Warm Up Exercise

"Death By 1000 Cuts" Fingerstyle Walkdown Exercise (Key of C)

Lesson #264

Video lesson

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Editor’s notes

In this lesson I’ll show you a fun fingerstyle exercise based on a C-major walkdown progression. Using 2 different arrangements, I’ll teach how you can use common chords in the key of C to capture the sound of a descending bass line throughout an 8-measure progression. This is inspired by the guitar work heard in Taylor Swift’s song “Death by 1000 Cuts” – though you’ll need a capo 4th fret to play along with her song (using the tabs I show).

Video timestamps:

0:00 Lesson overview
2:29 Chord shape basics
6:00 Chords, with melody notes
8:23 Walkdown variation #1
10:40 Walkdown variation #2
13:11 Playing with expression!

The song this exercise is based on

“Death by Thousand Cuts” by Taylor Swift. Again, you’ll need to add a capo on the 4th fret to play along with her version. The guitar starts 11 seconds in.

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