10K Hours Of Bluegrass Guitar-My Top 5 Secrets

Here are 5 secrets that I've learned from playing bluegrass guitar for well over 10,000 hours. Stick around to learn the ideas that can put you on the fast track to mastering this style. Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today. So I have been playing and teaching bluegrass guitar for a long time. I've definitely logged well over 10,000 hours in this style, and what I want to do for you today is just share with you really my top 5 secrets, my really just my very best ideas for really mastering the style and really getting this style down. Now, I have saved my favorite one for last, and I'm also going to include a bonus secret that I know that you're going to find really, really inspirational and encouraging. So stay till the end to get that. All right, let's jump in here. Secret number 1: understand that alternate picking 16th notes is the foundational bluegrass lead guitar guitar skill. Now, this may seem a little obvious to some of y'all, but I had to include this because there's a few ideas wrapped up in here that I'm finding very few people really understand. So let's start with 16th notes. If you're going to play bluegrass lead guitar, you have got to get comfortable playing 16th notes. I don't care at what tempo— it can be at 30 beats per minute— but you have got to get comfortable playing 4 notes per beat. Now, I say this because, um, A lot of people, when they're learning the tabs for this stuff, a lot of these tabs are written out as eighth notes, which is fine because it makes it a little easier to see on the page. But I find that confuses a lot of students because when it comes to the music, these leads, these fiddle tunes, are going to fall as 16th notes and not as eighth notes. Okay, so just a real simple way to get used to playing 16th notes, just understand that 16th notes are 4 notes per beat. So if, if our beats are right here, we're going 1 2, 3, 4.

We'll do 1-e-and-a-2-e-and-a-3-e-and-a-4-e-and-a. 1-e-and-a-2-e-and-a-3-e-and-a-4-e-and-a.

4 notes per beat. If you're gonna play bluegrass lead guitar, you've got to get comfortable playing these 4-note-per-beat ideas, which brings me to the alternate picking side. Now, a lot of people understand the down and up part of alternate picking. We pick down on the string and we pick up on the string. But even more important than that is that we want our downstrokes falling in a certain place rhythmically and our upstrokes falling in a certain place. So remember just a second ago I was showing you how to count 16th notes. 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a. So here's a real simple thing to remember for assigning your downstrokes to certain beats and upstrokes to certain beats. We'll do a down pick on beat 1, up on E, down on and, up on a.

1 E and a, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. 1 E and a, 2 E and a, 3 E and a, 4 E and a.

Now check out this little graphic right here that I, that I wanted to make here. I've been wanting to make something like this for for a while, but it just shows you where your beats are and it shows you exactly where the pick strokes need to fall. Now, as you're going through and you're learning fiddle tunes or you're learning licks or solos or everything, we're gonna stay consistent with that. We're gonna have down strokes falling on the downbeat and the and, and up strokes falling on the e and the uh all the time. For the most part, we're going to stick to that. So where a lot of people get confused is where we start adding hammer-ons and pull-offs to our picked notes, because it starts to seem like we're breaking the alternate picking rule by having 2 downstrokes or 2 upstrokes in a row, but we're not. So real quick, I'm going to give you just a real short, simple example to show you how to make sense of this. So I'm just going to do this passage right here.

We're going to do—

okay, one more time. So again, this idea is going to be played as 16th notes.

We'll do 1, E, and 2, E, and 3, E, and 4.

One more time.

1, E, and 2, E, and 3, E, and 4.

Okay, now look at our pick strokes on that. Down on—

down on 1, up on E, down on and, up on a down 2, up on E, down on and, up on a, down on 3, up on E, down on and, up on a, down on 4.

Now I'm going to play that exact same thing, but I'm going to throw in one hammer-on and one pull-off. I'm going to Okay, so now let's look at the pick strokes and notice that they fall in the same place.

Down, hammer, down.

That throws a lot of people off because previously we did down, up, down, up, down, but our down strokes are still falling where they need to fall.

Down, up, down, hammer down.

So that hammer-on, we would have thrown in an upstroke right there, but since we're going to articulate that with our left hand instead of our right, we're just gonna leave that upstroke out. So it looks like there's two downstrokes in a row right there because there are, but that's not breaking the alternate picking rule. That's perfectly in alignment with it, and it's exactly what we need to be doing. Same thing when we come down. And we do that pull-off there. That pull-off, if we would have picked that, that would have been an upstroke. But we're gonna leave that upstroke out because we're gonna articulate that with our left hand instead of our right. And we end up having 2 downstrokes in a row. But again, that's not— we're not not alternate picking. That's still alternate picking because the pick strokes have a rhythmic place that they need to fall. Okay, so I had to start with that because I've just seen a lot of students, they'll come in and they're trying to play like Tony Rice solos or fiddle tunes, but they're not familiar with the basic technique of bluegrass lead guitar, which is alternate picking 16th notes. If you'd like to go a whole lot deeper on this real foundational stuff and get a bunch of simple exercises that will really hammer home alternate picking as 16th notes, check out these videos right here. I go a whole lot deeper into those, but this is a really, really important thing to get down and to understand when you're learning the style of guitar playing. All right, so let's go into secret number 2. Okay, secret number 2. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Let me say that again. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. So I go a whole lot deeper on making your flatpicking sound smooth in this video right here. I'll have it linked down in the video description as well. So probably the best thing that you can do to make your flatpicking sound smooth is to play slower and to work on your timing. So check out this video right here if you want to kind of hear me talk a whole lot more about my favorite tool to use to develop your timing. So I love a train beat drum track for practicing bluegrass lead guitar. You can find these things on YouTube for free. I've seen them as slow as 40 beats per minute, and I've seen them as fast as 190 beats a minute, and you can kind of get it all in the middle they are in intervals of 5. But just real quick, I'm just gonna play a couple of bluegrass lead ideas along with a train beat, and this is at about 80 beats per minute.

Here we go.

A few reasons why that's my favorite tool to use for developing timing. Number one, it's just way more fun to play with. It's more fun to play with than a metronome, but it's also more effective because that drummer is spelling out those 16th notes on that snare drum, which makes it easier to hear the rhythm of what we're supposed to be playing. So it's more fun and it's more effective. I'll never forget when somebody showed me how to practice along with that, and it was just— it's so much fun. And I don't care if you need to go down to 40, 30 beats per minute, that's fine. Or if you want to really push your tempo and push your speed, that's fine too. But that is an amazing, amazing tool. If you will practice that, you will get better. And take these ideas, do it slower, work on your timing, and then your playing is going to be a whole lot more smooth. And once it's smooth, it's a lot easier to make it fast from there. All right, secret number 3: always be expanding and developing your vocabulary and your repertoire. So when I say vocabulary, that is— that's the licks, that's the passages, that's the phrases that we learn from our favorite players. You know, I've been doing this a long time, and I know that at any given moment I can— you know, that's, that's a, that's a like a Tony Rice thing. Or I can do, you know, and that's kind of a David Greer idea. Or, and that's very much a Brian Sutton kind of thing. Or I can, and that's a Doc Watson kind of an idea. Or that's like a Kenny Smith style floating lick. And I've just been playing this stuff and developing my vocabulary for a long time. And what that does is that, that enables me to pull from these ideas when I'm improvising, when I'm coming up with my own ideas. I'll see this a lot online, people kind of poo-poo, if you will, like learning licks. It's like, we're not just learning licks. It's like, well, no, we don't want to just learn licks, but you should learn licks. You should learn a lot of licks, like a whole bunch, because that's what you'll pull from whenever you're coming up with your own leads. So that's the vocabulary side of it, and obviously you can spend an infinite amount of time doing that. But also the repertoire. What's cool about bluegrass is that there is this vast, vast and expansive traditional repertoire that you can always be learning from and always be pulling from. Again, whether that's, you know, the, um, you know, the songs that we sing that come from you know, Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers, kind of that first generation there, or whether it's banjo tunes or mandolin tunes. But the best, in my opinion, is fiddle tunes. So I kind of want to give like a sub-secret to this one, um, and it's going to be this: when in doubt, learn and practice fiddle tunes. When in doubt, learn and practice fiddle tune. Because fiddle tunes will kind of give you everything that you need. You can work on your alternate picking, um, you know, as 16th notes. You can work on your timing. And it will also develop your vocabulary and your repertoire. It develops your repertoire because you're learning a new tune, but a lot of these, you know, a lot of these fiddle melodies become lead ideas that you can use in other places. Like, I don't know, like a tune like Billy in the Low Ground.

Like that little—

you can combine that, and that's a great little passage, a great little phrase, a great little lick that you can use in your guitar playing when you're coming up with your own leads. So if you take nothing else from this, take that. You know, learn and practice fiddle tunes, but you always want to be expanding your vocabulary by learning from the greats, learning from your favorite players, and also expand your repertoire by learning songs and by learning tunes. And I really do think that if you're ever kind of confused as to what to do, learning and practicing fiddle tunes is always going to be a win. Secret number 4, if you will: fall in love with rhythm. Fall in love with playing rhythm. This took me a long time to understand because I, I just, I didn't get it. I didn't understand why I would want to mess around with something as simple as strumming chords when I'm trying to develop my chops and learn all this fancy lead stuff. And that was unfortunate. But whenever I did finally get serious about learning rhythm, it really made bluegrass music come alive for me, because now I could lock in, I could feel the music, and I could see how the guitar fits into the greater whole, how it fits into the music, how it fits into the ensemble. Now, you may be watching this and you might not even play in jams. You might only play by yourself. But even with that, I would I would highly recommend developing your rhythm playing because even just sitting at home and turning on some of your favorite recordings and playing rhythm along with those is so much fun. And not only is it fun, it's cathartic, it's soothing, and also it will make your lead playing better. It will, because once you really kind of develop your rhythm playing skills, your lead playing will become more rhythmic. So it's a win-win situation. Now I'm not going to do a master class of grass rhythm guitar in this video, but I've done a few on this channel that really, really spell out the basics for you. You can check those out right here. But take it from me, learn rhythm, develop your rhythm, and I really do think that the more you do it, the more that you'll fall in love with it. And you'll probably find that you enjoy playing rhythm more than you enjoy playing lead. Alright, so the last one, and this one is my favorite. Which is there is no substitute for consistency. There is no substitute for consistency. So I'm going to let you in on a little secret here. Everyone thinks that the reason that they can't play as fast as they would like to be able to play is because of the way that they hold their pick. Everyone thinks that, and I know this because I am a full-time content creator, guitar teacher. I have online courses that have comment sections in them, and I get comments, DMs, and emails nearly every day with somebody asking me about the pick holding thing. People will ask me things like, what do you think of the technique where you angle it down on downstrokes and then you angle it up on upstrokes? Or is it the— it's the downward pick slanting? Or shouldn't the motion be with the fingers right here? I'm bracing my fingers but I don't think I should brace my fingers. You know, I'm trying to do it with the floating hand, but it doesn't really feel right there. Now, is it— should I do the twisty technique whenever I'm picking? I get this stuff all the freaking time, and I think that most of it is useless. Not all of it, but I think most of it is useless. I'm gonna share just an anecdotal example from myself here. So I remember this was several years ago, probably coming up on like 10 years ago, I was watching a bunch of content like that too, and I was, you know, oh well, in order to play like Eric Johnson, you know, the motion has to come from this, and you have to do it in groups of 5, and it's with economy picking, all this kind of stuff. I was watching a whole bunch of that stuff, and then one day I just— I don't know why, but I decided I wasn't gonna watch that stuff anymore. I was going to accept that I'm a unique individual. I have unique wiring. I'm actually left-handed, but I play right-handed. Right-handed, and I'm going to ignore that stuff. I'm going to develop a practice routine that optimizes for building speed, and I'm going to stick to it. And so I did that, and I did it for a year, and lo and behold, I made some real strides in my playing. I am sharing this with you because I'm just seeing this over and over and over again. I get messages all the time from people, you know, being like, you know, man, I've been really working on been working on this stuff for 2 months, for 3 months, and just the speed's not there, and I think I need to change the way I hold my pick. You probably do not need to. You need to develop a focused practice routine that you stick to over time. And when I say over time, I mean years, not months. Years. I'm sympathetic as to how frustrating it can be when you've really been putting in the work and 2 or 3 or 4 months go by and you're just not seeing the results that you would like to see. But I promise you, the answer to this is sticking to this, is consistency, okay? Because here's the cool thing: progress compounds. If you'll do that and get serious about sticking to that, and you'll stick to that for a year, will you, will you get twice as good, 3 times as good as you are now? Probably. But what if you stick to it for 2 years and you do that again? Well, now after 2 years, you're 4 to 6 times better than you are now in 2 years. Now here's the thing, a lot of times if I say— if I mention 2 years to somebody in their teens or early 20s, that sounds like an eternity to them. But I know that a lot of people who watch this channel are a little bit older because I have this thing called audience insights. And so if you're over the age of 40 40, you know good and well that 2 years is a flash in the pan. So give yourself a fighting chance. This is what I'm finding with the vast majority of students that I've taught over the years is they just don't have a focused practice routine that they stick to for a long enough period of time. That's it. I just get this a lot from people in they'll message me and they're frustrated. They're like, I've been practicing but the speed's just not coming. I've been working on this stuff every day for 2 or 3 months and it's just, it's just not coming. I think it's the way I hold my pick. Everyone thinks that. What I'm finding with most of them though is they haven't developed a really focused routine that they have stuck to for a long enough period of time. And remember, this That's years, it's not months. But if you can stick to it for that long, progress will compound and you can really, really, really take your skills to levels that you probably never even thought that you could. And when it comes to building speed, if you would like the very best ideas that I have around developing a practice routine that optimizes for building speed, check out these two videos right here. And again, I will link to those down in the video description. Okay, so let's do the last one here, this little bonus tip, and I really hope you'll take this with you and you'll find this inspiring and encouraging. And that's going to be this: do not compare yourself to or compete with anyone other than yourself. Let me say that one more time. Do not do not compete with or compare yourself to anyone other than yourself. I really wish that whenever I was first getting into this stuff that somebody would have drilled this into my head because we're humans and we compare ourselves to other people. We just do. But that really is a fool's errand because people have different DNA. Maybe they started playing this stuff at younger ages. And so comparing yourself or competing with other people really is pointless. Now, I'm not saying to not get inspired. Get inspired by your favorite players. Um, you know, hopefully you'll get inspired by watching some of my videos and other content creators that do similar stuff to what I do. That's great. I want you to get inspired by that, but don't ever hear somebody play something and get discouraged. Don't ever do that. However, we are humans and we do compare ourselves and we do compete. So I think if you'll turn that competition on yourself and compete with yourself, set this as a goal: a year from now, be able to just absolutely blow yourself now out of the water. Kick that that person's ass. And I really do think that if you'll change your, your, your mindset, get away from trying to compete with other people or comparing yourself to other people. It's just not fair. People have different DNA, they have different circumstances, they have different levels of talent. Comparing yourself to other people is really pointless. Get inspired by the people that you love and then compete with yourself. So, all right, there you have it. There, there's really some of the very best ideas that I can give you to really get this stuff down, really master it, and really take your playing to levels you never thought possible. So I've linked down to some of the videos that I reference in the video description, but also check out some of these playlists right here if you'd like to go a whole lot deeper on some of the topics that I was talking about today. All right, thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you next time.