Bluegrass Guitar Mastery: This Practice Hack Will Transform Your Playing

Today I want to show you an incredible practice hack that can totally transform your playing in just 30 minutes a day. Stick around to learn more. Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today. So there are a million different ways that you can practice the guitar. There's so many different things that you can work on. You can work on your scales, you can work on your arpeggios, you can work on improvisation. And where I'm mostly doing bluegrass guitar on this channel, you can work on your technique, on your timing, on your speed building, on your fiddle tunes. There's just so many things that you can work on. And I think a lot of times people get overwhelmed and they get a little confused and they're not really sure what to practice on. Now There is no one-size-fits-all approach to practicing the guitar. All of us are at different levels, all of us have different strengths and weaknesses, and all of us have different things that we could improve on. But what I want to give you today is just kind of a skeleton form practice routine, if you will, that you can insert yourself into. You can insert your own unique situation. You can really think of this as like a plug-and-play swipe file that you can use for your own unique situation. So here is the basic form of this little practice routine here. So number 1, we want to start off with some type of warm-up/technique exercise. And then number 2, we want to work on our technique and our timing in the context of a tune. And then number 3, we want to practice deliberately pushing ourselves to build speed. And you can do all 3 of these in as little as 30 minutes a day. I would recommend practicing more if you've got the time, but I know I know that not everybody has that, but those are the 3 main things that we're going to cover and we're going to practice every single day. We want to have some type of little technique exercise to get our blood flowing, to get our hands loosened up, and to kind of oil the machinery of our playing. And then we want to work on our technique and our timing in the context of a tune. That way we're building our repertoire and our vocabulary. And then number 3, we want to deliberately push ourselves in order to build speed. Okay, so let's go with the first one. So I have done a ton of videos on this channel, which you'll see pop up on the screen right now, um, showing you a bunch of different picking exercises for developing your picking and your fretting technique. Now I'm going to link down to those in the video description. You can go through those and pick out a few of those exercises that really help you, that really challenge you, and that are really going to be a complement to your practicing. But what I want you to do, I don't want you to spend all of your practice time doing technique drills. I think I've said this before on this channel, but remember, we do technique drills to be able to better play the music that we want to play. We don't practice guitar to get better at technique drills. We do technique drills to get better at playing the music that we want to play. But I do recommend starting off with one of those. Um, one of my favorites is this one, the Needs a little work, there's a little sloppy, but it's that little where you're having your, your left hand is having to stretch, but also your pick. You're essentially doing cross picking on all the strings there. I also love just making the G chord here and doing— that's a great thing to practice too, the little David Greer sounding cross picking stuff. I try to practice those things every single day. Those are great things to, you know, get your hands moving, get the blood flowing, get your muscles loosened up in your hands to then be able to go and play the music that we want to be able to play. Now from there, I recommend, I recommend working on a tune. Now you can do this with— maybe it's a solo that you're wanting to learn. Maybe it's like a Tony Rice solo, like, you know, Nine Pound Hammer. You know, maybe it's Billy Strings' Dust in a Baggie. You know, maybe it's, you know, it can, it can be anything. It can be anything. David Greer, Molly and It doesn't really matter what it is. It can be a solo like that, but I think what I'm going to show you for this lesson here is we're going to work with a fiddle tune. Now, I've talked about this before, but I like fiddle tunes because you can kind of— it kind of covers all of the bases there, and that is technique, timing, vocabulary, and repertoire. So what I'm going to do here for this lesson— and again, you can kind of plug and play whatever it is that you're working on here— but what I'm going to do for today, I'm going to do Big Big Mind. So I'd say most of y'all are familiar with that tune. If not, here's, um, I'll, I'll play it up to tempo here with a Strum Machine backing track here for you, just to let you hear it. So what you want to do is get this tune, or whichever tune that it is that you're working on, you want to get it down with the right technique. And remember, with almost all of this bluegrass stuff, we're going to be playing this stuff as 16th notes, 4 notes per beat. If we're doing fiddle tunes, the fiddle tunes are played as 16th notes. If we're doing solos, those solos are played as 16th notes. If we're just, you know, working on some licks, those are meant to be played as 16th notes. You want to get the tune down with the right technique, with the right pick strokes, all of that good stuff. But equally as important, you want to be working on your timing. So you want to find the tempo that is comfortable for you to be able to play the tune all the way through with the right technique at, and to be able to play that in time. My two favorite tools for working on your timing are the Strum Machine, which is great because it's just an infinite amount of backing tracks to any bluegrass tune that you can think of. And then my real favorite is the TrainBeat backing track. So what I want to do for you real quick here, I'm just going to give you an example of this here. So I'm going to play Big Mon along with a TrainBeat backing track, and this is going to be at about 100 beats per minute, and I'll play all the way through it here. Okay, it'll sound like this. All right, A part of Big Mon. 2, 3, 4.

Be part.

Okay, so whatever tempo that is for you— if you need to go way slower and go down to like 40 beats per minute, do that. If that tempo at 100 beats a minute is too slow for you, go up. Just find the tempo that you can play that tune all the way through comfortably. Now, this may take some time. A lot of people will ask me, they're like, Aaron, when I'm working on something, I you know, how long should I work on it before I move on? And the answer is, is whenever you get that tune to a level of what we might call unconscious competence. Just a kind of a nerdy way of saying to where you can play it without having to think about it. So if you are having to look at the tabs while playing that, you're not ready to move on. You want to get that to where not only is it memorized— memorized is good, but if you're still really having to think about it, you're not quite there. You want to get it to the point where you you can play that not even necessarily with your eyes closed, but you can play it and feel it, where whatever part of your brain that it is kind of takes over and you're into like the feeling the music part. So that may take some time, but that's why we want to practice this. And I would actually recommend spending like the majority of your practice time making sure that you get this tune down, or whatever it is that you're working on, a solo or whatever. If you're having to look at tabs, you're not ready move on. The goal should be not only to have it memorized, but to have it to where you can really, really feel it and play it without having to think about it. Okay, so once you've got the tune down to that level— and again, this does not have to be fast. If 100 beats per minute is too fast, go as slow as you need to. You can use the Strum Machine to do that. You can find these train beat backing tracks as slow as 40 beats per minute and as fast as 190, and you can get them in intervals of 5. It's great. Hey, real quick, if you are enjoying this video and other content like it, then I I want to invite you to check out my flagship online program, Flatpicking Mastery. In this course, you'll get access to over 80 lessons with more than 18 hours of my very best bluegrass flatpicking guitar instructional video content. The lessons in this program are all shot with crystal clear close-ups of my picking and fretting hands. You'll have the ability to slow down all the course lessons to half speed. You'll get printable and downloadable tabs and backing tracks for the vast majority of course, lessons. But most importantly, and as much as I love YouTube, this is a great opportunity to get away from the social platforms. We can get away from the algorithms, from the clickbait, from all of the comments, and just focus on learning, focus on progressing, and focus on being the best guitar player that you're capable of becoming. You'll get lifetime access to this program for one single payment, no rebilling. Hit the link down in the video description to learn more and join up. All right, back into the video. So get that down. But what we want to do now though is we want to start pushing ourselves a little bit. So what I recommend is maybe just taking the A part of that tune, or taking a chunk of whatever it is that you're working on, and now let's push that tempo up. And again, instead of going through the whole tune, let's work on just a chunk of that tune, still working on our timing, still with good technique, but now we're going to push ourselves to play it faster than we were playing a minute ago. So that might sound like this. All right, we'll do the A part of Big Mom, 110 beats per minute.

1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, now you don't have to play all the way through the A part right here. You can even do just half of the A part. The bigger picture here though is you want to take a chunk of the tune that you're working on, not the whole thing, just a chunk, and then push that tempo up just a little bit to start to acclimate yourself to playing a little bit faster than you're used to. But I don't want us to stop there. So what I want us to do now is we're going to kick that tempo up just a little bit more, and we're going to take an even smaller chunk of what we were playing. So what I'll do for right now is I'm just going to take that kind of first line from Big Monda Just that. I mean, if you wanted to, you could, you know, you could just do that there if you wanted to. But now I'm going to kick my tempo up another 10 beats per minute to acclimate myself to playing even faster, and that'll sound like this. All right, Big Mon chunk of the A part, 120. 2, 3.

I'll play that again, play a little bit more of it.

Again, the bigger picture idea there is that we want to take smaller chunks of what we were working on and then push the tempo up to acclimate ourselves to playing faster than we're used to playing. Okay, so that's what we've done. We, we, we, you know, we get our technique down, we get our timing down, and we do that at whatever tempo that we can comfortably play again the tune, the solo, even the licks that we're working on all the way through comfortably with, you know, you're the— with the right technique, with solid timing, all of that good stuff. But then once we've got that down we're just gonna take a chunk of what we've been learning and we're gonna kick the tempo up, whether using a strum machine, metronome, or train beat backing track. And we're gonna kick that up about 5 to 10 beats per minute, take a chunk of what we've been playing and practice that at that faster tempo. And then after that, we're gonna kick that tempo up even more and we're gonna take a smaller chunk of what we're doing and then we're gonna play that at that really fast tempo. And again, that just kind of gradually gets you used to playing at tempos that are faster than you're used to playing at. So if, if 100, 110, and 120 BPM is too fast for you, just— that's totally fine. Maybe you need to go all the way down to like 40 or 30 beats per minute to play it all the way through, and then kick it up to, you know, 45, 50, and maybe up to 60 as you increase the tempo on some of these smaller parts. That's great. That is totally— that is fantastic. Don't get intimidated by this stuff. Or you may want to like really push the tempo on some of this stuff, like really push it. Just getting a little silly there, but, um, you get the point. So let's review here. Let's kind of review what I'm talking about. So you want to start off with some type of technique exercise that kind of gets your hands warmed up, that gets the blood flowing, that gets you ready to, you know, play the music that you want to play. And then from there, let's take a tune or a solo or even some licks that you want to play, and again, get that down with the right technique, with the right timing, and find whatever tempo you can comfortably play that at to get your timing solid, to get your technique good, and all of that. But then from From there, let's take a chunk of whatever it was that you're working on. If it's a fiddle tune, maybe take the A part or take half of the A part and kick that tempo up about 5 to 10 beats per minute and practice it at that tempo. And then from there, take an even smaller chunk. You can take maybe just like a line from the A part or like a couple of licks from the solo that you're working on and move that tempo up another 10 beats per minute and practice it there. So here is where the magic is going to happen. The magic is going to happen is when you incorporate all 3 of these elements into your practicing and you stick to it over time. I know that's the part no one wants to hear. That's the part no one wants to hear. But think about this: every single day you're showing up and you're working on a little bit of a technique drill. Then from there, you're getting a tune or a solo or a handful of licks down with good technique, good timing, and then from there you're pushing yourself to build speed. If you do that every day for a year, oh my gosh, your technique will be at a whole new place. Your timing will be amazing. You will have vastly expanded your repertoire of tunes and your vocabulary, and you will have pushed yourself every day. I promise you, you will be able to play at least twice as fast as you can right now. But the magic happens when you stick to this this stuff over time. So depending on how much time that you have to practice, you can scale up or you can scale down with all 3 of these elements. Let's say that you've only got 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week to practice, which if you don't have at least that, you're not going to make very much progress. You really do need at least 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week to make progress and improve on this stuff. You could spend 10 minutes on each element. You could spend 10 minutes doing a technique drill, you can spend 10 minutes working on your tune with your technique and your timing at the comfortable tempo, and then you could spend 10 minutes pushing yourself, or however you want to chop that up in the span of 30 minutes. Again, this is like a plug-and-play swipe file. Whatever technique drill that you want to work on, great. Whatever solo or tune or even just a handful of licks that you want to work on, you can do that. And however that you want to chop up what you're working on to be able to play it faster, you can do that too. And you can scale up, you know, if you've got 3 hours to practice, maybe you spend an hour on each element. If you've got 2 hours, you can divide it up however you want to. But I really do believe, especially for people that are into the bluegrass stuff, if you will work on all 3 of those— again, getting a little technique exercise, we're working on our technique and our timing in the context of a solo or a tune or a handful of licks and then you're pushing yourself and you stick to that over time. Don't email me in 2 or 3 months of working on this stuff and be like, man, speed's not there, man. I think it's the way I'm holding my pick. I think I need to change the way I hold my pick. I've been up all night binge-watching videos. Like, if you— like, what about the secret technique where like you hit the, the pick from like this certain angle and you do this motion? No, no, no, no, No, no, no, no, no, no, nope. Stick to this stuff. Consistency, consistency, consistency, consistency. But I promise you, if you'll do this— and you can do it with as little as 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week— but if you'll stay consistent with this stuff, you will take your playing to new levels. You will get so much better, and then progress will compound. You've heard me talk about this before in other videos, but I promise you, you're gonna get better, you're gonna enjoy this stuff more, and you're gonna want to do it more. So I really do believe that these ideas and these little practice hacks will transform your playing. But remember, you've got to stick to it, and you've got to stick to it over time. There is no way of getting around that. So I want to thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Check out some of these other videos if you would like to go a little bit deeper with some of the other topics that I was talking about today. Thanks as always for hanging out, and I will see you next time.