Travis picking

I've been listening to the Beatles' "White Album" a lot recently, and I dug out an old guitar magazine that had an article about the making of the album, as well as a discussion of the guitar playing on several tracks.

Apparently John Lennon learned the "Travis" fingerpicking style from Donovan while they were both visiting India. The magazine also included guitar tabs for this type of playing, so I sat down and figured it out myself. I was pretty happy, since I haven't really learned anything new on the guitar in quite some time, and it's always good to have new chord or lick or whatever to incorporate into your own songwriting. I'm pretty much self-taught on guitar(although I took years of lessons for piano and brass instruments), and have always been more of a strumming and rythmic barre-chord kind of player--so it was nice to learn something different, although it's probably something that most guitar players learn at an earlier stage.

Anyway, you can hear what I'm talking about on Lennon tracks such as "Dear Prudence", the first part of "Happiness is a Warm Gun", and "Julia".