Walkdown from C to G

[Muffinhead]

I have become fond of the song "Don't Close Your Eyes" weritten by Bob McGill and recorded by Keith Whitley. I am doing it in the key of G and on the first line I play G C D G and walk down to Em. On the last line of the verse it ends on a C chord and the chorus begins with a G. I would like to walk down from C to G and so far I have not come up with anything that I like.

Can you help me out with suggestions. BTW I am finger picking the chords in a basic arpeggio style.

[Bingoccc]

Not a walk down but it may break things up for you. Either hammer on to or pull off of the 4th string E, hit the G on the open 3rd string then the G bass on the 6th to start the G,

[rick-slo]

Base line walk ups or walk downs are usually just using notes in the key you are in - pretty linear, pretty simple. So from C to G a walk down is C-B-A-G. Get fancier if you wish but you can get by with the above, especially country style.

[Smitty70]

Are you throwing a A minor in? Second time thru in each chorus Keith goes from E minor to A minor to D7 and back to C. Been fooling around with it myself since reading your post. I couldn't find any thing online that shows that progression but it's good.

[Hotspur]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

Base line walk ups or walk downs are usually just using notes in the key you are in - pretty linear, pretty simple. So from C to G a walk down is C-B-A-G. Get fancier if you wish but you can get by with the above, especially country style.

This.

Usually getting fancy mucks things up here, although one variation that works well is to drop a note and repeat the first one. e.g, if you don't like the B you could do C-C-A-G. I could see why you might not like the half step, which in some contexts can feel like it's "fighting" the downward movement.

But there aren't too many options unless you want to get much more complex.

[Muffinhead]

Thanks guys, I have some good suggestions here to try. Now all I need is a little time to try them. It's been a crazy week.

[SFCRetired]

Steve Kaufman has an instructional book on Flat Picking and he has a section that has a lot of walk downs and ups.

[stanron]

If you are finger picking you can play these harmonies.

E╓─0───────────────┐
B╟─────3───1───0───┤
G╟─────────────────┤
D╟─────────────────┤
A╟─3───2───0───────┤
E╙─────────────3───┘

If you are flatpicking you can play these chords.

E╓─0───────────────┐
B╟─1───3───1───0───┤
G╟─0───0───2───0───┤
D╟─2───0───0───0───┤
A╟─3───2───0───2───┤
E╙─────────────3───┘

If I remember correctly these are played with syncopation.

[Ed-in-Ohio]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

...snip...So from C to G a walk down is C-B-A-G. ...snip...

That's the ticket right there.

[DMFP]

Originally Posted by stanron

If you are finger picking you can play these harmonies.

E╓─0───────────────┐
B╟─────3───1───0───┤
G╟─────────────────┤
D╟─────────────────┤
A╟─3───2───0───────┤
E╙─────────────3───┘

Yep 10ths are great. You could also take the top line down an octave and just do thirds like this

E╓─-───────────────┐
B╟─────-───-───--───┤
G╟─────────────────┤
D╟─2───0───────────┤
A╟─3───2───3───2───┤
E╙─────────5───3───┘