Cannonball Rag - Merle Travis (With Tab) | Watch and Learn Travis Picking Guitar Lesson

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Here's how I play the thumb picker's anthem; Cannonball Rag. I worked this song out many years ago, but recently I saw Tommy Emmanuel play a version for Guitar Centre which had a few runs, fills and embellishments that I decided to pinch and add to this version. As with all these tunes, I'd recommend learning it slowly, but once you've got all the positions memorised, a good tempo to build it up to, would be around say, 190-220 bpm. Having said that, this tempo is still a fair bit slower than the lightning speed Tommy plays it at!

Be sure to try and copy the chord shapes I'm fretting, as well as following the tabs, because some of the notes that the thumb pick catches on the down sweep, are not tabbed out, as it would make the tab quite confusing to follow. If you're having trouble catching all the notes for the fast runs, you can always slow the speed of the video down in the Youtube player settings (it's the little wheel icon you need to click on, then adjust playback speed).

Best of luck and have fun with it :)

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