Late Starter

The difference for me with most flatpicking music (including bluegrass) is that flatpicking is mostly one note at a time, maybe with occasional strums. No melody and accompanying base at the same time. Fingerstyle can allow the thumb to be off working the base while your three fingers (sometimes all four) are working independently on the melody at the same time.

For me, the issue of fingerstyle vs. flatpicking is that my thumb cannot stand to hold a pic for more than a few minutes. (Due to many years of riding a bicycle with my thumb joint spread across the brake-hoods on dropped bars.) But no problem with my thumb in fingerstyle. Thanks for the tip on Doc Watson, I will take a look.

I have recently become interested in bluegrass music for fingerstyle guitar. So I went back to Session 8 of the Fingerstyle course to look at the Merle Travis exercises. There are 6 exercises on pages 115 - 118 of session 8 on the Merle Travis Technique. Exercise 5 and 4 are exactly the same in the pdf, but are different in the videos. I believe the Exercise 5 "Adding Syncopation and Chromatic Base Line" in the pdf is not correct. It is just a repeat of Exercise 4 (by mistake?). Is there a correct version of Exercise 5 (page 117) available? Also, does anyone know of some good fingerstyle bluegrass sheet music (with tabs)? Most everything I have seen is for "pic" playing. Thanks, Tom