Dust In The Wind Guitar Lesson Fingerstyle with Lauren Bateman

Hey everybody, welcome back. Lauren Bateman here in this video we're going to do an amazing song by Kansas called Dust in the Wind. I'm going to go over how to finger pick this whole thing. It's super awesome song. So let's get into it.

Now. If you guys are enrolled in my online course and you've gone through the finger picking section, this is probably going to make a lot more sense for you guys. But it does take time, it does take practice, go slow, work through it one section at a time. So there's a few different parts of this song. There's the intro, which I think everyone recognizes immediately. There is the verse, there is the chorus, and then there's our solo section that we're going to want to go through to hit all of the different parts of the song. So let's talk about the verse first. So the intro is all Travis picking. This entire song is Travis picking. And if you don't know what Travis picking is, I'll show you very briefly here in this video. Travis picking is just a pattern and you'll it's used a lot in a lot of songs. You can apply it to songs like Landslide, Landslides, another finger picking song. I can put a link to that video as well. You can use Travis picking on that. But this song is definitely a Travis pick song. So let's go over that pattern. I'm going to go in for a close up now for Travis picking, we're going to mostly be using our thumb, our first finger and our second finger. And it really depends on what chord you're playing. So for five string chords, we're going to be alternating between the fifth and fourth bass notes. And the first finger is going to own this third string. The second finger is going to own the second string. The third finger is going to own the third string. Even though we're probably not going to use the third finger in this song. So if I have a C major chord, it's going to be thumb or sorry, C, thumb, thumb. So it's going to be 5, 4, 1. That's the first half of the pattern. Thumb, thumb 1, thumb, thumb 1, thumb 2, thumb 1. So it's the outside strings and then the inside strings. So it's thumb two, thumb one, fifth string, second string, fourth string, third string. So it's thumb, thumb one. So it's one, two and thumb two, thumb one. So so it sounds like this.

Okay, so that's your C chord. The G chord or other six string chords is the same pattern except your thumb Alternates between the sixth string and the fourth string. So it'll be thumb, thumb one. Outside strings, thumb two. Inside strings, thumb one.

So we have C.

And then G.

And then D chords. In this song, we're going to be using a D minor, your thumb, everything's going to shift down. So your thumb is going to be alternating between the fourth and third string while your first two fingers own the second string. And the first string, it's going to be thumb, thumb 1, thumb 2, thumb 1. So 4, 3, second string.

4, 1, 3, 2. So outside strings, inside strings. So one more time, C chord.

G chord.

And then four string chords like D minor.

So that's the basics of Travis picking that we're going to use for the entirety of this song. If that's something new for you, I would definitely practice that before jumping into the song. So another caveat that we have for this intro to make this work is we don't want to just straight up Travis pick. We're going to be plucking this B string with our second finger. So I know I showed you the pattern. Thumb, thumb one, thumb two, thumb one. On that first thumb, we're going to play the thumb and the second finger at the same time. So it's going to be the fifth string and the second string at the same time. That's how we get the second sound for this intro. Because if you play it just straight up Travis picking, it'll sound like this.

Not sounding like. I mean, it's there, but listen to it with the pluck.

There it is.

Now you hear it. So we need to throw this pluck in. And that's why this song is definitely an intermediate level song. So if you're an absolute beginner, I. I do have an easy version of Dust in the Wind that doesn't have any finger picking at all. You might want to go check that one out first. We're going to talk about the intro now. So the chords. So if you have the Travis picking pattern and you have that down, all I need to do is tell you the chords and you'll be able to play it correctly. So that's the great thing about Travis picking. It's a pattern we play all the way through, and the only thing we change is what chords we're playing. So let's talk about this intro and how it gets that sound. So the first chord is going to be a C chord.

The next chord is going to be C major 7. To get to C major 7, all we do is lift up our first finger very Simple. So we have C major 7. C, C major 7. And then C add 9 where our pinky's going to be added to the third fret of the second string and then back to C. So that's our first four chords. It's C, C major 7. C add 9C. Then we're going to be working off an A minor chord, but we're going to start without the first finger up. We're starting with the first finger up. We're Starting with an Asus 2 chord, adding the pinky just like we did for the CAD9 to make an ASUS4.

Back to A minor, back to ASUS2. So it's ASUS2 pinky down for ASUS4. First finger down for A minor. Lift the first finger to get back to ASUS2. That's your next four chords. Then we go back to CAD9.

And this time I'm playing it with my third finger. For me, it's just easier to get into it that way. And then a C chord back to C major and then CAD9 again with the pinky. And then we're going to start A minor, lift the first finger for ASUS 2, pinky for ASUS 4. And then on this very end, we're playing mostly A minor. And then we're going to do.

We're going to do that plucking with the first finger and the second finger on A minor G. So let me just show you very briefly how this is going to sound from the beginning. So that you're going to start on C major. Here we go. C, C major 7. C add 9 and then C starting sus 2 sus 4amin. Sus 2 back to C, add 9. C add 9. C major 7, then add 9. A minor sus 2 sus 4. Then a minor. Pluck, pluck.

So what I did for that is I just did the first half that on the A minor of the. That I can't even talk. Travis breaking pattern. So we're doing the pluck, the pinch. So thumb and second finger at the same time. And then thumb one. So thumb, thumb one. The first three notes of that. Travis picking pattern. One, two. And. And then I'm plucking again, thumb in second finger A minor and then G, B. So we've got.

And that's very important because that theme keeps coming back into this song. And I'll show you where that happens again in the next part of the song. Just to show you a quick close up on that A minor section. So we have the A Minor, Okay. And on my other side here, let's show the picking. So I've got A minor, thumb, thumb one. Okay. And I'm doing the pluck. The pluck where I'm getting the thumb and the second finger at the same time. So it's going to be pluck, thumb two. And then I'm going to play A minor, pluck, G, B. Pluck right into our C. Okay, so again we have A minor.

Pluck, pluck C one more time. A minor.

All right. And you might have to practice it at that speed before jumping it into the song. If you guys are enjoying this video, don't forget to, like, comment and subscribe. I really appreciate your support. Let's get back to the lesson. So we've gotten through this amazing intro, which everyone knows, and now we're in the verse. So we have a chord progression here. It's going to be a C chord, G slash, B, A minor, A minor. If you've ever played Landslide, it's the same chord progression without the capo. So we have C, G slash, B, A minor, A minor. Then we have G, D minor, A minor, and that little theme that pops in again, the A minor.

And then we go through that progression again of the chorus or, sorry, of the verse. So it's got. I close my eyes.

Only for a moment and the moment's gone.

There's the A minor, G slash, B. And you'll notice when I'm playing this, I'm not plucking anymore. I'm just straight up Travis picking here. I'm no longer doing the pinch. The pinch is used more just on the intro. So here I'm more straight up Travis picking. And then we go through that again. All my dreams pass before my eyes Curiosity. Now this time we don't cut the A minor. We play two full measures of A minor as a Travis picking pattern. Which brings us next into the chorus. So how we start this chorus is we have a D, F sharp chord. Again, if you played Lens line, you got it. This is a very common thing. I'm basically the way I like to play it. I'm playing a D chord on the bottom, and I'm just looping my thumb over the top to grab this F sharp note. And my classical guitar teacher used to yell at me for that. But for me, it was just easier than doing a whole weird chord change. For me, I'd rather just do it this way. So we're starting with D, F sharp, G chord, A minor, A minor, same thing. D, F sharp, G, A Minor and then we throw that theme back in. That's why it's so important to get that down pat, because it just keeps popping up in the song. So for the chorus, we've got dust in the wind.

All we are is dust in the wind.

And I hit the. Hit the wrong note on the bass note. That still sounded good with the F sharp. And then from there you're back in to the verse. And then we do another chorus. And then we're going to talk about our next part, which is the solo, which is very interesting. So for the solo part, we're starting on A minor and we're basically just going to hang on the A minor chord and we're going to add G notes and F notes to the bass line. Now, for me, again, I like to use my thumb on these bass notes. For me, I find that pretty easy. So if we start A minor, we've got two measures of A minor. Then with my pinky, I'm going to grab this G, this bass note. Now, it doesn't matter if I mute the fifth string because we're going to be alternating between the sixth string and the fourth string. So we've gone from A minor.

To this G.

And then we're going to play four measures with F on the top. And I like to grab the F with my thumb.

And then we just repeat the whole thing over again. A minor 2G twice to F four times.

And then one more time we got A minor twice to G twice to F four times.

And then we get right back into the intro.

After the intro, we're going to play another verse, we're going to play another chorus, and then we're going to play this outro section. So this outro section is just variations on that. Asus 2, Asus 4aminor. So we're starting with Asus 4224 to a minor, to a sus 2, back to 4, to a minor, to sus 2 to sus 4, to a minor, sus 2, 4, so forth and so on until. So this fades out. We can't fade out, but that's what they're doing at the very end of this song. Hope you guys enjoy my Dust in the Wind lesson video here. It's definitely an intermediate level song. I highly recommend going to my website, grabbing that chord chart, looking at the tab. All of this stuff together can really help you understand all the really technical things that I was talking about here today. So go grab that. And YouTube's going to suggest a couple other videos that you guys might be interested in checking out. Check those out. And I hope to see you guys in another lesson video.