10 Bluegrass Guitar Licks Every Picker Should Know

Hello out there to all of my bluegrass picking internet friends. It's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with another bluegrass flatpicking guitar lesson. And I'm really excited about this one today because what I wanted to do was just give you 10 classic bluegrass licks that I feel like every bluegrass player or aspiring bluegrass player need to know. But I've got 10 licks for you, but they come from 9 different players. I've only got 2 repeat licks from one player in this. And what I wanted to do was just give you a feel and a taste for how different players in this style approach playing licks and playing leads and all of that kind of good stuff. I know a lot of people, they get into this style through someone like Billy Strings or Molly Tuttle, who I'm a huge fan of, and I'm going to show you some licks. But, you know, and a lot of people know who Tony Rice is, but I wanted to kind of also expose you to some of the other great players in this style. So what I'm gonna do in this lesson is some of these licks that I'm going to show you are going to be note-for-note passages that these players have recorded before, and where I'm doing that, I'll link to the recordings in the video description. But then some of these licks will also just kind of be in the 'in the style of,' because sometimes there's some of these licks where these players use them so much that it's kind of hard to pinpoint, you know, one single place. So again, some of these will be note-for-note passages, and then some of them will be like licks in the style of. One other thing I wanted to say before we jump in: inevitably, I will have left out some players here. I will have left out some licks. So please, if you will, cut me a little bit of slack because I'm only doing 10 licks here. These are just licks from different players who I've studied and been very influenced by and who I want to expose other people to. Now, that being said, I would like to hear from you, and I'd like to hear, you know, what other players, what other licks, maybe what other solos that you would like to maybe hear me cover in the future. So feel free to let me know down into the comments. As always, hit the link down in the video description to get the tablature for all these licks. I've also got a link in the top pinned comment. Let me stop running my trap and let's get into the lesson. So here is the first lick we're gonna cover. So this is Tony Rice 101. You know, somebody comes to me and says, hey man, give me some bluegrass licks, give me a Tony Rice lick, this is the one I like to give them. So I'm gonna slow this one down here for you, and it goes like this. We'll do Okay, so let me play it again. And that's just those— that classic kind of Clarence White kind of blues influence that Tony was so well known for. And even though he wasn't the first bluegrass player to start playing those kind of licks, like I said, I think a lot of that stuff starts with Clarence White, but he really, really took it to the next level and popularized that. And, and, and basically every bluegrass player since him has played licks similar to that. Um, for sure. So one more time. All right, let's jump into lick number 2 here. Okay, so this is a Doc Watson classic. The first time I ever heard this— so this was back in the day, probably 20 years ago when we still got music on CDs. I found a CD, it was called Foundations, um, the Doc Watson instrumental guitar collection, which I'll link down, um, in the video here for you. And, um, he plays this on, um, on a live recording that he does of the tune Billy and the Low Ground. And, um, so let me— I'll play the lick here for you. So we're gonna do— all right, so some really cool things happening there. And then right here, we've just got this very—

whoops.

So he goes in between that second and first string. He does that 4 times, and then— so that little— it gives it some really cool dissonance, which is what he's doing on the first part of that lick. And then we do— okay. So that's a really cool Doc Watson idea. You can actually hear Billy Strings use a lot of those ideas, you know, in Dust in a Baggy.

He'll do that with that—

it's kind of the same idea. And sometimes you'll hear him do that. That's a big Doc Watson influence there. So anyway, there's a Fantastic Doc Watson lick. I'll play it one more time here. All right, let's jump into lick number 3. All right, so this is a lick that Billy Strings plays on the solo to the tune Cabin Song, which I think was featured in The Hunger Games. Um, I, I love this little passage here because, um, it goes like this.

We'll do—

so the second half of that lick is pretty standard, um, bluegrass ideas, but this little part right here I just love that because it adds just a little bit of tension and a little bit of dissonance before it resolves and goes back into kind of our standard bluegrass passages. Okay, I just like contrasting that with some, like, Tony Rice.

Okay.

So that's just a great little passage that I think every bluegrass picker should, um, kind of pick up on because you can throw that into your solos and it gives it a little bit of tension, but then it resolves right after that. So that's a great one to learn and implement in your playing. All right, let's jump into lick number 4. Alright, one of my favorites here. This is a Kenny Smith classic. He actually plays this one in, in the tune Studebaker off of his first solo album, where he plays a version of it in Studebaker's capoed up on the 4th fret. But for now, I'm gonna stay down in C because this is a passage you can use over a C shape a lot here. So it's gonna go like this. We're gonna do Okay, and what's cool about that is when we're playing that over a C shape, you've got— we're pulling off to the open 3rd string there, and that's the major 3rd out of C. So you can base these ideas around there. It's really cool. So you can throw a version of that, um, in really anytime you're playing over a C shape. If you got the capo on there, you can use it. Just, you'll have to modify it depending on the song, but just a really, really cool lick out of C there. Again, that's most associated with Kenny Smith, and again, check out Studebaker to hear him really shred that idea. Let's jump into lick number 5. All right, so this is, this is a classic Brian Sutton, um, idea. Um, he, he uses this kind of a lick all the time in a lot of different places. So again, this is a little bit more of a lick in the style of, but, um, this idea will do So a couple of things that really stand out in that lick is the— where he throws in that little— it's a short little 16th note double triplet there. And that's just— that's such a cool, um, idea because it doesn't require you to pick all of those. It's, it's a combination of hammer-ons and pick notes. So that's really where it is right there. And then when you come down and do a downstroke on that note, it just sounds really powerful, and it throws in that little triplet there, which, which is really exciting when you're playing that in the context of a bluegrass solo. It's just, it's really cool, and Brian uses that all of the time, all over the place. And then after that, so kind of a Tony Rice sounded, but then he comes in and does. Okay, so again, one more time. Classic Brian Sutton idea. It sounds good at moderate tempos, it sounds good at fast tempos. It's just a really, really, really cool idea from one of the baddest dudes in this style here. So learn that lick, definitely add that to your repertoire and to your vocabulary. All right, let's go into lick number 6. Okay, so I couldn't do this series without throwing in at least one, like, floating lick. And when I say a floating lick, a floating lick just makes deliberate use of open strings to give it a really kind of a cool resonant melodic sound. So in this lick, what I'm doing here is I'm doing Okay, okay. So what's really cool about that lick is, is again, I'm using— I'm making deliberate use of open strings, because I could also play that lick like this. I could do— which is not bad, but it's, it doesn't— it's not this. You hear the difference? Do you hear how that second one is so much more melodic and resonant? And that's the cool thing about floating licks. So this kind of a lick is sort of in the style of someone like Tim Stafford, who I think is a really underrated player in the style. Tim played with Alison Krauss for a little bit. He's one of the founding members of Blue Highway, and he uses a lot of these kinds of ideas, and they're just— they're really cool. They're not really meant to be played played fast. They sound better at kind of moderate to slower tempos, but that's the idea. And so there's a bunch of different ways that you can use that. Kenny Smith uses a lot of these. He uses this one in Studebaker. He does— which is great. You can sometimes hear Mark O'Connor do something like But it's just making deliberate use of those open strings. And again, a player like Tim Stafford and Kenny Smith use these kinds of licks a lot. So love those little melodic floating licks. Let's jump into lick number 7. Tony Rice plays this lick at the end of the solo to Age from the Bluegrass Album Band. I think this is actually a Jim Croce song, but the Bluegrass Album Band covered it, and, um, it's just Okay, so I've got the capo here on the 3rd fret because that's the key that— that's the key that they do it in.

Again, one more time.

So your pinky's got to be in shape in order to do that lick, right? But that's a little, you know, he's doing that out of a D shape. So again, that's exactly what he plays on Age, but I'm gonna lose the capo here real quick. You can use that lick. I could do that without the capo down here in D. Whoa boy, those frets are bigger now, so it gets a little harder to do, but I could, I could move that if I wanted to do it in G. I could do it down there too. I could do it in A. I'd have to, you know, but you can take that and you can move that one around. But again, classic Tony Rice idea. Like I said, I showed you with the capo there. He uses that in H— he uses that lick all over the place. You can watch him live, he uses it all the time. That's— you have to know that one if you're, if you're wanting to master bluegrass lead guitar. So let's keep going here, and we're gonna go to lick number 8. I freaking love this lick. Cody Kilby plays this in I'm Going Back to Old Kentucky with Ricky Skaggs on his Tribute to the Father of Bluegrass album. And I just, I love this lick. Really, for that whole time, as far as the chords go, it's just hanging out over this— it's an A chord but it's a G shape. So we'll do And again, he just offers some really tasteful, um, tension in that and then resolves it at the end.

Whoops.

What's so cool about that is that that's over kind of like our flat 7 chord, but then we resolve back to the 5 of the 1 chord right there. And then he does this really cool kind of Mixolydian dominant 7.

So one more time, we'll do—

classic, classic Cody Kilby lick that you have to know for this style. So let's keep going, and now we're going to jump into lick number 9. So this comes from Mark O'Connor in his version of Dixie Breakdown that I think he played and like won the National Flatpicking Contest. He was like 14 or 15, and it just makes the rest of us all want to go kill ourselves because it's ridiculous. It's one of the hardest things, like that, that whole piece is like, it's, it's near impossible to play. But there's some amazing licks in there, and that one, that little chromatic lick that I just played there, is one that he plays, you know, I think he— okay, so let's do just the chromatic lick that we're gonna do. So I modified it just a little bit, um, at the end. That way we just kind of stay in the G chord here. But then, and you know, other players have used like a, like different versions of that. But I really like that one because we start up here in kind of third position and it just gives your, um, bluegrass solos, gives your bluegrass leads just a really cool kind of almost like out of control feel. And then, but it resolves at the end. And that's just a really cool thing. Definitely, I've linked to it down below. Definitely go and check out Mark O'Connor's version of that. It is insane but full of amazing ideas. All right, we've got one more here. Let's jump into lick number 10. Okay, so this is a David Greer passage. That comes from a tune called Big Dirt Clyde. Yes, that's the real name of the tune. It's called Big Dirt Clyde. It's from the Lone Soldier album, and it's just— it's one of my favorite bluegrass position shifting runs because we start down here with the open strings, come all the way up to the 8th fret, and come back down again. I love this lick. I use it all the time, and it'll go like this.

We'll do Again, we'll do—

So it's got a lot of this classic David Greer stuff, which is really what he's known for. Is, um, he's known for a lot of things because he's an incredible player, but, um, he uses a lot of slides. You know, those kinds of ideas there. But again, so again, I've got that link down below. That is Big Dirt Clyde from from David Greer, and he uses that lick, um, in that tune. All right, so there's 10 licks from 9 different amazing classic and influential bluegrass players there. And, um, what you can do, or what, what I like to do, is just take these ideas and kind of combine them. Um, you know, there's just— there's so many different ways that you could do this. I'll just kind of riff around here for a second, but I mean, you know, There's just a bunch of different ways that you can combine some of these ideas, combine influences from the different players, pick and choose from them, and then eventually use that to come up with your own ideas and your own leads and solos and all of that good stuff. So as always, thank you for hanging out. This was a fun— I've been wanting to make this one for a while just because I wanted to just expose you to some other different players in this style. So again, hit the video description to get the tabs for this. Hit the link in the top pinned comment also to get the tabs. As always, I appreciate you hanging out, and I will see you next time.