Yesterday, Blackbird, and Paul McCartney's fingerpicking style

Yesterday is a classic, frequently covered Beatles song.  It is still a popular request at live shows and in guitar lessons.  While it can be played with several fingerstyle techniques and in different arrangements and keys, Paul himself used his thumb to play the bass strings and his index finger to strum in an upward direction for much of the song.  The following video is an early live performance of Yesterday and is most likely how he played it in the studio.





Notice his picking hand in this more modern incarnation of the song.  He can be seen using a more advanced variation of this technique in the studio while performing Blackbird, another Beatles classic.  The index finger is strumming up and down as well as picking single notes.  This is typical of this technique and distinguishes it from the Travis picking style that people often learn when playing this song and songs like Fleetwood Mac's 'Landslide', or Kansas' 'Dust in the Wind'.  John Lennon uses the same Travis Picking approach for the Beatles' 'Dear Prudence' and 'Julia'.



Here is a rare version of Yesterday in the key of G (no down tuning) with the whole band.



Here is a studio outtake of Blackbird, around the time of the original recording:



Here is a live version of Blackbird with Paul McCartney's band Wings.



Here is a more recent version of 'Blackbird'