In this instructional video, guitarist Aaron Jaxon presents five beginner‑friendly solo lines for classic vocal‑based bluegrass standards—Nine Pound Hammer, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Molly and Tin Brooks, Blue Ridge Cabin Home, and Little Cabin Home on the Hill. He frames the lesson as a foundational step for flatpicking players, deliberately avoiding advanced "hot licks" in favor of simple, jam‑ready phrases. For each tune, he first plays the solo at performance tempo (110‑120 BPM) backed by a Strum Machine while displaying chord symbols relative to the capo. He then repeats the solo at half speed with scrolling tablature, encouraging viewers to use YouTube’s speed controls if needed. All chord charts and tab files are provided via the video description and a pinned comment, and he cross‑references his ongoing 20‑part series on fiddle tunes for flatpicking guitar. The video’s goal is to give guitarists a solid, universally recognizable repertoire that can be used in any bluegrass jam.
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Today I'm going to be showing you 5 simple solos to 5 classic bluegrass standards that every guitar player needs to know. Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with a little bit of a different lesson than what I normally share on this channel. I'm just going to be giving you 5 simple solos to 5 classic bluegrass standards. Now, these bluegrass standards are gonna come from the vocal side of the traditional bluegrass repertoire. These are not instrumentals. And I wanted to share that because I'm currently in the process of sharing a 20-part series around fiddle tunes for flatpicking guitar. I've actually got those already organized into a playlist, and you can check that out down below in the video description. But I wanted to give you some simple, playable solos to some tunes that are very jamable. You can basically go anywhere in the world where people play this music and they'll probably know these 5 tunes. So these 5 tunes are going to be Nine Pound Hammer, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Molly and Tin Brooks, Blue Ridge Cabin Home, and Little Cabin Home on the Hill. And the solos that I'm going to teach you today are going to be fairly simple. I'm not going to be throwing in a whole bunch of hot licks. And I want to do that because so many times when people jump into this style, they immediately want to jump in and start building speed and learn all the hot Tony rides and Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle and Brian Sutton licks and work on improvisation, and they skip over a lot of this foundational stuff. Here's what I'm gonna do today. For each of these tunes, I'm gonna play them up to tempo with a Strum Machine backing track. And when I say up to tempo, I'll play them in between 110 and 120 beats per minute. And as I do that, I'm gonna put the chords up here on the screen. Remember that the chords are going to be relative to the capo, and each letter will get 2 beats. I'll also have the chords written out on the tabs for these solos, which you can get down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. And then after I play each solo up to tempo, I'm going to play each solo at half speed. And as I do that, we're going to put the scrolling tabs on the screen. They're going to scroll across as I play. So I think the half-speed solos will be plenty slow for you, but hey, if they're not, we're watching this on YouTube and you can slow down my slowed-down version as much as you want to. Again, you're going to get 5 fairly simple solos to 5 classic bluegrass tunes, and I'm going to make it as accessible to you as I possibly can. And once you get these down, it's going to lay a great foundation in your playing, and you can use them at your next jam. Remember, you can get the tabs for all of these solos down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. So let's jump into the first solo here.
