In this instructional flat‑picking lesson, Aaron Jaxon presents five distinct lead ideas (licks) that can be played over a C‑F‑G chord progression, a variation on the traditional I‑IV‑V (G‑C‑D) progression common in bluegrass. He explains the musical context, demonstrates each lick on guitar, and relates them to the styles of influential players such as Tony Rice, Kenny Smith, Doc Watson, and Billy Strings. For each idea he describes the underlying scale choices (major pentatonic, mixolydian, blues‑scale hybrids), positional shifts, slides, and chromatic embellishments, and shows how the phrases outline the underlying chords. He encourages viewers to experiment, integrate the licks into their own vocabulary, and provides tabs in the video description and pinned comment. The lesson also cross‑references a companion video offering ten lead ideas for the more common G‑C‑D progression.
Chapters
Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with a fun little bluegrass flatpicking lesson. So what I've got for you today are 5 bluegrass lead ideas through a C, F, and a G chord progression. Because the thing about it is, when we're playing bluegrass lead, especially in the context of like traditional bluegrass, we're usually playing through like a 1, 4, and a 5 chord progression. A lot of times we'll be playing through a G shape, C shape, and D shape chord progression. We'll use the capo and kind of play those all over the neck here. But what I wanted to do today was show you a couple of lead ideas that you can use through a C, an F, and a G chord progression, because we're going to approach that a little bit differently than we would just a G, C, and a D chord progression. Which, by the way, if you would like to get a a ton of different ideas that you can use through a G, C, and a D chord progression, check out this video right here. I give you 10 bluegrass lead ideas that you can use through a G, C, and a D chord progression. I was inspired to do this because recently I did a lesson on this channel breaking down Tony Rice's solo to More Pretty Girls Than One, and that tune goes through a C, F, and a G chord progression. So I'm just going to expand on this a little bit today and give you 5 lead ideas that you can play through a C, F, and a G chord progression. As always, you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. All right, let's go into lead idea number 1. So that's going to start like this. We'll start off playing over our C chord and we'll do to F.
G, back to C.
Okay, so some pretty familiar territory there. We're gonna start that one off, you know, kind of with our C run and then come back down, couple little chromatics, couple little bluesy sounding notes. And then we'll go over to F, and I'm kind of outlining that F chord again, throwing in a couple little chromatic notes in there.
And then coming up here to G and then back to C. Okay, so let's go into lead idea number 2 here.
And, uh, so again, we'll start off with C.
We'll do position shift to F, to G, back to C.
Okay, pretty cool stuff there. So yeah, little position shifting run in C, and then with F, big position shift there.
We'll start off and then slide from 3 up to 7, and that's kind of that Tony Rice, uh, he plays that in More Pretty Girls Than One.
Okay, so we're kind of using that, uh, so that's a great little passage for F that starts off down here and moves up.
Okay, and then we're going to come down to G with like a little, and then back to C after that.
Okay, so now let's go into lead idea number 3, and that's going to go like this. We'll do Okay, I'm using this like Kenny Smith inspired, you know, he plays that in Studebaker. He uses it in a lot of places, um, but, and then, okay, and then again I'm going to come back over here to this kind of Tony Rice, you know, like he plays in More Pretty Girls Than One, but then I'm going to do a position shift Okay, so one more time there in F. And then for G, what I'm doing is kind of outlining these, these thirds that kind of go through the dominant 7. And then so we're ending there with G and then coming back to that Kenny Smith thing again.
Okay.
So really cool stuff there through CFG. That was lead idea number 3. Let's do lead idea number 4 here, and that's going to go like this. We'll do Okay, so getting a little crazy on that one there. So with, with this first run, again playing this over C. Okay, so you can think about that in a couple of different ways. You can think about it like out of your C major pentatonic. You can also think of it like C kind of dominant 7 mixolydian.
Okay.
All right, and then for F, we're going to do this really kind of gnarly little— okay, so, and that's kind of— we're mixing like our major and minor blues scale pentatonic ideas over F. So we're starting here, so kind of starting with a That's kind of a minor and then sliding up to a major. Okay, and then for G, we're gonna do— okay, so that's kind of starting with our G kind of minor blues scale, and then we're using this open first string kind of as an escape note.
Okay, and then ending with that third string and then coming back over here.
Okay, so really cool stuff right there. All right, and then lastly this kind of 5th lead idea here. I'm just going to take the same idea and move it through C, F, and G.
So we're going to do up to F, up to G, back to C.
Okay, and really that's a Doc Watson thing. You also hear Billy Strings use that all the time as well, but that's just down here for C, F, back to C. Okay, so there's 5 great little lead ideas that you can use through C, F, and G. Feel free to experiment with a lot of those move them around, try to use them in other places. Again, we're building up that vocabulary, and the more that you can build that up, the more sources that you have to pull from, whether that's learning licks and phrases and tunes and solos and just having that big, big, big bag of tricks, if you will, that will give you a bunch of material to pull from when you're coming up with your own lead. So check out some of these other videos right here for some more bluegrass lead ideas through G, C, and D. As always, thank you so much for hanging out, and I will see you next time.
