Hey Friend,
Okay, getting back to learning the song “Aubrey” by Bread.
A couple weeks ago I started writing about the chords for the song, but I found myself quickly going down a chord theory rabbit hole…
That can be a dark place, easy to bump into walls and get lost and such.
So I stepped back from that approach and decided we’d cover the basic picking pattern you’ll use to play the song.
It is played with a fairly simple pattern and arpeggiated chords.
You’ll use your thumb to pluck the bass notes and index and middle fingers to pluck the second and first strings (B and high E) together through most of the progressions.
The pattern gets repeated through the entire song, although there are some variations that we'll get to during the bridge sections.
To keep it as simple as possible, your thumb will do most of the work. The bass line forms the foundation and maintains the tempo and rhythm, since there is no percussion in the song.
You’re looking at four beats per measure, and the picking pattern sticks to eighth notes. So you’ll keep a steady, consistent finger movement with a pluck occurring on every eighth note.
Your thumb will be working across the entire fingerboard, plucking the lower four strings, so it will take some time for muscle memory to learn which strings to hit and when. Nothing a bit of practice won't take care of.
The good news is the pattern remains consistent, so once you’ve got the chord progression down, you should be able to master the picking pattern fairly quickly.
I’ve noticed that for me, when I hit a snag - a section that I keep screwing up - it helps to isolate that little section and practice it slowly so my fingers learn what they SHOULD be doing.
Maybe it’s one chord change, or maybe the picking pattern changes a bit. As long as I take a few minutes and focus on that tiny section, I find that when I come back to it later it goes much smoother.
Here’s the basic pattern as you pluck the notes:
P P IM P
P P IM P
This stands for thumb, thumb, index&middle, thumb.
LOL, I know it looks like I wrote “pimp” with a stutter, but this is actually classical guitar notation for fingerstyle technique. Here’s how the initials one out:
P = Pulgar/Thumb I = Indice/Index M = Medio/Middle A = Anular/Ring E = Mignolo/4th (pinky)
The word for each finger come from Spanish, and the Spaniards have been rocking’ out this style since the 1500s. Like they say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
If you want to learn more, there are TONS of resources online. Just do a search for “pima” and read to your heart’s content.
Here’s what I’m going to do…
I’m going to do something I’ve threatened to do in the past but have NOT done to date…
I’ll be recording a video of the pattern as well as tabbing out the lessons so, bear with me. I’m sure I’ll have a technical learning curve to get it all right and make it usable for you, and it’ll obviously take a bit of time to make the vids.
We may have a few false starts, but practice makes perfect, right?
Right now, if you want to at least try the pattern, you can finger an open D chord and pluck strings in this order:
P P IM P 4 3 21 3
(Where the strings are numbered 6 5 4 3 2 1 for E A D G B e, respectively, thickest string to thinnest)
I hope to have the video and tabs done this weekend, at least for the picking pattern. Thanks for your patience!
Peace~
Dave
| 
