I must say, it feels great to finally learn a long-time favorite song on the guitar! For me, that happened this past week with Pacing the Cage — a hauntingly beautiful song I knew via Jimmy Buffett's cover back in my high school days. It came in as a request this past week, and at once I realized its time had come. So behold, a brand new lesson!

LESSON #587
​"Pacing the Cage" by Bruce Cockburn

This is an amazingly fun song to play. It's played with Travis-style fingerpicking — using an arrangement that's full of novel & unique quirks. This is combined with Cockburn's memorable songwriting — and these elements blend together amazingly well. In that regard, it reminds me of Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman which I taught last spring.

My lesson starts simple and builds up from there — giving you a few semi-simplified ways to put it all together, should Cockburn's "full" fingerpicking approach be too tricky.

As per usual, don't miss out my additional lesson materials to help you get you up to speed with this song. This includes a link to a recommended lyric sheet, my practice notes, and a handful of play-along videos to get you up to speed step-by-step.

​Get all this on my lesson webpage »​

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​Need Fingerstyle Help?

If you're new to the Travis-style fingerpicking that Pacing the Cage uses, here's a few recommended lessons I've made that'll surely help out:

• ​Travis Picking vs. "Traditional" Fingerstyle​
• ​Travis Picking Patterns for the Most Common Chords​
• ​Wrap Your Thumb to Play the Fingerstyle "F" ​

And remember, my print-friendly guides are available for all of these lessons. Should you be hungry for even more on this topic, check out this list of all my fingerstyle lessons »​

That'll do it for this week – I hope you all enjoy! I've got some fun rock tunes in the work at the moment... stay tuned for those in the next few weeks. Until then ✌️

David

Browse all my lessons at songnotes.net​
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