Відео

Do a 900 Tony

Love your videos! Can’t quit play what you do but I do love watching. 🤜💥🤛

I heard an interview of Merle Travis when he was quite old. He says in the interview that his brother was a much better guitar player than he was. He says he just happened to leave Kentucky and eventually end up in Hollywood. His brother wasn't interested in fame or leaving Kentucky. Very humble guy considering how many people he inspired.

Good video and interesting stuff young dude. I don’t do bar cords. (Or barre cords. 😂) Prefer thumb over. I have always thought it was interesting that there are thousands of videos floating around teaching how to do Travis picking. Maybe three of them are using the thumb and index finger only. I can’t do just one finger very well. 🤷🏻

His late, great son, Thom Bresh nailed it when he said that Travis was probably the most influential guitarist of the twentieth century.

As if his picking style wasn't exotic enough, Merle Travis employed unorthodox instrumentation in his chart-topping 1940s country group: himself on guitar/vocals, along with upright bass, pedal steel, fiddle, trumpet, and accordion, and sometimes drums. Besides being one of the best-known performers on earth in the 1940s and 1950s, Travis was also the first guy to think of playing a solid-body electric guitar with 6-in-a-row tuners (which greatly inspired his pal Leo Fender after he got his other pal Paul Bigsby to build one for him in the mid '40s), acted in movies including From Here to Eternity with Frank Sinatra, was a world-class lyricist and songwriter, an excellent amateur taxidermist and cartoonist, and an ex-Marine who enjoyed the occasional drunken fistfight. How wild and humbling that such a hugely famous & talented celebrity is virtually forgotten today except by eccentrics, less than 70 years after his peak success. And by guitarists who learn the simplified fingerpicking pattern misnamed for him.

These are all movable chords also which once you get those couple shapes you’re set. Thanks!

Another great lesson, it would be interesting to know how tall Merle was, I'm guessing 6ft plus with large hands. As some one who is vertically challenged with small hands, although I use the thumb over position, there is no way I can fret the A string. Some of the stretches are impossible but I've found you can fake it by just palm muting the 6th string and let it thud away, most ofthe time it is muted any way. Nice to see another leftie playing right handed!

Probably heavily influenced by the swing sounds of that era. Sweet.

Yeah, no thumb over for me. My hands are about 1/2 inch too short

Double thumb C7... What !I was not prepared

Thanks brilliant video plenty to work on !!

top video ! .

Very cool lesson, A lot to learn

I've just recently found your site and have been working my way through your past posts. Thanks for all the great info, love the way you provide historical relevance to such great music. I'm a bit far away, living 'downunder', otherwise I would drop by and say thanks in person. And I'm glad you decide to continue with the posts, please keep going.

Thank you, Kyle! Great lesson and insight. I've tried to get my fret-hand thumb to wrap over the neck for many years. It's never been comfortable, nor do I get a clear note out of it.I have big hands and sausage fingers, like my farmer grandfather had. Genetics can be a bear... 😂 I'll keep trying, of course. The new studio looks good! Be good to you 🙏🏻🤍

Fantastic channel. Any advice? I’m taking lessons in the same fingerstyle vein. PROB: even when I think I know how to play it. Well slow, I have great trouble, speeding it up. maybe I just don’t know it well enough yet? (Busy practicing lessons but may join your Patreon when I get my sea legs.)

I use the voicing of the C7 chord but I never use my thumb to fret. Not because I think that there's anything wrong with it, but because I have small hands and for a long time, my only guitar was a classical one with a wide neck. I'll often alternate between the C (on the A string) and the G (on the low E string) with my fourth finger. I don't normally play the G on the high E string, although this is no problem with the fifth finger. If I want to play a G, I would normally play the barre chord in the third position. I do occasionally fret with my thumb on instruments with thin necks, like a mandolin or a three-course bouzouki, but not that often. It's no hindrance to fingerpicking to not use the thumb for fretting, unless you're trying to duplicate someone else's style.

Great video.. Thanks Kyle! ❤ Now if you could do a video on overcoming raccoon size hands.. that would be great 😂

I have tried for over 40 years to get my thumb able to fret the A string along with the E string but my hands are too small. Very frustrating because Merle is the one who inspired me to want to play in the first place. Oh well......Love and really appreciate all your videos.

"You could use this in any blues"... not if you can't finger that C7 chord 😂 Last video about Mr Travis was an eye opener, but this is something else Thanks Kyle - keep up the great work

Just a great, patient, thoughtful walk through, Kyle. I'll be coming back to this one for a while, brother man 👍

Loving your content! Man, he’s so relaxed while he plays this. Big grin, singing flawlessly. What a talent.

I loved ur vid!!! I’ll never master these shapes, but I can’t get me enuff Merle!!!

Great video! It’s fun watching the old finger pickers. Silly question, what kind of capo is that?

Amazing video, got me out of my guitar dry spell

Travis, picking, is a technique where your thumb plays the bass notes. If the chord contains six string strings, the thumb rocks between the sixth string and the fourth string If it’s a five string chord, the thumb plays the following sequence repetitively The thumb plays the following strings. 5 4 6 4 While maintaining this rhythm, the top three strings are for the melody It doesn’t matter what shape of the chord is, it doesn’t matter where you are on the fret board. This thumb pattern never deviates, and it follows the rule of six string chords or five string chords as I indicated above. It’s a technique used to produce a style that allows you to have a ragtime sort of rhythm or a stride piano sort of rhythm, going on while you play the melody with your other fingers There’s nothing easy about it, and it’s not restricting in any way, unless you limit yourself to this technique Classical style fingering is something you use if you play classical with the traditional “PIMA” technique In many cases with the chet Atkins/Travis, picking style, it is more practical to use the thumb over the top because this gives you an extra finger for melody Before you snobby jazz Musicians, criticize using the thumb over the top, I direct your attention to a famous bebop guitar player named Tal Farlow. Are you gonna criticize him too?

I bet most of the people criticizing Travis Pickett can’t even do it. And yes, I can.

18/01/2025 C.W. Stoneking: "hold my beer."

As far as whether this style is improper finger picking or not. I can tell you this. The best musicians are the ones who break the rules, not the ones who are afraid of the rules.

Before the 7 and 8 strings came along, you could use a standard tuned guitar to play along with most of what was on the radio. To add to that a 7 or 8 string isn't enough because there are many alternate tunings used so you find yourself re-tuning for every song. As long as I can pluck my g-string I'm happy.

I really wanted a parlor guitar, just because in a home environment, a dreadnought is pretty unwieldy. I was dreaming of a Taylor Baby, but as a retiree, the price was a serious obstacle. Then I saw a video with an intriguing little instrument, the Yamaha APXT2. It was HALF the price of the Taylor, and probably not qute the quality, but for my purposes, it was a great buy and a sweet little player. The surprise is that when you plug it in, it has a really big sound. Clean, it sounds like a dread, but when you get nasty, it competes with many electric guitars!!!

Y'know man There a lot of music channels out there, but you embody a "musician" to me, it's the kinda of vibe that's hard to get Keep up the good work

why is Billy's video in 2x speed?

Thanks for getting it right! This has been one of my pet peeves for years...calling pattern picking (for lack of a better word) Travis Picking.

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Why would pick a song that MT plays in a basic folk style and tell people THEYRE playing the style wrong? A great example of Travis style or Travis picking would be cannon ball rag.

My dad taught me this way. However, EVERY guitar tech I know HATES the Luther's Knot. Every. One.

A rose by any other name....

Travis picking is easy… Nothing complicated about it

The problem is that many of us play it correctly, but you’re insinuating that we’re not when you’ve never heard us play

If you have a good ear, you can figure out exactly how anyone is playing.

The open strings in standard tuning also are the same notes as the E minor or G Major pentatonic scales.

Hey Kyle, would you ever consider doing a video on some fingerpicking patterns?

Any chance you can make a video showcasing/breaking down Davy Graham?

Love how you say you don’t think in patterns. I refuse to use the down downed up down etc with my guitar or ukulele students. I teach them to learn intuitive rhythms with their strumming and picking

Your wrong young lad

I get about a year of use when I get refret on my Gibson F9 mandolin. Going to have to get SS on it next time.

Travis chords are more orchestral or jazz oriented. What people call often Travis picking is usually (Elizabeth) Cotten picking