02 BONUS material, September 2020
Added 2020-09-17 12:57:48 +0000 UTCThese exercises are designed as an introduction into the basics of Travis picking fingerstyle. This booklet is made up of six basic exercises (1-6) with variations, and an additional eight exercises (A-H) which are combinations of the previous six.
My suggestion is to play each exercise as many times as you need to master it and then proceed to the next one. In order to take full advantage of the benefits be sure to carefully follow the right hand finger placement indications for each exercise:
t - thumb
i - index finger
m - middle finger
Variations of some of the exercises (for example: 2a and 2b, 3a and 3b) are actually the same exercise but with different right hand finger placement. You will notice that in some variations you will be playing with only two fingers: thumb and index finger. This is specifically designed to strengthen your perception and understanding of the nature of that particular pattern. As you may know, the founder of this style, Merle Travis, only used these two fingers and he played all kinds of crazy stuff!! Players after him, like Chet Atkins and many others, started using all fingers.
This will be the first installment of Travis picking exercises. We will dig deeper into this style in one of the following monthly bonus materials.
