Help with Travis Picking - Alternating Bass!

[ocblues]

Doc used one finger, while his son Merle used up to three. John Hurt used two and the great Rev. Gary Davis used one. Four amazing guitarists, three different ways to play. There is no "right" way to play, just play what works for you. Above all, though, the rhythm is the most important aspect of "Travis" style picking. Stephan Grossman has some real nice books on Mississippi John Hurt that teach the songs note for note with tab and standard notation. Might be a good place to start if you like his stuff.

[SlimPickins]

BigRed51 made a good point. One that I remember I used to do a lot and still do sometimes. If I were watching a tv (2 hour soccer match) then I would have the guitar in hand just alternating the bass (A chord is a good one) while watching.

[Jeff M]

Use as many fingers as you are comfortable with.

Mark Hanson, in his instructional books "The Art Of Modern Travis Style Picking", teaches the use of thumb and 3 fingers.
From there it is a very short hop to "non-Travis style" (dropping the steady alternating thumb strokes,,,adding syncopation and full on chords) fingerstyle guitar.
Learning to use 3 fingers is really no harder than learning to use one or two.
You don't have to use all three all of the time, but they are there if you want them. Being comfortable playing with them gives you much more flexibility. If you wan't to play with just one or two, just leave the others out!
(Doc once said about his using just one finger and thumb for his fingerstyle playing (jokingly) "I learned to play this way rather than the right way using the other two fingers.")

[DamianL]

Here is the best clip i have ever seen for this..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45vrY1Q3S7I

Enjoy...

[Rich G]

I learned it by learning the ''The Boxer" written by Paul Simon. Fairly easy chords, c, g, f, am, em. I use the thumb and 2 fingers. It was very slow going at first, but every day I woke up, it got a little better. I haven't played that song in a long time, I might have to start all over.

[Turp]

Originally Posted by rccougar

Thanks for everyone's suggestions! Some great ideas and tips that I'm going to try out. I wonder if this is one of those things that you just keep working at until one day the light switch goes on and it works. At least I recall Pat Kirtley saying something like this during one of the Taylor workshops that I went to. Anyone else has any thoughts I'd love to hear them as well.

That's pretty much how I eventually got it. A friend had learned it and for months I tried. One night I was practicing the pattern very slowly and bam it happened. I'll never forget that moment in time.

[TBman]

Another song that is a great alternating bass is "Darcy's Guitar" by Pete Huttlinger.

Here's a link to the video of Pete playing it:

Darcy's Guitar

[sunburststrat]

I suggest you buy one of Mark Hanson's books:
http://www.accentonmusic.com/books.asp


"The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking" is probably the right one to start with. You can email them for advice.

I learned from the "Art of Solo Fingerpicking," a most excellent book!

Be sure to order the CD/book combination.

[arrowspace90]

With the "death" of "folk music", it seemed to me like my style of Travis picking was about dead. I never heard or saw many doing it for years, though Im sure many were. But it sure lost the mainstream.

Now it seems to be back. Everyone wants to at least be able to pull off a little bit of finger picking.

Great news for all those nail salons in every strip mall.