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KQ 100 Day Challenge
In early January 2021, Kieran Quinn invited people to join him in committing to a 100 Day Practice Challenge. You practice a new skill, or develop an existing skill, daily for 30 minutes a day, and share your work with the group every 100 days. It’s been a brilliant motivator for me, because I’ve never… — read more
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Unmilitary Two-Step
Rory Gallagher was a beast. Probably best known as an electric blues guitarist and singer, but he could also turn his hand to acoustic guitar, harmonica, mandolin and a host of other instruments. (Not unlike our own Seamie O’Dowd, who was heavily influenced by Rory.) This is a lovely little acoustic fingerstyle tune of his… — read more
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Windy & Warm
A further exploration of the Travis style of fingerpicking. This tune uses the ‘alternating thumb’ throughout most of the piece, but the fingers deviate a lot from the typical patterns we have been using so far. I first heard this tune played by Doc Watson and his son Merle. (Listen HERE.) I worked out a… — read more
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Spin Doctors solos x2
One of the first CDs I ever bought with my own pocket money was Pocketful of Kryptonite by The Spin Doctors. Two Princes was a huge hit at the time, and I wanted an album full of bangers just like that. I didn’t get it. The rest of the album was crap. The only other… — read more
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Wonderwall lesson 3
Here’s a slow playthrough of my simplified chord chart for Wonderwall. Basic chord chart can be found HERE. This is a simplified chart, it doesn’t contain the full structure of the song, but the thre sections you need to learn (Verse – A section, Bridge – B section and Chorus – C section) are included.… — read more
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Even More Travis (Beatles)
A version of Mother Nature’s Son by The Beatles (well by Paul McCartney, really, John didn’t have anything to do with this one!) I’ve used the Travis technique in this playthrough. It’s not how Paul plays it on the original recording, but I think it suits the song nicely. At a few points in the… — read more
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More Travis Picking (Kansas)
This is a playthrough of Dust In The Wind by Kansas. In the previous lesson we looked at the picking pattern used in the Intro of the song. You can use this right hand pattern for almost the entire song. The pattern changes slightly at bar 42, so keep an eye out for that in… — read more
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Travis Picking Lesson 2
Advancing the Travis Picking technique, with this variation found in the song Dust In The Wind by Kansas. This video demonstrates the right-hand picking variation, and plays slowly through the introduction of the song, which is the first eight bars (Section A – Intro) of the tablature file. The tablature for Dust In The Wind… — read more
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Travis Picking Lesson 1
Here are the basic techniques for the fingerpicking technique known as Travis Picking. Tablature sheet for the examples used in the video below can be found HERE — read more
Famous Dave Music 