4 Bluegrass Flatpicking Licks For Building Incredible Speed And Chops

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you with another bluegrass flatpicking lesson. What I've got for you today are just 4 really cool licks that are fantastic for building speed and for building chops in this style. As always, hit the link down in the video description and in the top pinned comment to get the tabs for this. And one other thing that I wanted to say is 2 videos that make a great complement to this are my How to Build Speed with One Lick lesson. You can check that out right here. And also my favorite exercises for building flatpicking chops, which you can check out here. I've also got those videos linked down in the video description as well. I'm gonna jump into the lesson here, but stay till the end because that's where I'm gonna talk a little bit about how to practice these licks. And I've also got just a couple of bonus ideas that have really helped me and I think will help you as well. So without further ado, let's jump into lick number 1. So I have covered this lick before in, in another video here, but I want to go over it again in the context of these 4 kind of speed building licks. So this lick is gonna go like this. Okay, let's try that again.

Here we'll do—

and I am bas— I'm, I'm using straight alternate picking to that, just down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. And then right here, down, down, up, down, down, up, down. I've got all of the pick strokes written out on the tabs for you. This is just a great— this is just a great lick to practice because it's got you going, you know, all the way, you know, from the 6th string up to the 1st string, which forces your hand to kind of minimize the tension in that, you know, while you're picking. Okay, and that's just a great one to kind of practice over and over and over again here. One of the great things to do with these licks, and I've talked about this before, but is to find the tempo where you can play the lick at. Kind of find the fastest tempo that you can play that lick at, again, you know, clean and reasonably in time. And then from there, shorten the lick a little bit, something along those lines, and kick that metronome up— or that metronome or drum track up, say, 5 to 10 beats a minute— and practice the shortened version of that. And that will acclimate you to playing at tempos that are faster than you're normally used to playing at. So anyway, I'm not gonna spell out exactly how to shorten this lick here. I talked about that in detail in my, you know, how to build flatpicking speed with one lick. You can check that video out in the description there. But start with the full-length lick, start with that, and then just kind of kick your metronome or drum track up, you know, 5 or 10 beats per minute. You know, and then maybe make it a little faster and just— and again, that just gets you used to playing at tempos that are a little bit faster than you're used to playing at. And if you'll practice that over time, you'll find that your baseline for how fast that you can play will kind of gradually increase over time. Okay, all right, so now let's jump into lick number 2. Okay, so this lick is a very, very Cody Kilby-inspired lick. Cody is just an absolute monster player, and, and he plays these like long extended runs like you just heard me play that are all picked, and he plays them just at the speed of light. It's astonishing to hear him play. But real quick, let me go through this lick here, and I'll kind of break it down and analyze it here for you. So that's going to go like this.

We're going to do—

okay, one more time here. We'll do Okay. So same kind of deal on this. It's mostly alternate picking all the way through this.

Just down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up down, up down, up down, up, down, up, down, Up, down, and then we're going to end with kind of a Tony Rice sounding phrase.

Okay, okay, so again, this is a great one to practice because it kind of has you going, you know, from this 5th string all the way up to the 1st, and then it ends with a really cool sounding phrase. And, and like I was saying with the lick before this, you can shorten this lick. You can— let's see here— just stop right there. You could, you could stop right there. Again, like I was talking about with the first lick, you know, find the fastest tempo that you can play that lick at, you know, solidly. Then from there, you can shorten a little bit, kick that up, and, you know, kick, kick the metronome or drum track up, and then shorten the lick just a little bit. And, and that gets you used to playing at tempos that are faster than you're playing. Just a really cool kind of Cody Kilby style lick that you can use, you know, to add to your repertoire and your vocabulary of, you know, bluegrass licks and phrases, and also doubles as a great speed and chop building exercise. Okay, let's jump into lick number 3. Alright, so I love this lick. It's a beast of a lick, and this is a straight Brian Sutton lick. He plays this in— so if you've ever listened to the Ricky Skaggs Bluegrass Rules album, he does Little Maggie on that album, and Brian plays this lick in his solo to Little Maggie. He plays it out of B, and he plays it— he ends it just a little bit different than what I'm doing here, but the basic idea is kind of spelled out here for you. Again, I'm just doing all of these in G. Let me kind of slow this lick down for you. So it's going to go like this. Okay, so we'll try it again here, and it's going to go Okay, so like the licks that we've played before, it's mostly alternate picking through this, but this one has a lot of slides in here, and it's a great position shifting run as well as a great, you know, you know, lick to practice for your picking as well.

So we'll do—

so that was all alternate picking.

Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, except for that slide.

Okay, and then once we get there, and you want to do that slide with your pinky And now we're going to do— okay, so one more time here, and then we're going to stop there, and I'm just going to kind of end it. And so this is where, um, I end it just a little bit different than how Brian does it. I think on, um, it's just a little bit different than how Brian ends it, um, but I'll do it. I'll do this. We'll do again. I think the way Brian ends it, it's more like, uh, So some kind of monster insane Brian Sutton thing. I'm gonna end it just a little different and we'll do—

okay, okay.

Great little lick there to practice for your picking. For your position shifting. And again, as is the case with the other ones, you can shorten that lick, okay? Or you can shorten it even more, okay? There's just a bunch of different ways that you can do that, but that's the main idea there. Get the whole lick down and find the fastest tempo that you can you can play it at. And then from there, you can shorten that lick, but then kick the metronome up and kind of start to acclimate your brain to playing at tempos that are faster than maybe you're used to. Okay, so there's lick number 3. Let's now jump into lick number 4. Okay, so this is a really cool one. It's, you know, it's obviously kind of Tony Rice inspired, but you'll also hear Jake Workman play a lot of licks like this. These just kind of long extended runs that kind of start from the bottom and go way up to the top and back down again, which is awesome. Jake's just such an amazing player. So this lick is gonna go like this. We're gonna do All right, all right, so down here we're gonna do—

and then—

so let's just stop right there on that lick and do that much again. So we're doing And then with the pick on that, that's just down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, slide up, down, up, down. Okay, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, slide up, down, up, down. And then from there Okay, and then with the pick strokes on that, um, up, slide, up, down, up, down, up, slide, up, pull-off, up, down. So up, slide, up, down, up, down, up, slide, up, pull off, up, down. Okay, so let's put the whole thing together here. Okay, let me go through that lick and see if I can say the pick strokes while I'm playing it. This is some serious Zen shit here. So let's do down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, slide, up, down, up, down, up, slide, up, down, up, down, up, slide, up, pull-off, up, down. Okay. I think I got that. And again, I've got the pick strokes written out for you on the tabs there.

But again, let's do that again.

Okay, so yeah, obviously some Tony Rice-inspired licks, but you'll also hear Jake Workman play a lot of these kinds of phrases that kind of go up the neck like that. Um, and then, um, you know, like I was saying, um, you know, you can also shorten this one, you know, to kind of, um, go along with what we were saying earlier in the video about, um, you know, shortening the lick but then increasing the tempo there. So you could do something along those lines, or you could shorten it even more and do— okay, again, I'm not going to like really, really, you know, spell out how to shorten that. Again, if you want to get a more detailed analysis of how I go about doing that, again, check out— hit the video description and check out the How to Build Flatpicking Speed with One Lick. I really go into detail on that. But that's, that's the idea there, is, you know, just find the fastest tempo you can play that full-length lick at and then kick the metronome up, shorten the lick, and then maybe kick it up a little bit more, and then something along those lines there. So there's that, there's the 4 licks there. And so now I'd like to talk to you just a little bit, you know, about how to practice these. And again, the main idea there is take the full-length lick, find the fastest tempo, and then once you're, you know, comfortable playing it at that tempo, you can shorten the lick a little bit, kick that metronome up. And if you'll just practice that on a daily basis, over time you'll find that your baseline, your standard for how fast you can play, will gradually rise. And I think that you'll find that naturally, you know, a lot of these, you know, tunes and solos that you're trying to play, you can play them at faster tempos cleanly and in time, which is really, really cool. So that's one of the things. Now, um, um, 2 kind of important things here, um, when it comes to practicing these kind of licks. Number 1 is just a lot of repetition. Um, I, I, I wanted to give you just some really short licks here because you can just apply like a lot of repetition to these. I'm talking, you know, ultimately you have to decide, but kind of what I tell people, um, you want to tell some of my students, you know, if you read about or hear about, you know, great basketball players like you know, Kobe Bryant, or, you know, way back in the day, like Larry Bird, and they'd get to practice before everybody else and shoot in between 500 and 800 shots before practice started. You know, music is not the same thing as sports, and I don't want to make that comparison. However, when it comes to skill building, there's some general things that apply, and that repetition is the mother of skill thing is very, very true, and I just don't hear as many people talking about that. So just take some of these licks and just be like, hey, I'm gonna practice that first lick, I'm gonna do it 50 times a day, and just— you do that every single day for you know, 50, 100 times, you will build speed. There's no way that you wouldn't be able to. It would be impossible not to build speed doing that kind of repetition. And you can do that with that first lick, you can do that with all of these licks. So repetition is really important. And the second one here is pushing yourself. And what I've been talking about in this video, where you find the fastest tempo that you can play the full-length lick at— and also don't worry about whatever tempo that is, I don't care I don't care if it's 50 beats a minute, I don't care if it's 40 beats a minute, I don't care if it's 170 beats a minute. Just find wherever that is for you. And then once you've got that, once you're comfortable with that, then shorten that lick just a little bit but kick your tempo up. And now you're acclimating yourself to playing faster than you are used to playing. And so, um, so that, that's, that's pushing yourself, all right? And if you'll combine both of those, repetition and pushing yourself, and, you know, do that every single day. And then check out my other video on my 10 favorite picking exercises for building chops in this style. And it doesn't have to be, you know, the exercises I have in that video, but just some type of, you know, technique exercise that you practice every single day. You know, Steve Kaufman used to call it, you know, oiling the machinery. If you'll combine all that stuff together and do it every single day, I promise you you're gonna build chops, you're gonna build speed, your playing's gonna go to a new level, and I think you'll find that the other tunes, solos, or ideas that you're working on are gonna become a lot easier and you're gonna be able to play them faster. Okay, so one more thing that I wanted to add, just kind of something that has really helped me but doesn't really so much have to do with the playing. Number 1, especially when it comes to building speed, is whenever you're playing— and you've heard me talk about trying to minimize tension in your picking hand— but I want to take that a step further, and I want you to think about trying to minimize tension in your entire body. Here's one of the things that really helps me whenever— if I'm sitting down to, you know, practice those licks and I'm really trying to push myself and What I try to do— I'm not perfect with this— but I just try to bring awareness to the tension that's in my neck and my shoulders, really my whole body. But I find that the tension— a lot of times I'll build up tension in my neck and my shoulders because whenever we go to do something that we think is hard, our human tendency is to tense up like this. We all do it. We all do it. And so if you can just bring awareness to the amount of tension and in your neck and your shoulders, and then just make a conscious effort to relax that. I think that you'll find that the tension in your picking hand will subside, and it will make playing these fast licks like a lot easier. So that's something I'm always trying to do, just minimize the tension, just minimize the tension, relax it. That stuff's way easier to do whenever you're not— it's just whenever you're relaxed, nice and relaxed. So again, whenever you're going to practice this stuff, you know, in addition to, you know, getting the notes and the pick strokes and all the technical stuff right, just bring awareness to your neck, bring awareness to your shoulders, and just relax. Try to relax that stuff. And, and you'll start to notice whenever you're practicing if you're tensing up a little bit and just try to keep your body nice and relaxed. Because if you'll minimize the tension up here, I think you'll also find that the tension in your picking hand subsides. And then one other thing that I wanted to just throw out there is, um, you know, learning how to be present to the moment. If you're anything like me, um, whenever you're practicing something, um, a lot of times you will engage in negative self-talk. I think most of us do that, and it is— to the degree that you can minimize that, you'll be better off. We just do. It's a human thing. I do it all the time. I'll be trying to practice something, or, you know, a tune or a solo, and, uh, you know, you just, you just engage in negative self-talk. It's like, man, you've been doing this for so long, you've been practicing so much, and you still cannot play that. It's like, oh my gosh. Or if I'm like listening back to something that I played and, you know, it's not up to my own personal standard and I'm just like, my gosh, what the heck is wrong with me? Or we engage in comparisons. It's like, my gosh, this other guy could just play that with ease and I'm sitting here having to struggle to do that. We all do that. Some of us more so than others, but we all struggle with that. And I think to the degree that whenever you're practicing, if you can just clear your mind and just be present to the moment. Just try to clear it out like the only thing that exists is what you're doing, is what you're doing. Get into that flow state. Um, your, your playing will improve drastically. And this is just for me, but a daily practice like meditation has been extremely, extremely helpful. It's just the deliberate practice of being present to the moment. You don't have to be of any religion It's for people of all faiths or people of no faith. It does not matter. But it's just a practice of learning how to be present to the moment. And if you can bring that to your guitar playing, you can bring that to your musicianship. I think you'll find that your playing improves drastically and your enjoyment of it will improve drastically because you'll be experiencing what they call a flow state. And it is one of the the best feelings in the world. It is enormously beneficial both, um, for your body, for your mind, and I also happen to believe for your soul. So, um, just wanted to end there with some parting words of wisdom that don't have as much to do with the, um, technicalities of building speed. But just remember, relax that tension in your neck and your shoulders, relax that tension in your picking hand, and when you're practicing just be present to the moment. Be present with what you're doing. Don't engage in negative self-talk. Don't beat yourself up. Don't engage in comparisons. Just be at one with this beautiful, beautiful thing that we call playing music. So I want to thank you so much for hanging out today. Again, hit the, um, video description to get the tabs for this lesson totally for free and to also check out my How to Build Speed with One Lick lesson and my 10+ lessons for building, um, flatpicking chops. Thanks as always for hanging out, and I'll see you next time.