Travis Picking help

[Riverwolf]

Hello all,
I have become bored with my playing and decided to take a different road.
I am looking for a Travis picking course(s).
I have dabbled some in the past and seem to have natural thumb and finger isolation ability. (?)
But I want a course that starts simple with simple chord shapes and SLOWLY moves on.
I do best with a regimented approach.
I want to only use thumb and one or two fingers.
Traditional fingerstyle is out as I have limited use of both pinkies.
Using Youtube I have about half of "Landslide" down in 2 days.
But I don't want to learn that way.
Looking for book courses and online courses.
Thanks!

[Blueser100]

Mark Hanson's books got me started on learning Travis picking years ago, and to this day, it's a basic skill that I rely on every time I play.

https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-...s%2C149&sr=8-1

[Riverwolf]

Originally Posted by Blueser100

Mark Hanson's books got me started on learning Travis picking years ago, and to this day, it's a basic skill that I rely on every time I play.

https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-...s%2C149&sr=8-1

Thanks just saw that on Amazon. I also am wanting an online course or group of lessons.

[reeve21]

Originally Posted by Riverwolf

Thanks just saw that on Amazon. I also am wanting an online course or group of lessons.

Check out Toby Walker’s video lessons.

[Riverwolf]

Originally Posted by reeve21

Check out Toby Walker’s video lessons.

Somewhat familiar.
Does he also do Travis picking or just fingerstyle?

[Robin, Wales]

I play a few songs Travis style, and started with the style about a year ago simply because I wanted to add Pancho and Lefty and Clay Pigeons to my set. Plus now I use it for Boots of Spanish Leather and If I needed You.

I must have a very different learning style to you (the OP) as I would have struggled to learn from a book or anything "regimented". To learn, I watched the original performances on YouTube and listened to the records. I did find one lesson on YouTube covering the basics, and from what I picked up, the style is very straightforward:

You get your thumb going in an alt bass pattern.

Then with one or two fingers (I use two) you are either pinching in time with a thumb strike or picking between thumb strikes.

Anything fancier you hear on a record is because the player is doing a hammer on or pull off.

And there may be a bass run or walk down with the thumb pick at some point.

And that's pretty much it.

Just keep that thumb going and you can get away with murder and it will sound fine. If I watch the same player performing the same song at different concerts or recordings they mix it up on the fly anyway - it's that thumb rhythm that's the constant, everything else is just window dressing.

Mind you, I am probably coming at this from a totally different direction than the one that would suit your needs.

[reeve21]

Originally Posted by Riverwolf

Somewhat familiar.
Does he also do Travis picking or just fingerstyle?

He has some materials that teach thumb with alternating bass and syncopation on top. Folk songs, John Hurt, etc. I think of that style as Travis but I’m not sure if that is what you’re after.

[Jamolay]

Originally Posted by Riverwolf

Somewhat familiar.
Does he also do Travis picking or just fingerstyle?

Wouldn’t “Travis Picking” just be a subset or type of finger style? What is the difference?

To me, finger style is playing with your fingers. Do what ever feels good and works for the sound you are trying to make.

[Brent Hutto]

Originally Posted by Jamolay

Wouldn’t “Travis Picking” just be a subset or type of finger style? What is the difference?

To me, finger style is playing with your fingers. Do what ever feels good and works for the sound you are trying to make.

It's a particular subset where the goal is to sound like Merle Travis or any of the great players who've adopted his style. To my ears, it's quite distinctive.

I mean, classical guitar is played with your fingers. But it doesn't like anything like other "finger" styles, right?

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Robin, Wales

To learn, I watched the original performances on YouTube and listened to the records.

Me too, except it was records only for me. This was round three decades before YouTube...

Originally Posted by Robin, Wales

You get your thumb going in an alt bass pattern.

Then with one or two fingers (I use two) you are either pinching in time with a thumb strike or picking between thumb strikes.

Yes, that's basically it, except that you need to get the finger(s) in there ASAP. Pretty much everyone can get the thumb going, but pretty much everyone's thumb rhythm falls apart when the finger comes in.

I discovered that when trying to teach the "thumb first" approach. IMO (and IME!) the only way is to start with complete patterns, but real slow. That's how I taught myself, and is how Mark Hanson does it too.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Jamolay

Wouldn’t “Travis Picking” just be a subset or type of finger style? What is the difference?

Travis picking is another term for "alternating bass", aka "thumb style". It's specific to folk and blues, and quite different from classical fingerstyle. (Some classical pieces do have a kind of alternating bass line, but it;s not ruled by the thumb like the folk style is.)

The irony is that Merle Travis himself had a very distinctive and unusual technique: using thumb and index only. Most players in the style named after him (which of course he didn't invent) use thumb and two fingers and sometimes three.

There is one element which distinguished his style (and his followers) from other alternating bass styles, which is the damped bass. I.e., the Travis style tends to be a kind of swinging country/jazzy sound - as in Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed, Tommy Emmanuel. Folk players that use the style tend not to damp the bass strings, and often play in straight time, not swing.

[Brent Hutto]

Originally Posted by JonPR

There is one element which distinguished his style (and his followers) from other alternating bass styles, which is the damped bass. I.e., the Travis style tends to be a kind of swinging country/jazzy sound - as in Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed, Tommy Emmanuel. Folk players that use the style tend not to damp the bass strings, and often play in straight time, not swing.

Yes, to me that style of swinging country picking is the only thing that brings "Travis" to mind when I hear it.

The world of "fingerstyle guitar" seems riddled with 100 different styles and the practitioners of each one expect other people to know what they mean when they say "fingerstyle guitar". But it's such a broad term it can mean almost anything.

At least with Travis style there's one clear historical thread making it clear (with hundreds of recordings to back it up) what that specific style sounds like in the hands of many great players.

[JonPR]

Following on from Robin's summary of the technique, here's how a typical pattern looks for a C major chord:

------0----------|0---------0----|
------------1----|------1--------|
------0-------0--|----0-------0--|
-----------------|---------------|
--3-------3------|3-------3------|
-----------------|---------------|
  1   2   3 & 4   1   2 & 3 & 4  
      m     i     m     i   m
  T   T   T   T   T   T   T   T

There's only three kinds of thing going on there:

1. Thumb only (beats 1, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4)

2. Finger only (3&, 2&, 3&). This could be the same finger, or any two fingers. Middle and index would just be the most common choice.

3. Thumb and finger together - "pinch stroke" (beats 2, 1)

The way to practice this is to take it beat by beat, slicing each bar into 4 vertical slices, as it were. Obviously you keep the thumb rhythm regular, and the hard part is getting the difference between pinch strokes on the beat, and the "finger-only" strokes between the beats. As slow as necessary to keep it all steady. And of course you can - and probably should! - treat each of those measures as an exercise in itself, before joining them together in the complete pattern.

But the point is to have thumb and fingers together from the start. The thumb is not "independent". It just feels that way when you've mastered the technique.

As Robin says, there are often complications involving hammer-ons or pull-offs, but they are the fret hand's business, of course. And sometimes you can have an extra finger to play three notes at once (to accentuate a chord), or to maybe add 16ths between the 8ths (or triplet 8ths). But that's a few stages down the line.

[Riverwolf]

Thanks for the answers.
I have been playing a lot of Carter style with a pick for years.
They seem very similar.
I once took a beginner fingerstyle course on Jamplay.
Lack of enthusiasm for the song choices dampened my drive.
I did order the book mentioned above.

[Glennwillow]

Hi Riverwolf,

I have never put a course together on Travis picking, but you might get something out of my tutorial on how to play the fairly simple "Clay Pigeons" song HERE.

- Glenn