that I think most Travis pickers use that terminology).

UPDATE: Oh yeah, just to anticipate any questions. A rest stroke is when you place (for example) your i finger on the 3rd string and then pick the string (with just your finger, the hand doesn't move) and let the i finger swing all the way through and literally land on the 4th string and rest there. A free stroke on the other hand "curves" and misses the adjacent string. Rest strokes are generally used for melody stuff and free strokes are generally used for chords and arpeggios.

-Dan

[psiXaos]

Ah, yes DanF, I forgot about the rest strokes. I use them generally to emphasize a certain note in a melody, since it gives a stronger/louder sound.

Btw, I've realized I am not familiar with the term Travis-picking. I just jumped on seeing the fingerpicking word. What is travis-picking really?

[jackleg]

travis picking is a technique originated by merle travis a long time ago. terribly popular in old time country music and bluegrass...uses the thumb index and middle finger...chet atkins was prficient with it. it works real well for arpeggiated stuff but is lacking (imo) when it comes to playing classical style (which i am scared to attempt on my own). "dust in the wind" by kansas and "landslide" by fleetwood mac are probably the most widely known examples of basic travis picking. more complicated would be the chet atkins rendition of "mr bojangles" which i highly recomend for anyone who wants to hear the lovely things this technique can do. also an album called "the day the fingerpickers took over the world" with atkins and tommy emmanuel. shortly after posting i took upon the task of finding the essentials of travis picking on another site and have licked the intro to dust in the wind...still working on the verse and chorus but trying to pay attention to the warnings listed here...more advice would not hurt my feelings, also any thoughts or experiences regarding this style would be fun to hear.

[DanF]

One cat that may be worth checking out is Laurence Juber, I personally find his stuff much more interesting than Tommy Emmanuel. I think the strength of playing fingerstyle is the texture of sound you can get from your instrument. Anyway it may not be your bag but his sound is one other approach to fingerstyle.

-Dan

[JohnJumper]

Here are a couple of samples I just recorded for this thread (sorry about the shabby execution). These are what I think are Travis Picking type patterns (I could be wrong). My dad also used to call them double thumbing. The first is a picking pattern from that Beatles tune "Country Boy" or maybe it is from the John Denver version. The next is kind of the "Dust in the Wind" pattern. The third is the same picking pattern as "Dust in the Wind" but I added a hammer on. The last is just something picking over a blues pattern - I am not sure where I picked that one up. Anyone else have some samples they could post - maybe some other rythmic patterns? I would be interested in hearing them...


If you are looking for general finger style guitar playing Phil Keaggy is a great guitar player. Check out his album "Beyond Nature"!

[VidKid]

L. Juber is great!!! Guy Van Duser is also not mentioned much. He was the guy that arranged Chet's Stars and Stripes Forever and there's a Mel Bay publication called "Stride Guitar" by Guy Van Duser, which is really tough stuff. Guitar Boogie Shuffle, Alligator Crawl along with Stars and Stripes are top-notch show stoppers, if you can play them!!! I've personally learn and re-learn these selections for years and still can't get them right.

Another incredible player, who is more of a neo-modern classical guitar composer, is Andrew York. Anything he does is also great, breaking new grounds for new classical guitar compositions. He plays jazz also.

Jazz guitarist, Earl Klugh is usually not known for his solo playing, but Earl Klugh/Solo Guitar CD is worth a listen and is difficult to play as Guy Van Duser. Really nice arrangements on standards with alt bass going on with jazz chords.

Everybody knows Leo Kottke and how great of a player he is, especially his 12-string stuff. I rip all my nails on that stuff. Airproofing is impossible to play. I don't know how he does it keeping everything going.

As an alternative to F.Noad, The Carcassi Classical Method book has 24 etudes which are fun to play and sound really nice.

Just my personal thoughts on fingerstyle,
VidKid

[Gunnan]

You can check solo guitar blues / jazz songs by Joe Pass.
One that I use hybrid picking on is Blues for Basie but it would sound alot better with fingers I just cant AP with my fingers.
I dont personaly play fingerstyle but thats one place to start if you are interested in blues music. I assume that all the blues before chicago were being played with fingers so you could check Robert Johnson, Honeyboy, or Sonhouse.

[adamblong]

I have to say that Tommy Emmanuel and Laurence Juber are both fantastic guitarists. I think there are two camps of "fingerpicking" guitar: first would be more of the melodic, fluid, "new age" or Celtic (Alex de Grassi/Pierre Bensusan) sounding music ... next would be the more pickin' genre ala Chet Atkins, Tommy Emmanuel, Doyle Dykes. Both styles are wonderful and worth diving into and at the level at which these guys are, you really can't lose if you're looking for inspiration ... but if you are getting into fingerstyle, they may be a bit ambitious to start out with.
If you can, I'd recommend finding someone with experience (not necessarily classical) that can help you with technique, because your RIGHT HAND is the key to fingerstyle obviously. With whichever style you choose to develop, they share the same fundamentals involving the right hand and body kinesthetics.
I've attached a couple of links that might help with explaining what I think is omportant in right hand technique for fingerstyle. Plus I've attached an MP3 and TAB that is a fairly simple (intermediate) practice for Travis Picking.

Right Hand Position and Mechanics (http://www.theguitarsuite.com/rthandposition.html)
Right Hand Attacks (http://www.theguitarsuite.com/rthandattacks.html)

My apologies for the crap recording
MP3 of my song "Roadtrip" (http://www.theguitarsuite.com/mp3s/Roadtrip.mp3) ... a decent example of Travis Picking and not way difficult

TAB for the above song (http://www.theguitarsuite.com/freepdfs/Roadtrip.pdf)

Hope this helps somebody.
Adam Long
the guitar Suite.com (http://www.theguitarsuite.com)
designed for the acoustic and fingerstyle guitarist

[henryclifford]

Part of the difficulity in getting started with fingerpicking is focusing in on a particular stylistic approach - From Maybelle Carter (1st generation folk traditionalist) and her contemporaries (Merle Travis, Chet Atkins and Tommy Emmanuel), to jazz, pop, blues, Celtic, classical, flamenco and new age impressionists like Preston Reed. Go to a fingerstyle competition and you'll quickly hear what I mean. In fact, most fingerstyle competitions allow use of a thumb pick. I can't think of a more diverse sounding musical "style". Lots of choices! One thing in common is that they all use at least the thumb and one finger on the right hand.

Travis picking typically relies only on the thumb (w/pick) along with the i and m fingers of the right hand. A common characteristic of Travis picking is that the RH palm mutes the bass notes while the melody rings clear on the treble strings. Merele Travis' Nine Pound Hammer or Cannonball Rag is a typical example. Perhaps more accessible is Chet Atkins' or Tommy Emmanuel's version of J. Loudermilk's Windy and Warm.

Classical guitar instruction is unsurpassed at developing independance and efficient use of both left and right hands. Especially if the music you want to pursue is more traditional, then consider learning *some* classical guitar. Also realize that many prople who teach classical also play/teach steel string (e.g., Michael Chapdalaine) so don't assume you're going to have to deal with some inflexible enforcer from the 19th century.

Regardless of approach, save yourself years by finding the best teacher you can. Check with the music dept. of a nearby university. Attend a performance by a accompolished and ask them if they know of anyone teaches in your area. Also, Bill Kannengiser's video, Effortless Classical Guitar will be very helpful in understanding proper basic mechanics.

Side Note - Both Bill and Andrew York (mentioned above) studied with Pepe Romero at USC. Pepe is *incredibly* gifted - check out his CDs 'Guitar Solos' or 'Famous Spanish Guitar Music'. Rodrigo (the composer) could have had his pick of guitarist's perform at the 50th anniversy "Concert of Aranjuez" at the Palace of Aranjuez. He choose Pepe.

[DanF]

Hey Henry, excellent first post! Welcome to iBM! I have to admit that Preston Reed is WAY too out there for me :P There is certainly a lot of variety though as you said.

-Dan