Mastering Travis Picking: A Journey into Fingerstyle Guitar

Mastering Travis Picking: A Journey into Fingerstyle Guitar

I'm Jack Baker. I opened the Fretted Instruments School in Manhattan in 1970, and I've been teaching guitar and banjo here ever since.

Today I want to talk about Travis picking, what it is, where it came from, and how I'd tell a new student to approach it.

Where It Comes From

The technique is named after Merle Travis, a guitarist from Kentucky who worked in blues and country. His thing was using his thumb to hold down a steady bass line while his fingers pulled out melody and harmony on top. The result is one instrument doing two jobs at once. It influenced a lot of people, and it's been a staple of folk and bluegrass ever since.

Why I Teach It

My school focuses on fingerstyle folk guitar and bluegrass banjo, so Travis picking fits naturally into what we do. It's flexible enough to work on traditional ballads and newer songs alike. Playing bass notes against a melody gives you real control over phrasing, you're not just strumming through a chord, you're shaping how the music breathes. And honestly, it'll make you a better fingerpicker across the board, not just in this one style.

How to Start

A few things to get right from the beginning:

1. Right hand position. Keep it relaxed. Your thumb covers the bass strings, the 6th, 5th, and 4th. Your index and middle fingers handle the higher strings.
2. The basic pattern. Work on an alternating bass. Thumb on the 6th string, index on the 3rd, thumb on the 5th, middle on the 2nd. Run that through your chords. It feels awkward at first. That's normal.
3. Go slow. Don't build speed until you're accurate. Seriously, slow it down until every note is clean, then slow it down again.
4. Pick the right songs. "Freight Train" and "Deep River Blues" are good starting points. They're not easy, but they're honest.

How I Got Into It

I first heard Travis picking live at a small folk festival in upstate New York. Hearing the melody and the rhythm come out of one instrument at the same time, that was enough. I wanted to teach it.

Lessons

We offer in-person lessons in Manhattan and online sessions. Whether you're picking up the guitar for the first time or you've been playing for years and want to clean up your technique, we can work with that.

If you want to learn Travis picking, come find us.