The Picking Room

Nine picking patterns. Strings that actually ring.

Cnext C

Strings 1–3 are plain steel, 4–6 bronze-wound. Tap any string to hear it under the current chord. space plays and stops.

Tempo88 bpm ♩

Tablature · loops through the progression

Travis Picking

Alternating thumb with a pinch — the folk engine · 4/4 · Intermediate

Named for Merle Travis: the thumb becomes a metronome, striking a bass note on every beat while the fingers drop melody notes between and on top of it. Beat 1 is a pinch — thumb and middle finger strike together.

How it works

Thumb alone first: main bass, alternate, main, alternate — four quarter notes. Loop it until it's boring.
Add the pinch: on beat 1 the thumb and m (string 1) strike at once.
Fill the off-beats: i on string 2 after beats 2 and 4, m on string 1 after beat 3.

Practice notes

The thumb never waits for the fingers. If something falls apart, drop the fingers and keep the bass marching.
Palm-mute the bass strings very slightly for that classic thump.

Hear it in

Freight Train
Dust in the Wind
Landslide

The picking hand

Classical guitar names the fingers in Spanish — you'll see p i m a in every fingerstyle book.

ppulgar — thumb · bass strings 6, 5, 4iíndice — index · string 3mmedio — middle · string 2aanular — ring · string 1

Hand position

Rest the forearm on the guitar's edge; let the wrist hang loose over the soundhole.
One finger per string — keep i m a hovering over strings 3, 2, 1 so they never hunt.
The thumb plays outward and down, fingers curl inward and up; they pass each other like scissors, never collide.
Start every pattern slower than feels necessary. Even beats a fast.