Creating a Travis Picking arrangement over C-G-Am-F
Lesson #247 • Jul 16, 2019
Video Overview
Instructional PDF 3 pages
Editor’s notes
In this lesson I’ll show you two different fingerstyle arrangements I put together using the chords C-G-Am-F, both of which are inspired by the Vampire Weekend song “Hold You Now”. Normally, when a song gets in my head I’ll casually strum it when playing guitar – but for this song, I found myself gravitating toward the Travis picking fingerstyle. This was a first for me, so I wanted to capture it in my practice log and share these two exercises. They both use the same chord progression and bass notes, but it’s the right-index-finger melody notes that are slightly different between the two exercises. I’ll talk you through some of my process, and of course show you the tabs. I hope you enjoy!
Video timestamps:
- 0:00 Playthrough & boring talking stuff
- 2:27 Right hand bass notes
- 3:44 Left hand chord shapes
- 4:45 Full tab, variation #1
- 5:28 Full tab, variation #2
- 6:30 Final tips
Vampire Weekend’s “Hold You Now”
Here’s the official audio for the song that inspired me, if you want to hear it:
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