Go Beyond Alternating Thumb Picking with Melodic Bass Runs

So you’ve finally mastered the alternating-thumb picking style so prevalent in the folky fingerpicking of Americana singer-songwriters, from legends like Joan Baez and John Prine to modern stars such as Jason Isbell and Gillian Welch. Maybe now you want to add some blues or ragtime influences to your repertoire. Where do you go from here?

Double-alternation patterns in the bass, where your thumb alternates bass notes on three strings, add another layer to the rolling sound of your arpeggios. A common next step might be adding some fretting-hand movement to create melody in the treble strings while the bass strings maintain their alternating rhythm. This approach is often referred to as Travis picking, named after the late, great guitar wizard Merle Travis. But it’s also prominent in the folk-blues tradition of players like Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt, as well as Piedmont blues legends such as Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Boy Fuller.

When we look at top fingerstyle blues and ragtime players, we see that the bass often moves melodically, just like the treble strings. This added dimension usually leads people to exclaim, “It sounds like two people are playing!” Melodic bass lines are a great skill to add after you’ve mastered the alternating thumb style. By breaking down some common ideas with a few exercises, you’ll see that this technique doesn’t have to be too hard to learn.

Week One

Let’s compare two different moves. Example 1 has the typical double alternation in the thumb over a C chord, where every note is within the chord: the bass goes C (root), E (third), G (fifth), E (third). In Example 2, we introduce a B note on beat 4, which acts as a leading tone to C and brings us back to the root note in the repeated measure. I often use this type of leading tone in the bass to signal to other players that we’ll be staying on the same chord in the next measure.

For instance, I think of the bass move in Example 3 as a reset button, making the chord feel new again—perfect for bluegrass or old-time songs that stay on the same G chord for a while. A good creative exercise is to develop similar moves for other chords. You can use a major seventh (one fret below the root) leading to the root for major-sounding music or try the flatted seventh (two frets below the root) moving to the root for a more bluesy vibe.

Another great variation on the standard root-fifth alternation is to alternate the fifth of the chord with the major sixth, creating a different kind of double alternation: root–five, root–six. This often doesn’t change the string you’re picking but introduces a new fretting-hand note on the same string. Check out Example 4 for a cool bass sound you could use in a blues context. In Example 5, we add the flatted seventh note to imply a seventh-chord sound.

That’s the end of Week One. The complete lesson features four weeks of workouts (plus a bonus exercise.) There are two ways to access the full video and musical examples: Join our community at Patreon.com/acousticguitarplus OR Buy the January/February 2025 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.