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Walk-down exercise inspired by the Turnpike Troubadours

Lesson #290 • Mar 15, 2020

Video lesson

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It includes all of my notes for this lesson, allowing you to follow along at your own pace. You're free to download, print, and share the PDF across your devices.

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Editor’s notes

Hey friends! Here’s a warm-up exercise, focusing on simplified walk-downs between C, F, Am, and G chords. This one is inspired by the song “Diamonds and Gasoline” by the Turnpike Troubadours. While I’m not showing you exactly how they play things (nor teaching you that full song), this extracts the spirit of what you hear in the intro & verse of that song and turns it into an approachable lesson, should these be skills you want to work on.

Here’s timestamps for the video I made:

  • 0:00 Exercise at a glance
  • 2:03 Riff 1 & 2, simple versions
  • 8:06 Riff 1 & 2, with add’l strumming
  • 11:38 Farewell

The song that inspired this exercise

Here’s a video of the actual Turnpike Troubadours song that inspired this exercise. While I’m not teaching this song (or its fingerstyle riff) spot on, you can surely use what I’ve taught and get going with this tune, if that’s your goal.

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