Radiohead's "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" is exactly the song your guitar teacher warned you about: it looks like four notes on a loop, it is four notes on a loop, and that is precisely why it will slowly hollow you out from the inside. Thom Yorke basically wrote a lullaby for people who have given up, and here I am, cheerfully picking it apart.
This little clip is the fingerpicking pattern that drives the whole thing — the hypnotic, rolling arpeggio in A minor that never once lets go. Yes, you can play it with a pick if you insist. No, your right hand will not thank you either way.
How the Street Spirit fingerpicking pattern works
The trick is that the right hand is a machine and the left hand is the artist. You lock in one relentless arpeggio pattern — the same rolling picking motion, over and over — and let the fretting hand quietly shift the shape underneath it. Because the picking figure never changes, your ear stops hearing individual "notes" and starts hearing that famous hypnotic drone. It's the same continuous-arpeggio idea behind Dust in the Wind: the pattern is the groove, and the harmony just slides around inside it.
Concrete takeaway: metronome on, give your right-hand fingers exactly one job, and forbid them from improvising. Make the picking so automatic it's boring, THEN move the left hand. If you're still building that engine, the basic fingerpicking patterns are where you grease the gears — and if the word "arpeggio" is doing heavy lifting here, I also explain what an arpeggio actually is.
Play it long enough and you'll either reach enlightenment or gently dissociate in A minor — honestly a solid deal for 35 seconds of guitar. Tabs and Guitar Pro are on my Patreon, where the notes live and the existential dread is free.