Baseline for Travis Style Guitar Picking

Video Transcript

"For Travis style picking, basically the first thing you want to learn how to do is get your thumb playing a baseline. It's some sort of an alternating baseline, maybe a 1-3, or a 1-5. Here's a 1-3 baseline. Or sometimes a 1-1 baseline's nice as well. Like this one. Elliot Smith did some songs with 1-1 baselines. Or 1-5. But the first thing you want to do is get that thumb going and get it moving just on its own. You want to put a brain into your thumb where it just kind of moves passively, and then you're eventually going to get your fingers moving, finding some sort of a melodic thing. So the song, "Freight Train" is a good place to start."