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Fingerstyle Academy

Travis Picking

This style is commonly played on steel string acoustic guitars. Pattern picking is the use of “preset right-hand pattern[s]” while fingerpicking, with the left hand fingering standard chords. This involves playing a steady bass pattern with the thumb and filling out some syncopated rhythms with the fingers of the right hand (assuming a right handed guitarist). It is a great accompaniment style for folk and ragtime music among other styles.

The essence of the Travis pattern is the steady bass against the syncopated figure played with the fingers. The use of the term “syncopated” is perhaps stretching it a bit. This term refers to a rhythm that is “off beat” with reference to the basic pulse. In this case the overall rhythm of the Travis pattern is not syncopated, however when you break the pattern down into its two elements, one part (played with the thumb) is on the beat, and the other part (played with the fingers) is sometimes in between the beat, hence the term syncopated. It is important to understand however, that when both thumb and finger are working together this should not produce a off beat jerky rhythm but instead a lively yet comfortable feeling groove with a steady pulse.Read More »Travis Picking

Fingerstyle Guitar: Low Melody And High Melody

In this tutorial we’ll explore low melody and high melody by studying  a rendition of the song “Danny Boy” in which we’ve applied fingerstyle. The song snippet itself isn’t hard to play or even finger, but you’ll see that there are a quite a few note-related points of interest. This is VERY common in fingerstyle guitar. You really have to understand note values and how they relate, so I decided to add that right here before everything gets too complex. Before we begin this second introduction to fingerstyle guitar, we have to learn something very important.Read More »Fingerstyle Guitar: Low Melody And High Melody