Travis Style Fingerpicking

Travis style fingerpicking is a guitar technique for fingerpicking commonly played on steel string acoustic guitars. The index I, middle M, and ring finger A on the right hand, are each dedicated to one of the three high strings, while the thumb alternates playing bass notes on the lower three strings.

Typically the thumb P plays the low E, A, and D strings, while the index finger I plays the G string, the middle finger M plays the B string, and the ring finger A plays the high E string. It sounds most natural when the guitarist's thumb first plucks the root note of the chord that the left hand is fretting. For example, while fretting a C chord at the neck (open C chord) the thumb would first pluck the A string because the left hand is fretting the root note C on that string, then the index finger would pluck the G string, the thumb would pluck the D string, and the middle finger would pluck the B string.

Travis style fingerpicking is named after the country artist Merle Travis.