the stunning Landslide by Fleetwood Mac
written by Stevie Nicks released in 1975 this is a beautiful beautiful song
and it's an absolute joy to play on guitar today we're looking at the classic Rhythm
finger picking pattern starting with the intro and verse picking patterns we need three chords
we are only going to be playing the middle four strings for each of these chords at this time
so we have a C a G/B or G over B and an Am7 playing with our capos on Fret number
three today we're also going to be using the classic Travis style picking pattern
that plays throughout the song Breaking this pattern down using our first chord
which is a C we have our thumb sitting by the A string index finger by the G middle
finger by the B keep them as close to hovering around this position as possible throughout
the picking pattern the thumb is going to play the A string first the index plays the G
string thumb comes down to play the D string middle finger plays the B thumb comes back up to
play the A index to play the G and thumb finishes the pattern on the D so thumb index thumb middle
thumb index [Music] thumb a g d b a g d the second chord we move to here is the G/B and we
play the same picking pattern on the picking hand moving to the A Minor 7 chord we
play the same picking pattern again and the fourth chord we move back up to the G/B chord again C G over B Am7 G over B this is an excellent part of the song to get
used to this picking pattern on because we only use the middle four strings on our picking hand
and the chord changes are a nice fluid pattern so you're speeding that up a little bit [Music] the
verse and the intro repeat this 4 Chord sequence working on your fluency keep the movements on
your picking hand as small as possible the thumb's really what drives this picking pattern so getting
used to isolating the thumb section and looking at it like a Bas [Music] line and then adding
in the chord tones to add the colour and the richness the song's in 4/4 and this is a four-bar
chord sequence so we have c 1 2 3 4 G over b 2 3 4 A Minor 7 2 3 4 G over b 2 3 4 this four bar
chord sequence cycles for the all the verses and the intro we have a couple of variations on the
chord patterns that denote certain parts of the song So this one comes on the last line of verse
one instead of returning to [Music] G/B plays half a bar A minor 7 and half a bar G/B so we play
thumb index thumb on the A minor 7 and thumb index thumb on the G/B so that's a string g string
D string a string D string g string playing that whole line C G/B Am7 Aminor 7 G/B a playthrough
of verse one I took my love I took it down so my reflection covered heels L slide here at verse two we do exactly
the same again again the variation on the last bar this time isn't Am7 to G/B it's D/F# which segways into the chorus so
D/F# is this chord here index finger second fret e middle finger second
fret G third finger third fret B and the picking pattern we apply still Travis
picking our thumb comes to the E string index still on the G string thumb jumps
down to the D string middle finger on the B string thumb back up to the E string index
finger g string and thumb finishes on the [Music] D so playing that as the last line of
verse two we go from C to G/B to Am7 and to D/F# that's such a beautiful chord
change moving on to the chorus now [Music] introducing three new chords for the chorus we're
bringing in a G this one's just the three finger G because we're going to be using that E string a
D7/f# and an E minor the picking pattern changes slightly because we're going to be incorporating
Different Strings there's a variety of guitars on the recording of the chorus of this song
so I've picked out the notes that give the character we're still playing the Travis style
picking pattern but we are incorporating with the G chord and the E minor chord the high E
string also the picking pattern for the G plays thumb on the low E index finger on the G string
thumb comes down to play the D i then play with my third finger or ring finger the high e you
can play this with your middle finger if that suits I like the finger independent so I use
my third finger we then come back up with the thumb to play the low E and then index finger
plays the G and thumb plays the D so in one go moving on to the D7/F# we have our
thumb still on the low E we have our index finger on the G thumb comes down to
play D middle finger B string thumb back up to play e index finger G thumb finishes
on [Music] D moving on to the E minor chord we convert and play the picking pattern we
did for the G [Music] chord so thumb on the E index finger G thumb down to D third finger
High e thumb up to low E index finger G thumb D so you're putting those
first three chords together [Music] we play E minor twice here we then move
to the C so this next part of the chord sequence is as the verses we have the
C same picking pattern G/B Am7 all the same picking pattern as the verses
but the final chord we return to a D/F# which we did going into the chorus we
repeat the chorus playing [Music] G D7/F# E minor twice C G/B A minor 7 and as we did on the final
line of the verse one we do half a bar Am7 and half a bar G/B a play through of the
chorus I've been afraid of changing [Music] time makes you Boulder I'm getting older to we've now covered the main components of
the song that we need so talking structurally we have an introduction verse one verse two
chorus we then have a guitar solo that is the verse chords and picking pattern four times round
we then move on to a chorus for the second time after this we have a third verse which then ends
the song and does something a little different to bring us to the end when we get to the windown
section at the end of verse three we have the line and if you see my reflection in the snow covered
Hills the landslide bring it down they repeat that line again she repeats that line again so on that
second time we go and if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills so there's a single pick
of all four strings in the middle on the G/B chord on the word Hills and then we pick up that
pattern again when the landslide bring it [Music] down the song ends on an A Minor 7 chord
here's a playthrough of the intro verse one verse two and the Chorus so you can
see how this sounds when it's put together I took my love I took it [Music] down show my reflection brought me down child within my heart sail through the changes I've been afraid of changing time makes you bolder in this lesson here I'll show you
how to play the intro to Jolene by Dolly Parton if you're enjoying your Travis
picking this is a belter see you next time