Travis Picking | Dust in the Wind

[Music] hey there welcome to this video today we're gonna learn about a style of finger-picking called Travis style and it's named after an old Kentucky guitarist named Merle Travis and I'm just gonna break this rage right on down for you so we need our thumb our index finger in our middle that's pretty much all we need for this it's a three finger style and if you don't already know the thickest string is called an e followed by a D G B and another e and for this lesson we're just going to forget about these two strings okay forget about those for now and we're going to focus on the middle for your thumb is going to be planted right on that a string your index is going to cover the G and your middle will cover the B string and your thumb is actually going to bounce back and forth between the a and the D string okay and here's the pattern you're gonna pinch the a string and the B string together like this so if you can try to keep your thumb pretty straight you want to avoid having it bent that's kind of considered bad form so if you can straighten out your thumb you just work on that for a second and your other fingers are going to aim for the palm of your hand when they come in and and pick the string okay so it's going to be a motion that's very similar to closing your hand rather than doing this sort of claw thing all right that would be considered not so great okay so we start off with a pinch on the a string the B string thumb comes over to the D plucks that and then your g string okay it's the first half of the pattern we have [Music] okay then the second half you have the a string first then the B string the thumb comes over to D and then index grabs G okay so real slow you got a pinch middle two separate a door two separate and then the middle two separate all together so I think it's worth mentioning that your thumb should be positioned closer to the next side of the guitar and your fingers will be closer to the bridge side all right and actually if you look if you're positioned right you get a little triangle in between them you see that if my thumb is back too far triangle goes away move it forward there it is triangles are good okay so that takes care of your thumb and your fingers as far as your wrist position is really going to be kind of up to you a classical style tends to have a an arch right in here a lot of more country folk styles will often flatten our hand so we can mute certain strings that we're not playing so that's going to be completely up to you I will say that the most important thing is that your hand is comfortable and there isn't any tension anywhere in your hand it should be pretty relaxed okay one of the most important things about learning a new guitar technique in my opinion is to find a way to apply that to a piece of music that you love and you would really enjoy playing and for me when I first started learning this Merle Travis style of picking there was a song called dust in the wind by the band Kansas and if you haven't heard of it it's a really popular song I encourage you to to check it out and the entire song pretty much is this style that we're learning and so the story goes carry lifter in the guitar player of Kansas was teaching himself how to play this this style just like we're doing today and he had a you know a C chord shape like this and he got the the right hand thing going and he found that you know as C s he moved his fingers around he could create a melody that works with this court and with this finger pattern that we're learning and his his wife said boy that sounds really pretty and you know he thought it's just it's just an exercise I'm doing you know but but he kept going with it and you know before before he knew it he was writing this iconic song and I think there's a lot a lot to be taking away from that you know you know for one listen to your wife to encourage your husband and and three no matter where you're at in your guitar playing just enjoy enjoy the process of it and enjoy you know creating music really so for this for this to zest on the wind we're gonna go over just the introduction but I think once you learn the introduction you'll you'll have a really good handle on the rest of the song you need two basic chord shapes you need to see like that and you need an a minor like that okay and there's a melody that just cycles around and around and it's this first fret of the B string which is a C note by the way starts with that then it drops down to the open B goes up to the third fret on that same string which is a D and that's it just goes around and around throughout the introduction so you have a C chord with that C note up in the melody let that go [Music] pinky down here third fret and then drop your first finger back down [Music] okay that's the first part then we shift to our a minor shape like this only we begin with this finger off because the next note is going to be an open B and we have this then pinky comes down try to reach for this this might be tricky get as close to that fret as you can and then that note comes down back to see regular a minor shake okay so from the very beginning we have C I'm just going to call out the the notes from the melody okay and you can see hopefully you can see what chord shape I'm playing okay so the first note C B [Music] d see [Music] be shifting over to here see [Music] be okay since we ended with B it's going to go right back up to D again and then we're going to go to this position C C note be [Music] see over our a minor shape [Music] [Music] see and at the very end we break the pattern and we go I'm going to show you the right hand in a minute but that's this note right here first fret B and the open a string and then second fret of the a string which is a B and pinky on your third fret of the B string which is a d and pluck those two together that might feel a little bit awkward to some people using those two fingers but I think it's the most efficient way to let these fingers drop back into your C okay so again at the at the end of the introduction drop down to see okay I'm gonna cycle through that whole thing okay really slowly [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so now I'm going to show you how to practice this finger picking style so keep in mind this is gonna take some time and you know depending on where you're at with your level of playing it could be a long time you know how shoot I think I think I was like a year working out dust in the wind when I first started out you know I was doing other things I played flat pick for ten years before I even got into finger picking but you know it's a it's a long thing but but the amount of songs that you're gonna be able to play when you have this technique down is is really is really rewarding and they don't all have all have to be as fast as dust in the wind yeah this moves pretty quick this you know there's plenty of other songs that use the same pattern that are a little more relaxed and you can you can find some enjoyment out of playing okay so the first thing you want to do is make sure that that right hand finger pattern is just automatic so just to review it starts off with a thumb and a middle finger your middle finger okay and it's that pinch on the a and the B strings and then thumb comes over to D plucks that on its own and then the G with your index on it on its own and then thumb back to a middle on D come on D index on G okay so you have and the rhythm of that for those of you who might know a little bit about about reading music it starts off with a quarter note followed by all eighth notes and you count it like this one two and three and four and again one two and three and four hands so that very first strike is a little bit longer than the rest of them okay really important to get your your finger order and your rhythm rock solid because we're just going to this right hand or if you're left to your left hand your picking hand is going to be like on autopilot and we're gonna be focusing on playing the melody and the chords with our other hand okay so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to play through the whole intro at a very slow speed we're gonna do 60 okay I'm going to count us in together and do your best to stay with me and and I'll do my best to stay with the metronome at at this speed okay one two three four [Music] okay how'd you do I think I probably rushed almost all of those notes but hey you know we're in this together so left hand you might notice my style my thumb is creeping way over here that's like not good in classical land but hey that's how I do it so find what's comfortable for you you may find that uh that the right hand is cool but the left hand is you know you're getting a lot of buzzy notes stuff like that is happening and and that's completely normal but you know stick with it if you find that that these stretches like on the C chord especially on this a minor chord when you have to reach up to that third fret if you're finding that that's like just not happening feel free to grab a capo and and work this out like you know fret three or something where where the frets are a little bit closer together okay so that's 60 let's let's bump it up again I realize that this might be a lot to take in but you know it's on video so you can stop it and you know go do something else and you know kind of set a set of course for yourself maybe you know maybe you can do 60 by the end of the week and then I don't know next week you can try to do 72 let's do 72 now 1 2 3 4 [Music] you [Music] okay really nice job so I said I was going to talk about that turnaround at the very end of the whole cycle where we have those two quarter notes at the end that go the picking on that you probably already figured this out but I'll just I'll show you a string and B string you have a pinch while this fingers here okay this is just a little part of an a minor chord by the way we're just doing those two notes and then the next two here that I showed you earlier you're gonna pluck or a pinch those same two strings okay I have to practice that separate from everything else okay here we go with the metronome at ninety two one two three four [Music] all righty okay so our goal by the way if we want to play this along to the recording or if we want to perform this record this up to the the proper speed it's gonna be all the way up to 192 okay so again you know know know your limits be good to yourself and you know how fast and you can do this and you know take your time as far as your practice time you want to you want to just make sure you don't get sloppy you know that's really I don't I don't want you to try to get this up to speed when you're not ready so it's important to go through this process and I'm glad you're doing it so we just did 92 I'm just gonna keep ratcheting this up until we get to 192 okay the rest of the lessons just gonna be that so if you feel like you've hit the wall you know shut it down and you just you can just always keep coming back to this and and working through it okay so let's go up to 116 sounds good here we go 1 2 3 4 [Music] alright that was 116 okay so yeah no a note on playing sloppy because I don't want you to feel like just because you know maybe you can't play this quite up to speed with this finger style that doesn't mean that you can't play this song because of the song it is really just some some basic chords that you likely already know and in this rhythm which is 1 2 & 3 & 4 hand you know so really you can you can play through this this tune like this there's nothing wrong with that at all it's out it sounds just fine and you know to be honest with you a lot of people can't even tell the difference you know but you'll know that you're putting all this hard work into it and it's it's hopefully rewarding and and hopefully enjoyable you know it's fun for me anyway so we're gonna keep going that's 1/16 we'll go up to here's one 38 all right 1 2 3 4 [Music] all righty we're getting there that's 138 how about about 160 here we go 160 1 2 3 4 I messed up start again 1 2 3 4 [Music] all right we're moving now that's 160 shoot we're almost there tell you what two more this is 176 here we go one two three four [Music] whoo all right last one 192 so hey if you've if you've been sticking with this and you're with me it's all sounding good congratulations well maybe I shouldn't congratulate you yeah we're not quite there but 192 if you can do that 192 you're you're there you know you know this tune you're ready and you know way before now you can probably even or you could have gone hunt to the rest of the song but you know maybe this is like three years later in the making who knows anyway hopefully it was fun thank you so much for for sticking with it and we'll play it out at that 192 full speed dust in the wind here we go one two three four [Music] thank you have fun everybody

Channel: All Around Guitar

Views: 273,485

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Id: 6d8G9oKpYNg

Length: 25min 40sec (1540 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020