10 More Bluegrass Guitar Licks Every Picker Should Know

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with a fun little bluegrass flatpicking lesson. So what I've got for you is essentially a part 2 to a video that surprisingly enough to me became the most popular video on this channel. You can check that out right here. It's just 10 bluegrass licks that I like a lot and wanted to share with people. And so I just wanted to make a little follow-up to that because I've been playing this stuff for a long time and I've accumulated a lot more than just 10 licks here. So, um, like the other video, this one will be, um, 10 bluegrass licks. These are pretty advanced, and some of these are note for note from some of my favorite players. Some of them are like licks in the style of, and then I've even got one of my own in here. So as always with these videos, you can get the tabs for these licks down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. All right, so without further ado, let's jump into lick number 1. Okay, so I had to start this off with like a Tony Rice classic. So he plays this little lick in his solo to How Mountain Girls Can Love, which I've done a full lesson tutorial on this channel for, but I'll play it slow here for you. So I'm changing up the ending just a little bit from what he plays on the original recording. I think he plays— okay, because it goes to the 5 chord right there. I wanted to change it up just a little bit to just kind of give you a G lick here. So obviously the coolest part about this lick is that beginning. You just kind of hold that, and then— so we bend, and then— now I also really love this part of the lick as well, the— where you do the open 3rd string up to the 5th fret of the 3rd, 5th fret of the 4th, and then— okay. So it's just a gnarly little greasy bluegrass lick that you can throw into your solos, whether you're, you know, playing over, you know, like a bluegrass standard or a fiddle tune, and it just gives it some grit, gives it some grease. So I love that little Tony Rice lick. I wanted to kick off with that. That was lick number 1. Now let's go into lick number 2. All right, so this is like 2 David Greer licks combined into one passage. So let me go through and play it slow here for you, then I'll break it down a little bit. So we'll do Okay, so he plays that lick in the second solo to, um, the tune Smith Chapel from the Lone Soldier record, if y'all remember.

Something along those lines.

But on that second solo, he plays—

okay.

And I remember the first time I heard that lick, I was like, I have got to learn that right now, because it takes you up from this like high E down to the low A really quick, and it just really sounds cool. And again, that's—

okay.

And then the The second half of this passage, he uses that in a lot of different places, but I learned it from his solo to Molly and Tin Brooks from the True Life Blues record, which I've done a full lesson tutorial on this channel for that. But he does, you know, so he does that little gives it like a— it's almost like an E9, which gives that little bluegrass lick just a little bit of a jazzy feel. Not too much, but a little bit. All right, so I combine those two together to get a really pretty sounding really cool sounding David Greer style lick and David Greer style passage. All right, so that was lick number 2. Let's now go into lick number 3. All right, so this lick is like a Doc Watson, Tony Rice style kind of mashup lick, doing, um, And that is just a great little lick out of your C shape that is good to have in your vocabulary, ready to use at any time. So it, it's partly inspired by like the beginning to Tony Rice's solo to More Pretty Girls Than One. You know, but also a little bit by Doc Watson, you know, where he would do that, you know. And so I'm kind of just combining that, that Tony and Doc influence together to get that. We end it with some chromatics. Just a really cool little lick in C, um, to have, um, to have in your vocabulary. All right, so that was lick number 3. Let's now go into lick number 4. All right, so I love the open string floating licks, and, um, nobody does it better than Kenny Smith. Kenny is just the master of these. And so I got this one— there's a tune on the Studebaker record called Snowshoe, and I think maybe at one point in time I'd learned the whole tune, but I definitely learned the very last lick he plays at the very end, and it's this one right here that goes— and if you'll leave your ring finger there at the end, like have all those strings ringing out. It's really cool. All right, and then that's just, you know, over here on this first string, and then 7th fret of the first— I'm sorry, 7th fret of the second string, and then we'll do the first string open, 7th fret of the third string, second string open, 7th fret of the fourth string 3rd string open, 9th fret of the 5th string, and then 4th string open. All right, how, how beautiful is that? I love that little lick there. Also, make sure on your left hand— so we'll do, let's do ring, middle, index, ring. Everything kind of falls into place, like, you know, just love that beautiful little floating lick there. And again, that's from Kenny Smith's Studebaker record, and the tune is called Snowshoe. All right, so that was lick number 4. Let's now go into lick number 5. All right, let's light it up with a Brian Sutton lick here, okay? Pick things back up here after doing that slow, pretty melodic floating loop. Let's pick it up with a, uh, with a, with a barn burner here. So, um, Brian plays this in Decision at Glady Fork from his solo record, and I like it because it's got a lot of hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides, but it's meant to be played like fast and powerful. What that is. I'll do that again. And what's cool about that is if you're playing a kind of, you know, like a pretty quick bluegrass tune, like a lot of times bluegrass pickers kind of get stuck down here on these like first 3 frets. And if you're wanting to kind of move up the neck a little bit, that's a great way to move up and then come back down again, you know, no matter what you play. But again, it's a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Pull-off.

Okay, so, so your, your left hand is really important on that, but it's just a great little G bluegrass lick can move up the neck. Um, it's, you know, fairly easy to play fast, and it's just a really good one to add to your repertoire. Again, I think Brian plays that— oh, he plays it in a couple of places. It's on Decision at Glady Fork. I don't remember exactly, something like that, but you can really take that passage and use that in your bluegrass solos. I love that little lick from Brian Sutton. All right, so that was lick number 5. Let's now go into lick number 6. So this is kind of one of my own licks here. Um, I mean, it's, it's inspired by all of the greats, but I like it a lot because it's like out of D and, and we do a lot of position shifting. We move, um, from like down here to the 2nd fret all the way up to the 10th fret. It's out of D and it goes like this. All right, let me play that one again. Okay, so I like that this one gives us a bunch of mobility and we can move up and down the neck here, but I also like how we start. So I'm kind of switching in between like our major and minor pentatonics and blues scales.

So this one's minor.

But then major, major again. Okay, so you want to pay attention to your left hand on that. So use your ring finger right here, ring finger again, and then pinky right here. Okay, so I'm, I'm showing you that one out of D, but what's cool about that is you can move it around. Like if you wanted to do it out of E, you could do You could come up and do it, you know, um, in G, you know, um, starting to run out of frets there. But you could even come up to A and use just a little bit of it. Okay, so it's just a really good passage to get under your fingertips, and again, it's usable in a whole lot of places. And gets you moving up and down the neck and doesn't keep you stuck, you know, in some of these like lower frets that, you know, happens to a lot of bluegrass players whenever we're playing leads. So that was lick— I've got these written down, I lose count of where I'm at here. So then, all right, so that was lick number 6. Let's now go into lick number 7. All right, oh man, I love this lick. So going back to Kenny Smith again, this from the Studebaker record. This is from the second solo that he plays to Bill Cheatham, and it goes like this. That just like the coolest thing ever. Oh man, I love it. And it is challenging. It's hard to get. So what we do there— so he's kind of making this like, which is— I don't want to get too deep into the theory here, but I don't know, it's like almost like an F sharp minor 7 flat 5 chord. But he's doing like a little floating lick into each one of those notes. So we start with the— and again, I got the capo on the 2nd fret for this here. And so it starts off with like the open, open 4th string to run. So open 4th to right here, open 3rd to right here, open 2nd to right here, open 1st to here. Okay, so if you can get that chord shape down, he just— he, he picks the open string before each one of those notes. All right, which is challenging to get but has a really cool sound. Whoops. And then end with— okay, I just love that beautiful sounding little lick there. Okay, so I love that little lick from Kenny Smith. So that was lick number 7. Let's now go into lick number 8. All right, so coming in with a really hard-hitting Jake Workman lick right here. I love this little passage. Let me play a little slower here for you. All right, I'm modifying it just a little bit from what Jake plays on the record. I think he does something along those lines, but I wanted to just kind of change the ending up just a little bit here for you. But again, this is another one of those capos on the 2nd fret here, kind of add a G. Again, a lot of players get stuck kind of down here in these first 3 frets. Sometimes they can come up to the 5th, but if you're willing to go a little further up the neck, this is a a great passage to use in your bluegrass solos. All right, so I love that little Jake Workman lick. That was lick number 8. Let's now go into lick number 9. All right, so I, I think a lot of flat pickers have like attempted this one before, um, but it, it takes a little work to get this one down. So I'm taking this one from Mark O'Connor's version of Dixie Breakdown, just that classic like contest classic that I think he won the National Flatpicking Championship with when he was, I don't know, like 14 or 15. But this, this little passage is really cool because again, you can throw it into like a traditional bluegrass thing and it just kind of gives the listener's ear a little bit of a tweak. It's something different, it's really cool. So it's gonna go like this, we'll do All right, so like the— like is the case with a lot of these, I'm changing up the ending just a little bit to just kind of distill it down into a usable lick here. Again, so conceptually This idea is— I wouldn't say it's simple, but I mean, you can see what's happening. We're kind of taking this little— this kind of root inversion, like E minor triad. He's— and then we're sliding down, coming back up, and then right here I'm going back into kind of traditional bluegrass territory. Okay, so that's just one of those. And really the challenge there is, is with your left hand, because that little slide with the pinky making those notes sound nice and clean is very challenging. But it can be done. If I can do it, you can do it. I really believe that. So one more time. Okay, so again, that's from Mark O'Connor's guitar version of Dixie Breakdown. That was lick number 9. Let's now go into lick number 10. All right, so I wanted to end it with this kind of really crazy sounding chromatic idea. So this comes from like one of the flatpicking contest legends. It comes from Roy Curry. I actually first— I heard him play this, uh, I went to the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas in 2001, and it was a little bit of a bittersweet festival because, um, it was happening just a few days after 9/11 had happened. And I was, I was really excited to see Tommy Emmanuel and Nickel Creek because back then like Nickel Creek was really, really big. They were like on the radio, you know, they were on CMT and all that kind of good stuff. And I was really excited to see both of them. And I didn't end up getting to see either one of them, but I did go and just listen to the flatpicking contest. And Roy was there, and I took in my little— I took in like a little tape recorder. This is before cell phones. And I took a little tape recorder into my pocket because I wanted to record some of these cats playing this stuff. And I remember getting Roy's performance and hearing this lick and just sitting at home on my little stereo and just hitting rewind over and over and over until I finally got this lick. And it goes like this, we'll do— okay, let me do that again for you. So that's the main idea right there. We want to start over here with this 3rd fret of the 2nd string and then 5th fret of the 3rd string. Pick that, slide up to the 6th fret with your ring finger, and then hit that 3rd fret again.

And then we'll—

okay, one more time. Okay, and you can use that over, you know, just a G right there. And if you want to get really adventurous, you can keep going like up until you hit this C if you want to go from like a 1 to a 4 chord, you know, however you want to, however you want to square it there. You know, it can just really, really add some spice, add some flavor to your bluegrass solo. So there's a bit of a stretch right there, but it's a really trippy, really slippery sounding bluegrass lick that you can add to your solos there. All right, so thanks so much for hanging out today. You know, I hope you've gotten some licks, some ideas to use in your own own playing. Again, these are just licks that I love, and I love using in my own playing, and I just wanted to share with you today. So remember, you can get the tabs for this down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. As always, thank you so much for hanging out, and I will see you next time.