Top 4 Fingerpicking Guitar Patterns (Travis Picking Style)
I’m going to show you the top four finger-picking
guitar patterns in the Travis picking style Travis picking is a finger-picking approach named after
the guitarist Merle Travis these four patterns are the most common and most basic finger-picking
guitar patterns to learn you can play them as they are or you can expand on them in the future
to play some very advanced-sounding fingerstyle guitar and solo guitar arrangements which is what
players like Chet Atkins did these finger-picking patterns that are used all over the place in any music
that has somewhat of a finger-picking guitar sound folk guitar country music singer
songwriter music the Beatles used Simon and Garfunkel Bob Dylan and tons and tons
of artists today are using some of these exact fingerpicking patterns to accompany themselves
the signature of this travis-picking sound is that one’s thumb is constantly alternating bass
notes keeping a consistent sound going in the bass role and then the fingers are
filling out the chords with various patterns and notes on top of that and then the melody can even
be played on top of those two things as well when you put that all together it creates
this very appealing fingerpicking guitar sound because we’re playing the role of at least
two musicians if not three we get this full rich self-contained kind of music sound with just
one instrument I’m going to show you each of the four finger-picking guitar patterns with different
string groupings because different chords use different strings I’m going to demonstrate each
pattern through a common chord progression slowly and then fast and then I’ll also demonstrate
each finger-picking pattern with a section of a real song so we can hear how it sounds in real
music that’s what we’re going to cover let’s do it I’m Jared Borkowski from soundguitarlessons.com
where I help guitarists gain more creative control over music so we can express ourselves
more freely if you’re new here welcome please follow and subscribe i have new videos every week
okay so the first pattern is called the inside-outside pattern we’re gonna use a g chord for
this and every pattern is named based on what’s happening above the bass because the bass in
all four patterns are going to be the same so this is the bass line if you’re playing
a g chord it’s the one five of g okay so that’s just going this alternating base and
then the inside outside means that you’re going to play out of these two notes the third string
and the second string the inside note and then the outside tone it’s just very simple alternating
between those you have a base inside base outside base inside base outside that’s it as simple
as it is inside outside pattern this is g quick side note don’t ever put your fingers
down with the left hand that you don’t need we’re not playing a g chord like this
with this finger down with this finger down I’m just playing holding down at least
this third fret on the sixth string and then with any sixth string rooted chord you’re skipping
the string and you’re going to play the rest of the notes above the root on the fourth third and
second string so we’re playing the root down here on the sixth string and then you’re playing
string three thumb jumps up to string four seconds and then second string with your m finger
with your middle finger okay this is the pattern the inside-outside pattern now if you’re going to
play a fifth-string rooted chord let’s go to a c chord here then the pattern is just
contained in all four metal strings so this is the inside-outside pattern on c or
any chord that’s rooted off the fifth string by default these things can make
alterations on them which we’ll talk about another time but that’s the fifth string rooted
chords if it’s a fourth string rooted chord then you’re just playing top four strings only so this
is a d chord and you’re playing the same pattern and then you got thumb inside thumb outside
thumb inside thumb outside okay so with all of these patterns the string groupings are the same
sixth string rooted chord you’re playing strings five and then four three two fifth string rooted
chord you’re playing the middle fourth strings fourth string rooted chord you’re playing the
top of four strings again as default you can venture away from that later and add more
complexity to the patterns but this is the foundational version of these fingerpicking
patterns so here’s a very common chord progression that I’m going to play each pattern through this
is the chord progression of one of my favorite country songs of all time by Buck Owens called
love’s gonna live here I’m gonna play half of it at half-time speed so you can see the pattern
really slowly and hear it functionally working nice and slow through a chord progression then
I’m gonna double speed for the second half so you can hear how it sounds when it’s sped up
so here’s the demonstration one two three four so now I’m going to sing the first verse
of this song, love’s Going to Live Here just so you can hear how this super simple
inside outside pattern which at first might seem as basic as how we’re going to use it in
real music well it works quite well over real music it also is the foundation
to get more complex finger-picking patterns down but it’s great on its own too I’m going to speed
it up quite a bit just so you can hear how it might sound if you work towards getting this
faster and using it as your accompaniment oh the sun’s gonna shine in my life once
more love’s gonna live here again things are gonna be the way they were
before love’s gonna live here again time for pattern two we’re not gonna
need to spend much time here because it is just the flip it’s called the outside
inside and you already know what it’s to be we’re keeping the base the same all the time and you’re
going to play thumb outside thumb inside the groupings of the
notes along with the chords stay the same everything’s the same you’re just flipping
outside and inside so here’s that same progression nice and slow and then doubling
the speed halfway through one two three four now let’s listen to it in the context
of our song in real music I’m gonna play it nice and fast again and this
is the chorus of Love’s gonna live here the progression is the same throughout
the whole song is the chorus love’s gonna Live Here Love’s gonna
live here love’s gonna live here again no more loneliness only okay the next pattern is when it gets fancy
this is called the pinch pattern and it is the most common finger-picking pattern of all
time and the most useful if there’s one you’re ever going to learn it should be this one it is
just fantastic sounds good slow sounds good fast it is just a wonderful pattern and the
The first two are a great foundation to then creating this pattern, especially the outside
inside because the pinch pattern is simply two outside inside patterns in a row except
the first one we’re going to do this motion that is called the pinch motion because you’re
playing thumb you’re plucking with thumb and the m finger the middle finger
at the same time towards each other in this pinching motion so that’s called the
pinch so we’re pinching and because we played those two together we’re letting it sustain or
you can think of it as kind of resting for a note instead of going base outside base inside
you’re going together weight base inside instead of okay so you got a little a
little syncopation there which is what makes this is gonna sound like it kind
of bounces and has more texture to it so okay and the second time you’re just playing
a normal outside inside so you got pinch thumb inside okay so pinch weight thumb inside thumb
outside thumb inside that is the pattern pinch weight thumb inside thumb outside thumb inside
except and that’s the pinch pattern I like to take away the very last eighth note
the very last inside as well so it gets even a little more of a bounce to it okay so I like
to take that last note away which will be the reason taking that last knot away is
nice is that if you want to work towards playing really fast finger picking it gives you
a little space the syncopation sounds great too but it gives you just a little space to switch
chords and to just have it feel more relaxed with the right hand so I typically play it that
way if we filled it in it would sound like this just a little cramped to throw that in and
get back to the pinch so I like to leave that out that’s the pinch pattern the
grouping of the strings is the same here it sounds here’s what it sounds like on c I’m swinging it a little bit too you can play it
nice and straight or swing nice and straight or swinging a little either way here it is on d
okay now here it is through our progression it’s nice and slow and then speeding it up
double speed halfway through one two three four all right let’s plug it into our song we’re gonna
do the second verse of Love’s gonna live here same tempo and same progression just so we can hear
that context of the pinch pattern as accompaniment in a real song I hear bells ringing I hear
birds are singing Love’s gonna live Here Again you hear how the pinch pattern has that bounce
to it it’s just so effective as an accompaniment pattern it’s just a fantastic finger-picking pattern
to play with that’s the one I used in the intro of this video as well okay the fourth pattern
in our top four finger-picking guitar patterns is called the descending arpeggio because it does
exactly that it arpeggiates the chord from the top downward we’re going to do a pinch and then
play the middle note and then the thumb does its thing it’s never going to change the thumb is
always doing it so now the top note of the thumb baseline is part of this arpeggio descending
The arpeggio structure is okay so I’ll just let you look at it on the screen while I play it really
slowly so you can mimic that if you need to the descending arpeggio part is so the thumb and the bass are kind of taking part of this melodic sound if you want to listen
to it that way okay that’s what it is on g you can just apply that to the middle
four strings or the top four strings okay here it is through our progression
super slowly then speeding up halfway through like we’ve been doing one two three four as for plugging it into the song well this song
is so beautiful and so simple it just has those two verses and then it has the chorus so we could
Sing the chorus again for this but you heard the chorus before let’s do a guitar solo over this
descending arpeggio pattern so we can hear it in the context of music so I’ll play through the
progression the same way with the descending arpeggio pattern and then playing a guitar
solo on top of it for our song One Two One Two if you want some beautiful amazing
cords to practice your finger-picking guitar patterns with then definitely download my chord
a chart called Chords with Color it’s unlike any other chord chart out there it shows a bunch
of chords through several keys and then tons of alternative options for each of those chords so
you can add color to them and extensions and just beautiful alterations that still work equally
well in whatever setting your chord was in a song you’re working on or performing and it’s
just wonderful for listening to sounds practicing techniques studying the chord theory of something
and working on finger-picking guitar patterns so check that out for free download you can go to
chordswithcolor.com or just click the link at the top of the description so which fingerpicking
guitar pattern out of the four was your favorite and which one are you going to commit to learning
so you can use it in any and every song that you work on next was it the inside-outside pattern
the outside inside pattern the pinch pattern or the descending arpeggio pattern let me know in the
comments I would love to hear from you i post new lessons every week next week I am going to share a
solo guitar arrangement of autumn leaves beautiful simple easy arrangement and share
the sheet music for that as well so hope to see you in that lesson take care
thanks for watching and happy practicing
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