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Home ❯ Topics ❯ Travis Picking Fingerstyle ❯

Adding Melodic Licks & Fills to a Fingerstyle Groove (Key of G)

Lesson #443 • Jul 6, 2022

In this week's lesson, you'll learn how to take an easy-going fingerstyle sequence (Key of G) and dress it up with melodic phrases & fills — all coming from the G major scale. The result is a catchy, low-key groove that's easy to jump in to and get running with. This is a terrific exercise if you're interested in learning Travis Picking, or likewise curious about creating your own improvisational fingerstyle arrangements.

Free Video Lesson

Instructional PDF 2 pages

Follow along with the print-friendly PDF! 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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Follow along with the print-friendly PDF!

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.

To download the PDF, upgrade to premium or log in.

Lead Guitar Study

Here’s a quick bonus video, where I take the lead fills from my free video and tackle them on my electric guitar. I also show the process of transposing those same riffs up an octave (out of open position), which is a handy skill that’s worth learning. The tabs for this are included in my print-friendly PDF above.

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Jam Track

If you want to play along with a drum track, as I show in my video lesson, you can use this audio file. It loops over a 4-count drumming pattern. Simply press play and jump in at any time… see my video lesson for an example!

Normal tempo - 88bpm (download):

Slow tempo - 76bpm (download):

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The Inspiration For This Lesson

Michael over on my Patreon page sent over a request for the 1972 classic Goodtime Charlie’s Got the Blues, a song which I’d never heard before. As I listened to a few different artist’s take on it, the easy-going groove sunk its claws into me. While my lesson above doesn’t teach the precise heard in this song, I definitely drew some inspiration from this original recording. I’ve love to teach this song at some point, but in the meantime please enjoy these clips from the original artist and a few others who have covered it.

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