Perfectly Fingerpick Landslide by Fleetwood Mac Step-by-Step Guitar Lesson!

So I firmly believe that this is one of the best finger picking songs to learn first. It's definitely the one I learned first. And the reason is it makes you feel like a really cool and a really good guitar player. It's also a song that a lot of people recognize once you start playing. And that song is Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. Now, it has a very particular picking pattern which we're going to go over step by step in this. You'll notice that I do have a capo on the third flat fret. You are going to need that for this song. That's how they play it and that's how we're going to play it here. So I'm going to show you this picking pattern. So we're going to be mostly using our thumb, our first finger, and our second finger on our finger picking hand. So if you're a righty, that would be your right hand. If you're a lefty, that's going to be your left hand. So let's start off by just talking about the chords first. All right, so the chords we're going to be using in this song, the verse is going to be a C chord. It's going to be this G slash, B kind of chord here. And I'll show you that transition that I just did. So you can see I'm using my second finger here in my pinky. Now, for some of you, that might be weird, but there's a reason we're doing it this way. It's because it's going to make it very easy to just transition right into that A minor chord. So let's go back to the C chord real quick. So I've got a C major chord. Okay. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to lift up my third finger. Just bring the second finger up one string. So now the second finger is on the second fret of that A string. And then the pinky is going to come down on the third fret of the B string. Now, for those of you that aren't used to using your pinky a lot, you're like, lauren, could I just do it this way with the second and third finger? You absolutely could. The great thing about doing it this way, if you notice my first finger is still down. I haven't lifted it up because this finger, the pinky, is covering that string. So it means I can basically leave my first finger and rotate around it as I'm switching between these cords. It's also good, you know, if your pinky Is your weaker finger might be a good opportunity to work on that. But yes, you could go from C to your second and third finger. That's totally fine as well. Totally acceptable. And then into the A minor. But I like doing it this way. C, bring the pinky in place and then rotate into the A minor. So that's our verse chords. Now our chorus, we have a G chord. We kind of have a little walk down. So we're kind of doing this G, F sharp. Okay. So basically it's a G chord and then we're moving our first finger just up. I'm muting the A string. But when we into the finger picking pattern, you'll see why that doesn't matter so much. Okay. And then we're coming into an A minor or sorry an E minor chord. And then we hop back into C, G slash, B, A minor and we have this interesting D7 chord that I'm going to show you when we get to the chorus. So first let's talk about the picking pattern here. So this is an eighth note picking pattern. And the timing is going to be one and two and three and four. Okay? One and two and three and four. And on the one, two, three, four is always our bass note. So we're going to be alternating our bass note between five and four just like this. So I'm on a C chord and my thumb is just going 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4,. 5 4. What's going to happen is we're going to put notes in between those bass notes. So I'm going to refer to it as thumb 1, 2. Now if you're learning traditional, you know, classical style finger picking, you'll often see these referred to as pim. Okay. That has some, there's some Latin terms and I don't know what they are off the top of my head. So I do thumb 1, 2. But also understand it is pim if you see that, if you're familiar with that notation as well. So if you just want to practice rotating through the chords, we have C, we're going to be going five and four over and over.

Five, four, five, four. Okay. And all of these chords are five string chords. So we're not going to be doing anything different. So if you go to g, b still 5, 4 and the same thing for A minor.

Okay? So no matter what you're doing, it's going to be 5, 4 on the verses. Alright? When we switch to the chorus, we're going to be doing something different. Now we're going to throw some notes in between. These are. Our other two fingers are going to come in handy. So as I said, our thumb is having strings five and four. Our first finger owns string three, and our second finger owns string two. All right, so we have the G string and we have the B string. Okay? And the first part of the pattern.

Is going to be thumb one, thumb two.

Okay, so just try that.

Thumb one, thumb two.

Okay, SO we have that alternating bass pattern.

Thumb one, thumb two dot okay, so.

Those notes are going in between the bass notes.

So it's thumb one, thumb two.

Just try that with me.

Thumb one, thumb two, thumb one, thumb two.

On your own.

Okay? So that's the first half of the pattern. The second half of the pattern is going to be thumb one, thumb. Okay? So we're not playing the two the second time.

All right, so it's thumb, one, thumb.

So if we put both of those.

Together, it is thumb one, thumb two, thumb one, thumb. Again, thumb one, thumb two, thumb one, thumb One more time. Thumb one, thumb, two thumbs, one thumb.

All right, if I play it a little bit more to speed, it's going to sound like this.

Okay, Sorry. Sounding like Landslide. Right? So very, very cool picking pattern. So I would sit on that just for a little bit, just to get the feel for it. Because once you can do that on the C chord, guess what? You just now played the entire verse because all you would do is switch your chords.

Thumb 1, thumb 2, thumb 1, thumb. And then A minor, thumb 1, thumb 2, thumb, 1, thumb.

And now we go back to G slash B.

And then you just repeat that chord progression over and over. So the chord progression is going to be C, G, B, A minor, G slash, B, C, G, B, A minor.

G slash, B. Okay? So that's going to be the chord progression for this over and over again. So if we just take it very, very slowly. Okay, let's work through that. So we got. All right, let's take it nice and slow. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and thumb.

1, thumb 2, thumb 1, thumb 3, thumb 1, thumb 2, thumb one, thumb.

Again.

Start one more time. Ready?

All right, and that's how we play our verses. Okay? So just that chord progression over and over and over again until you get to the transition into the chorus. So this is where we're going to have some new chords come in. We're going to change our picking pattern very, very slightly. Okay? So what's going to happen is when we come through, we're going to play our C.

G slash, B.

Okay, we got to A minor. What we're going to do is we're going to play a D7 chord. It's not going to be traditionally the way you would play a D7 chord. Usually a D7 chord is a four string chord. What we're going to do is see the third fingers on this bottom note here on the high E string. Well, what we're going to do is we're going to take this note and we're going to put it on the low E string. So how are we going to do that from this a minor chord, we're going to leave the first and third fingers in place and we're going to take that second finger and just plop it up on the top so we get this F sharp note. Don't worry about muting this fifth string. That's okay. We're not going to play that fifth string and I'm going to show you why. Alright, so just for that motion, it's going to be a C chord, a G, B, A minor.

Okay, so why do we do that? Because now you can hear that nice ringing of the bass note. And that's what we want on these finger picking songs. We want these bass notes to come through. So what's the picking pattern we're going to use for these six string chords? Let's take a G chord first. Okay, so it's the same picking pattern except our thumb is going to be alternating between six and four. Okay, so the C chord, all those other chords, it was five and four. Now it's going to be six and four. Okay, Just like this. Okay, so you're going E string, D string, back and forth. But the pattern in between is the same. Okay, so it's going to be.

Okay.

Thumb one, thumb two thumb, one thumb.

Okay.

So that's going to be the pattern. Now let's take that a little bit slower on this G chord. So it's going to be thumb one.

Thumb two, thumb one, thumb.

So it's sixth string, fourth string, sixth string, fourth string. Okay, so we're still doing that same motion and it's going to be the same thing for the next chord, this F sharp or G F sharpish chord. Okay?

And then we have E minor.

Now after we do that, the first three chords are six string chords. We have the C chord.

And then we have the G B chord, we have the A minor chord and then we come back to the D7 chord. So if I take this from the chorus, just to show you the progression and how it works, we Have. This is the very last line of the verse. We have the C chord.

Okay? G slash, B, a minor.

Here's D7. So we're switching this sixth string here.

Then right into a G chord.

There's the F sharp. So how we did that again, remove the second finger. Just move this first finger up one string. Don't worry, if you mute the A string, we're not even playing it. We're skipping right over it.

Okay, Then we got E minor.

And then we have C.

G, B, A minor. Back to D7. Okay. And right there, if you heard it, I actually played the wrong picking pattern. But the great thing about these eighth note picking patterns, I played the wrong fingers in the wrong order. But if you just keep playing, it's not going to sound bad if you accidentally hit the wrong note with if you use the second finger instead of the first finger or the first finger instead of the second finger, it's not going to matter. Matter. As long as you keep that bass going. Okay. And you keep the timing and the rhythm, most people aren't going to notice. So let's go through that transition again. So we have our C chord.

Thumb one thumb, two thumb one thumb.

G slash, B.

A minor.

Here's the D7.

You can see, I'm thinking. And now G chord.

G saw sharp.

E minor.

And then C.

G slash, B.

A minor.

And again, again. Because I'm going very slow. It's very actually. Actually harder for me to go slow than play this fast. So sometimes I'm accidentally playing the first finger instead of the second finger. But it still sounds good because we're using that. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. 1 and 2 and 3 and four. And as long as you keep the tempo, you're going to be perfectly fine. All right, so what I'm going to try to do here is just do a little bit of a play along with you so that we can go through a little bit of an intro of verse and a chorus for you to have something to play along and practice with. 1, 2 and 3 and 4.

And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills where landslide brought me down.

Oh, mirror in the sky what is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?

Can I sail through the changing ocean times? Can I handle the season of my life?

Here comes the d7.

Well, I've been afraid of changing Cause I built my life around you.

But.

Time makes you bolder and children get older and I'm getting older too.

You.

Again. If you take a listen to through you're going to hear. I did make some little changes to the picking pattern, but the key is keep going, keep the timing, keep going. And it's very, very hard if you don't know this picking pattern inside and out to play and sing at the same time. Because if you're thinking, thinking about the count, which was kind of what I was doing because I'm so used to playing it a different way with a different timing, I was thinking about it a little bit, and it trips you up when you're thinking. So for a song like this, I would just sit on the picking pattern until you've got it ingrained, and then you can try singing and playing at the same time. If you're thinking about the pattern, you're not going to be able to sing this and play this at the same time. You really got to have the pattern ingrained in your head. Now, if you want to know the pattern that I usually use when I play this song, I highly recommend you go check out my Travis picking lesson right over there. It's a really great pattern you can use on songs like this. Dust in the Wind, Blackbird, you can use it on lots of songs. Very, very useful. Go check out that lesson right over there.