4 Bryan Sutton Licks To Level Up Your Flatpicking

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with 4 Brian Sutton style ideas to inject into your playing and really spice up your bluegrass leads. So this video is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis of Brian's style. I don't think I could ever do that, it would take years. But these ideas that I'm going to show you today are 4 ideas that Brian uses a lot in his bluegrass lead playing. So you— how to play these ideas, and then I'll show you how to apply them in the context of a classic bluegrass standard. You can get the tabs for these licks down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. All right, so let's go into the first idea. Okay, so Brian's bluegrass power triplet here. This is one of the most common ideas that just makes Brian sound like Brian. So the idea here, we'll take this over a G. Okay, again. Okay, so really the place to really watch it right there, right there. That's where our triplet happens right here. And with your pick stroke, you'll do a down, hammer to the 3rd fret, and pick up on that 1st string, and then hit this 1st fret of the 1st string with a down pick. So that's the challenging part, and that's the part that you want to get really clean for this. And then you can end that in several different ways. You can do, you know, you can do— there's a lot of different ways that you can end that, but that's really, um, that's really kind of the crux of this phrase. And it just gives it this really exciting, uh, powerful, fast sound that's actually a little easier to play than it sounds because we're not picking all of those triplets. We're doing a hammer-on and then ending with a down pick right there. So at the beginning of it, you can start it off with a G run and then lead into the lick. You can jump right into it. There's a lot of different ways that you can do this, but that idea is just one of those ideas that really makes Brian sound like Brian. A little bit of history here, um, you know, with Brian's playing, there is a backdrop of a very obvious Tony Rice influence. All in his playing. But another big influence on Brian was Dan Crary, and Dan actually used a lot of these kinds of triplets, these kinds of, you know, 16th note triplet ideas that had a bunch of hammer-ons and pull-offs in them too. So a little bluegrass history right there. But the way Brian does it is really unique. And just a couple of variations on this that I did want to talk about: you could do it over D, and you can do Okay, and you can also do it out of C, um, and he does this if you've— on the Bluegrass Guitar album, uh, he records Beaumont Rag and it's just smoking. But you could do— so kind of same deal, but okay. So that's just a couple of other chords that you can use the same idea over here. But anyway, so I don't want to leave you with just a bunch of licks here. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to throw this into How Mountain Girls Can Love. That's the tune I'm going to use for all of these ideas right here. So I'm going to play the real basic melody on the first half of this solo, and then I'm going to use this kind of power triplet on the second half of that. That'll sound like this. Okay, so let's jump into the second idea here. All right, so the grassy chromatic special. So this first idea, okay. And it just gives it this really cool, almost slightly chaotic feel to where it feels like the train is about to derail, but then we kind of jump back onto the tracks at the end. Okay, and then related to that is this idea. It has the same feel to it. And then I'm— but at the end of that, I'm going to end with like a Tony Rice passage. So both of those ideas have this really cool kind of chromatic feel. Now again, a little history on that, um, I don't think Brian was the one to come up with this idea because, because you can go back and listen to some mandolin stuff that Adam Steffi was playing on some Alice Nelson Krauss's records like back in the '90s, and he used that idea a lot. Vince Gill actually uses a similar idea at the end of his solo to One More Last Chance. Okay, so people have been using these ideas, but again, it was Brian that really kind of made this idea like a staple of bluegrass guitar. So again, the first one and the second one is just a variation on it. So there we go. But again, I don't want to leave you with just a bunch of licks here, so now let me put both of those ideas into How Mountain Girls Can Love, and that'll sound like this. Okay, so let's jump into the third idea here. All right, so the Sutton Sweep. So here's the basic idea. So what makes this idea sound so interesting is when you're playing it in the middle of your kind of standard bluegrass lick. Gives it this really kind of unexpected sound that you really didn't hear any bluegrass players doing before Brian came along. So with this shape right here, and again I'm doing this out of G, what you want to do, have those, uh, your pointer finger across the 3rd fret of the 2nd and the 1st string, and then your ring finger on the 5th fret of the 3rd, and then with your pick just up, up, up, and then we'll come back in Okay, so yes, we're breaking our alternate picking rule there, but we're doing it in a deliberate way. So this idea does take some practice. It's actually not that hard to do. In my opinion, it's easier to do than all of, you know, the standard alternate picking that we use in this style, but it feels a lot different. From, you know, our kind of traditional alternate picking bluegrass technique. So it takes some practice to get it under your fingers, but— and what really makes this idea sound cool is you want each of those notes— you want to hear the space in between those notes. Okay, so it does take some practice. Again, really cool sounding idea, but it does take some practice. And again, to the best of my knowledge, Brian was the first guy that came onto the scene and kind of brought that idea into it. He obviously didn't invent sweep picking, but he kind of came along and made that idea again a staple of bluegrass lead guitar. So here's that idea in How Mountain Girls Can Love, and it'll sound like this. Okay, let's go into the last idea here. All right, the 5th position to open position escape hatch. Brian uses this idea all the time, and it's just a great, powerful-sounding bluegrass lead idea. All right, so the basic idea is this. Okay, let's do it again here. Okay, so Brian normally plays it, you know, his hand is kind of in 5th position and he'll play it like So I kind of suck at that and bring my hand up into 6th position, but it has the same feel there. And, and that's kind of our— we'll play that 7th fret on the 3rd, 6th fret on the 3rd, 5th fret on the 3rd, and then pull off to the open 3rd string, and then So you really want those hammer-ons and pull-offs nice and loud and clear through that. And a really cool variation on this idea would be this. Let me play that again. So this is more of a, like, open to 5th position and back down. But again, the way we get from 5th position back down to the open position is through the Okay, so again, uh, 5th position to open position escape hatch. The first idea, second idea. Okay, so there we go. So I'm going to use just the first idea there, um, in the context of How Mountain Girls Can Love, and that'll sound like this. So these are 4 classic Brian Sutton style ideas. He uses this in his bluegrass leads all the time, and if you can practice these and get them under your fingers, you can really start to add some of Brian's influence into your play. Most of the ideas that I've shown you in this lesson work over like 2-bar G ideas or G position. You can put the capo on and play it wherever you want to there. So just keep that in mind with these licks. They kind of work really well, um, over like 2-bar G phrases there. But it's up to you to work on these licks, get them underneath your fingers, and then apply them in other places. So I hope I've been able to give you some ideas from one of the absolute best to ever play this style, and I hope you take these ideas, learn them, and then use them in your own playing. Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you next time.