Practicing Walk Ups & Walk Downs in G

Video lesson

Editor’s notes

Recently I’ve been learning a song that features heavy use of walk ups & walk downs on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th strings – so I went ahead and created this exercise to give me some practice reps. We’ll be in the key of G, using the chords of G C and D, and starting with a simple alternating-bass-note strum. From there, we’ll add some connective phrases to help us switch between chords. This breaks up the strumming, adding a bit of melodic shape to the playing. In the lesson I’ll explain the chords, the strumming, how to approach the connective phrases, and give general tips for learning this style of guitar.

Video timestamps

• 0:00 Lesson overview
• 1:44 Chord shapes
• 2:15 Fretboard map
• 3:14 Strumming pattern
• 5:58 Playing the walk-ups & walk-downs
• 11:04 Playthrough (simple strumming)
• 11:32 Playthrough (intermediate strumming)

Related lessons

Here’s a related lesson I did doing this same technique using the chords of E, A, and B7. The biggest difference in this lesson below is I’m doing the walk-ups and walk-downs on the 6th and 5th strings, which I think is a bit easier to play (compared to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th strings).

Likewise, here’s a lesson I made showing this same technique using the chords of A, D, and E. The PDF for this lesson is available here.