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Blackbird Fingerpicking
by Christopher Sung

Tonight, I was noodling with my guitar a bit while watching the Yankees-Red Sox game. I'm actually a Mets fan but, gosh darn it, if those Yankees aren't fun to watch...

...and don't always fall behind in the 7th or 8th inning like the Mets...

Anyway, I was noodling with "Blackbird" off the White Album by the Beatles, and I realized that by playing around with the harmony and some of the fingerpicking patterns, you can create some nice music. The basic premise behind the guitar part for "Blackbird" is a repeated droning of the open G string (the 3rd string). Because of this open G, the tune itself is in the key of G major. By taking two-note chords in G major and incorporating the oepn G string into different fingerpicking patterns, I got something like the example below:

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