Travis picking lesson -- Clay Pigeons by Blaze Foley

[Glennwillow]

A little over a month ago BobbyMocha here on the AGF sent me a PM asking me for help on Blaze Foley's "Clay Pigions" as played by John Prine. He noted that he specifically needed help with the finger picking pattern. So I decided to use the song, Clay Pigeons, as a vehicle to help teach a version of the Travis Pick.

I hope this is helpful to those here on the forum who might like to learn more about finger picking.

- Glenn

[s11lko]

Very helpful for us lesser mortals mate. Thanks for doing this... x

[srick]

Nice lesson Glenn!

[reeve21]

Hi Glenn, this is great! Very well thought out and nicely produced. Great song, too! Thanks for your time and effort on this, I think it is going to be very helpful to a lot of us.

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by s11lko

Very helpful for us lesser mortals mate. Thanks for doing this... x

Hi s11lko,

Thank you very much! This video was challenging for me and a lot of work, but I have been thinking for a long time that a good video on how to play the Travis pick could be really helpful. The request to do Clay Pigeons really got me thinking that I should finally do this.

I had to make a lot of diagrams and actually figure out how I was playing this song, and for me, that was not easy. But I am glad I did it.

I hope this is helpful to you! Thanks so much for checking into this!

- Glenn

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by srick

Nice lesson Glenn!

Thank you Rick!

I appreciate your watching enough to see what this is about! I very much appreciate the support and kind words Rick!

- Glenn

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by reeve21

Hi Glenn, this is great! Very well thought out and nicely produced. Great song, too! Thanks for your time and effort on this, I think it is going to be very helpful to a lot of us.

Hi Bob!

Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment! I do think this kind of video might be helpful to you and I hope the approach I have taken to teaching the Travis pick makes it a little more accessible to you and others.

Thanks for noticing the production details. Making the diagrams, doing the video recording, and putting in several days of editing and coming up with a script outline means that I did put a lot of time into this. I am glad to have finished this and feel good about the results.

I hope the video teaches a bunch of people how to play the Travis pick!

- Glenn

[Don Lampson]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

A little over a month ago BobbyMocha here on the AGF sent me a PM asking me for help on Blaze Foley's "Clay Pigions" as played by John Prine. He noted that he specifically needed help with the finger picking pattern. So I decided to use the song, Clay Pigeons, as a vehicle to help teach a version of the Travis Pick.

I hope this is helpful to those here on the forum who might like to learn more about finger picking.

- Glenn

Great - As usual! Wish there was such a way to learn songs when I was just starting...

Don

[Carmel Cedar]

Glenn - thank you for doing this. I really like the way you assembled the visual materials and laid out the lesson. Next week I've got some down time coming, and I'm going to work through the lesson, may have more comments (and a heck of a lot of appreciation) then. In the meantime - thank you!!!

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by Don Lampson

Great - As usual! Wish there was such a way to learn songs when I was just starting...

Don

Hi Don!

Thank you for your generous thoughts and comments!

I, too, wish that I could have learned the Travis pick from a lesson like this when I was young. I think I could have learned it a lot faster if there were!

In fact, as I thought through this lesson, I thought just in that way -- how can I make this easier to understand? That's when I started laying out those box diagrams to show the beats, the fingers and the strings to be played. I could have figured out tablature, but I actually thought those box diagrams were easier to understand, especially combined with the chord diagrams, which I also built.

Thanks for your comments, Don!

- Glenn

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by Carmel Cedar

Glenn - thank you for doing this. I really like the way you assembled the visual materials and laid out the lesson. Next week I've got some down time coming, and I'm going to work through the lesson, may have more comments (and a heck of a lot of appreciation) then. In the meantime - thank you!!!

Hi Carmel Cedar!

Oh, that would be great if you did have the time to work through this and see if it helps you! I would be very interested to read your comments when the time comes!

This is the first tutorial that I actually laid out a detailed outline of the script before sitting down to do the video recording. I edited out my turning of outline pages that are on the raw video footage. I wanted to make sure this was laid out in a very logical way and it was complicated enough to where I did not completely trust my memory.

Even without all the edits, the video came out to a little longer than 30 minutes, which I know is long. But I was thinking, if I went to an instructor to learn the Travis pick, I bet he would need at least 30 minutes to demonstrate building the picking pattern like this, in a logical way.

Thanks Carmel Cedar for your kind words of encouragement! I do hope you find this helpful! All the best to you!

- Glenn

[12barBill]

It is so nice to see someone take the time and make the effort to put something together like that and then present it in such an encouraging manner. Comments like "now don't get flustered, this may take a month of just practicing the right hand pattern with open strings" are the kinds of things that make for good, practical and encouraging teaching.

Thanks for "that" Glenn.

[DownUpDave]

I can’t thank you enough for all the time and effort you put into this. I have been wanting to learn Travis picking, looked at a lot of stuff on YouTube, your video is the best. You are a natural teacher, your approach, information and delivery is superb, thank you.

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by Bill Sims

It is so nice to see someone take the time and make the effort to put something together like that and then present it in such an encouraging manner. Comments like "now don't get flustered, this may take a month of just practicing the right hand pattern with open strings" are the kinds of things that make for good, practical and encouraging teaching.

Thanks for "that" Glenn.

Thank you Bill!

I really appreciate the encouragement from you, as well! It's very rewarding to get this kind of feedback! Your comments are greatly appreciated Bill!

- Glenn

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by DownUpDave

I can’t thank you enough for all the time and effort you put into this. I have been wanting to learn Travis picking, looked at a lot of stuff on YouTube, your video is the best. You are a natural teacher, your approach, information and delivery is superb, thank you.

Hi Dave,

Well, you are most welcome, Dave! The most rewarding thing for me would be if potential finger pickers actually got something out of this teaching video. I very much appreciate your kind and encouraging comments!

I don't know that very many of us are natural teachers, but we -- me, especially -- can learn from our mistakes and keep working to do better. I'm sure that for some people that this video could be streamlined even more. There is some repetition in playing the pick pattern multiple times for different chords, but if people are going to play along with the video, I felt that this was needed. Otherwise, viewers have to stop the video and go back and that is more of a hassle. And YouTube is not all that good at allowing you to find your place when you go back.

I do hope this is helpful to you, Dave! I greatly appreciate your taking the time to watch this and then provide comments here!

Thanks so much!

- Glenn