Homespun – Easy Steps To Guitar Fingerpicking

Homespun – Easy Steps To Guitar Fingerpicking

[3 DVD – VOB]

Digital Download

Drawing on four decades of teaching experience, Happy Traum has devised this nearly foolproof method to help you get off to a great start. He trains you to “rewire your brain” so that playing in this style becomes second nature. Happy also imparts invaluable information about finger picks, string damping, Travis style picking and other important topics.

Lesson One starts you from scratch. The simple children’s song Skip to My Lou helps you learn the basic concepts before you move on to finger-picking standards such as Spike Driver’s Blues, Green, Green Rocky Road, Staggerlee, Nine Pound Hammer and Hobo’s Lullaby. With each piece you’ll acquire new skills and by the end of this lesson you’ll be able to apply them to any song in your repertoire.

On Lesson Two, Happy shows you how to play in the versatile and useful “dropped D” tuning. You’ll learn how to play and sing five classic songs, each one rich with possibilities for creating exciting arrangements: The Colorado Trail, My Home’s Across the Smoky Mountains, Fishin’ Blues, The Blues Ain’t Nothin’ and John Henry.

Back in standard tuning, Lesson Three introduces you to the songs and styles of Merle Travis, Doc Watson, John Hurt and other masters of traditional guitar fingerpicking. You’ll learn to move freely around the fingerboard playing licks, slides, hammer-ons and bass runs while maintaining the steady thumb rhythm that gives this style its ear-catching appeal. Songs: I Am a Pilgrim, Deep River Blues, Louis Collins, Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out and Step It Up and Go.