3 Killer Bluegrass Licks (And How To Use Them)

Today I'm gonna be showing you 3 killer bluegrass licks, and I'm gonna show you how to use them across 6 different classic bluegrass tunes. So you, you better hang around now.

All right.

Hey there, it is Aaron Jaxon coming to you today, and what I have got for you, I'm gonna show you 3 of my absolute favorite bluegrass licks, my favorite bluegrass passages, but I'm not just gonna stop there. I'm gonna show you how to use these licks across 6 really classic bluegrass tunes. And if you stay till the end, I'm gonna give you a couple of big picture ideas around how you can take all of these amazing licks that you're learning and use them in your own playing. That way you can use them at jam sessions, use them in your own leads, and use them in your own solos. You can get the tabs for these 3 licks down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. So let's jump into it. All right, so here's the first lick. This has always been one of my favorite bluegrass licks. This is actually a passage that I picked up from David Greer. Um, I think the tune is literally called Big Dirt Clod. I think that's actually the name of the tune. It's a great tune though. It's from his Lone Soldier album. And it's just, um, it's a lick that he plays on that tune, and I love it because it takes you from this like open position up to the 8th fret and back down again in a really cool bluegrass way.

All right, so let me slow it down here for you.

All right, so here's the lick nice and slow. Let's do it one more time. Okay, so again, just a killer lick. Okay, so anyway, There's the lick. Now that's the easy part. So now what I want to do is we want to use this in some classic bluegrass tunes. So this lick is a 2-bar phrase. So what I did was I did a bunch of research on some classic bluegrass tunes, and I tried to find a couple that have like 2 bars of a G-shape, uh, kind of I chord here. And one of my favorite ones that I came up with is How Mountain Girls Can Love. So this is an old classic. I think it comes from the Stanley Brothers side. Of the traditional bluegrass repertoire. Tony Rice did a really famous version of this. So what I want to do here now is I'm going to play this lick in How Mountain Girls Can Love. Now what I'm going to do is on the first half of the solo, I'm just going to play a really simple, really even simplistic melody, and then on the second half, I'm going to throw the lick in there. That way you can hear the contrast and you can hear how the lick fits into the tune. So that is going to sound like this. Okay, so that tune is a perfect place to use this really cool 2-bar lick. I don't want to just stop there. I now want to use that lick in another classic bluegrass tune. This one's also from— it's from one of the Stanley Brothers. This is from Ralph Stanley. This is his classic banjo tune called Clinch Mountain Backstep, and I'm going to do kind of the same thing here. I'm going to play the basic melody of Clinch Mountain Backstep on the first half of this solo, and then I'm going to use the lick on the second half of the solo, and that's going to sound like this. Okay, so remember this lick is a 2-bar phrase. Now what happens on Clinch Mountain Backstep as far as the chords go, um, it goes like this. Now I've got the capo on the 2nd fret and I'm playing this again out of a G shape, but the tune's technically in A. So the, um, the, the way the chords go: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. So again, Again, this lick is a 2-bar phrase. Chords don't stay on our G shape, or technically our A chord, for 2 bars. But what we have are what we sometimes refer to as quick Ds or quick Cs. And that's just where we go to another chord for, say, 2 beats instead of a full bar.

1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, and where we're doing that, we're say you have 2 measures and you're mostly staying on, say, your G shape for like 6 beats, and then you switch to the D for, say, 2 beats. A lot of times we can use these 2-bar licks that are out of our G shape over a chord progression that goes to, say, either a C or a D chord for 2 beats, and it works. Like in Clinch Mountain Backstep. Okay, and it works really nicely in the context of that tune. So there's just a few ways of using one of my absolute favorite bluegrass licks in two classic bluegrass tunes. Now let's go into the second lick that I want to show you. I love this little lick out of C. And what it is, let me, let me play it for you nice and slow here. Okay, and again, that's kind of like the other bluegrass lick, and this is the case with a lot of these licks. I think we'll come in on the and of beat 4. Go 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Okay, one more time here. Okay, now what this is is a 1-bar lick that we're playing out of a C shape. And I say a C shape because we're in bluegrass, we use our capo all the time to get this nice, bright, open-sounding chord sound that we need for rhythm and for lead. So you can take these licks and anytime you're playing a C shape, you can use this. And the good news is this happens in bluegrass all the time. Like, one bar of a C shape, you could— it's infinitely usable. I'm going to show you two different ways in two classic tunes here. So the first way here, I'm going to show you how to use that in Nine Pound Hammer, and that's going to sound like this. So this tune is just great for this particular lick. Okay, so that's a perfect place to use that. So let me do that in another classic tune that uses 1 bar of a C shape in its chord progression, and that's going to be the old classic, Your Love Is Like a Flower, and that's going to sound like this. At the beginning of this solo here, I'm just giving you a really basic kind of melody version of this. Okay, so wherever you have that little 1 bar of C, which happens in a ton of bluegrass tunes, Where appropriate, you can use this little— okay, which is just a great little lick, and it's infinitely usable in the context of traditional bluegrass tunes.

All right, let's do one more.

This little passage here is 2 beats of G, 2 beats of D, and 1 bar of G. Okay, and I'll play it real slow here for you.

One more time.

Okay, so what this is, again, we're starting off with just 2 beats of G. All right, and then And that's a little passage I've taught this solo on this channel. It's a solo that David Greer played on Molly and Tin Brooks from an old Bill Monroe tribute compilation album. But this, it's a great little passage to use over a D shape because it gives you like a little D9, just a little bit of a jazzy sound there too. And it's just, it's a really fresh sounding passage to throw into your solo because a lot of times when we're playing over D, we tend to kind of default to like Tony Rice, which is great, but I like this one because, like I said, it gives you just a little bit of a kind of a jazzy feel here to it. But I wanted to show you this specific kind of passage because this kind of thing happens in so many different bluegrass tunes here. So real quick, here's two that I want to give you real quick. Let me start off with, um, the old Flatt and Scruggs classic, um, I'm Gonna Settle Down Here. And again, I'm going to give you a really basic melody at the beginning here, and then I'll throw that lick in at the very end again to give you a little contrast and show you how it sounds in context of the tune. So that tune is just a perfect example of the way that a passage like this can work in a classic bluegrass standard like that. The way the chords go—

well, tonight I'm all alone, no place to call my home, don't have no one to love me anymore. I'm gonna pack up my crap and take a long, long trip back to the one that I love so. So that and then the back to the love one that I love so good.

That happens in so many different bluegrass tunes here. So that tune is a great example. Now another one that I want to do, um, kind of coming from— I know Flatt and Scruggs did this. I think this tune actually shows up on the very first Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys recording. And this is Little Cabin Home on the Hill. And I want to do the same thing. I'm going to give you a real basic melody, but then I'm going to throw the lick at the end again to give it a little contrast and show you how it sounds in context of the tune. So this This is just another great tune that kind of does the same thing, you know.

Tonight I'm alone without you, man. It seems there's longing for you still. All I've left to do now is sit alone tonight in a little cabin home on the hill.

All right, like right there. 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4. Happens all the time in bluegrass, by the way. Remember the previous lick where I showed you Nine Pound Hammer and Your Love Is Like a Flower? Well, guess what? You can use that passage in both of those tunes as well. Totally use this phrase in Nine Pound Hammer. Um, works in that tune. Just what about "Your Love Is Like a Flower"?

It was long, long ago in the moonlight, we were sitting on the banks of the stream, and you whispered sweetly in the ear.

And it works really nicely in that tune as well. So there's kind of a bonus there. There's actually 4 different tunes that you can use that passage in, um, as well. So I wanted to leave with just a couple of big picture ideas here. Now inevitably, where I, I ended up showing you like 6 different solos to use with these licks, people are going to be like, Aaron, give us the tabs for all 6 solos. No, I'm not gonna do it. And the reason is, is because the bigger picture of this lesson is not to just give you 3 hot licks. I've got a ton of lessons on this channel where you can get, you know, licks galore. But at the end of the day, the purpose of learning licks is to build your vocabulary and use these licks in your own solos. And so what I want you to take away from this lesson today is, is whenever you learn, you know, a lick here or a phrase or a passage, analyze it just a little bit. Look, is it a 2-bar lick? Is it a 1-bar lick? Is it a 6-beat lick? And then from there Go through and look at some of the tunes that you're playing, some of the songs that you're either working on. Maybe you have a local jam session that you go to. Take a couple of tunes that get called consistently and just kind of analyze the chord progressions here. We typically don't use a whole lot of complicated chord progressions in traditional bluegrass, but just see like, okay, how many measures are we staying on the G on that one? How many beats is that C on there? And see if you can start matching some of these licks and phrases into these tunes that you're playing. That's the bigger picture to take away from this lesson today, because I don't remember who I heard say this, but this is a really important thing, and I want you to remember this: you cannot outsource your own creativity. Let me say that one more time: you cannot outsource your own creativity. I love YouTube. I really love this platform. I love it as a creator. I love it as a consumer. I could watch YouTube all freaking day. But kind of a negative byproduct of all of this amazing material being on this platform for free is that people are expecting everything to be spoon-fed to them all the time. And my friends, I'm just telling you, that is not going to make you a better player. It's not going to make you a better musician, is having everything just spoon-fed to you. You have to take some of this stuff that you're learning here, you know, from me or other channels like mine and you have to figure out how to use it in your own playing. Now, I hope I've given you a couple of guidelines today. Whenever you're learning a lick, look and see how many bars it is. Is it a 1-bar? Is it a 2-bar? Is it a 6-beat lick or phrase? And then look and see, you know, where in some of the tunes that you're either working on or that you're playing at your local jam session, and see if you can plug these into those tunes. And if you'll do that with a couple of different tunes, you'll start to get a feel for how you can use this stuff that you've put into your vocabulary. You start to get a feel for how you can use this in your own playing, and you'll get better and better and better and better at this. I want to thank you so much for hanging out. Again, you can get the tabs for the 3 licks down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. As always, I want to thank you for hanging out, and I will see you next time.