How to Travis Pick on Guitar for Beginners
Welcome to my lesson on how to Travis Pick on guitar for beginners. I first learned this pattern from a teacher of mine back in 2009 and it was a HUGE breakthrough for me in terms of fingerpicking technique.
While this is NOT the actual picking pattern used on Landslide, it was the first song I we used to learn the pattern. To this day, I still use this pattern to play Landslide.
This pattern CAN be found on songs like Dust In The Wind By Kansas and Just Breathe By Pearl Jam.
Return to All Guitar LessonsWhat Is Travis Picking?
Travis picking is a popular fingerpicking technique for guitar players. It is a very common technique used on acoustic guitar. The core concept of Travis picking is simple: you keep a steady beat with alternating bass notes using your thumb. There are many different types of picking patterns that fall into the Travis Picking category. I will be giving your a very popular example below.
Who Invented Travis Picking?
It gets its name from Merle Travis, an American country singer, songwriter, and guitarist—but it’s used in many different styles of music. He is credited with bringing this sound and style to the world. Though this style would inspire and spawn a great many notable others across the 20th century, many of whom added their own twist, Merle Travis is widely recognized as the first to bring it to the mainstream—hence the name Travis picking!
The Timing Of Travis Picking Patterns
The first thing to do is talk about Travis Picking on guitar is the basic rhythm and timing of the pattern. We will be using an 8th note rhythm counted as:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
The timing of this picking pattern uses an alternating bass note pattern and has one note that is held slightly longer.
1 2 + 3 + 4 +
D D U D U D U
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Travis picking guitar lesson
You can learn more about this pattern and the specific timing in the video lesson below, where I will explain how to play along with this pattern step-by-step.
The below diagram shows you how the Travis Picking pattern is played over a 5 string chord (in this example a C chord) and a 6 string chord (in this example an Em chord).
If you notice on the 5 string chords, you alternate the bass line using adjacent strings while on the 6 string chord, you alternate the bass line by hopping over the A string.
You are interested in learning more about developing your fingerpicking, check out my Fingerpicking Guitar Series.