Building Powerful Bluegrass Solos!-Combine Flatpicking Influences For Amazing Leads

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you, and what I've got for you today is a little lesson on 3 different ways of of playing a bluegrass lead break through the classic bluegrass standard, "Your Love Is Like a Flower." So what I wanted to just kind of show you today is the way that I like to come up with leads and solos on my own. So what I'm gonna show you is how I like to target the melody of a tune, how I like to play around the melody and pull influences or pull ideas from my various flatpicking guitar influences. Here. So I'm going to give you 3 different solos that you can play over your Love Is Like a Flower. For the first, the first 2 are solos that I wrote myself, and then the third one is Tony Rice's classic solo to this from the Bluegrass Album Band. And remember, you can get tabs for all 3 of these solos down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. Well, I guess without further ado here, let's go ahead and jump into the first solo, and let's go ahead and listen to that one up to tempo with a backing track. Okay, so I guess before I get into, um, you know, analyzing the licks and the solos here, let's go over just a real basic melody to this tune here real quick. So, um, I've got the capo on the 4th fret here, played out of a G shape.

And the basic melody to this tune is, uh, um, it was long, long ago in the moonlight, we were sitting on the banks of the stream when you whispered so sweetly, I love you, as the waters murmured a tune.

And the chorus is essentially does the same melody.

Um, oh, they tell me your love is like a flower in the springtime, it blossoms so fair. In the fall when it withers away, dear, and they tell me that's the way of your love.

So if I played that without singing it Okay, real simple, pretty basic bluegrass melody here, um, but I wanted to get that out of the way because you'll at least know, um, you know, what melody that I'm targeting and kind of playing around with here. But let's jump into this first solo here. And so the first phrase of this first solo that I'm doing is going to go, um, All right, so, all right, so I'm—

so I'm targeting that, but then I'm coming up and hitting this note. And then I'm ending right there, um, so, um, so from the beginning of this, um, um, let's—

okay, so again, I'm targeting notes that are in the melody, but I'm playing around it a little bit. Okay, and let's keep going here.

Now we're gonna do—

okay.

So again, all right, so what I'm doing there, um, um, let me take it from the beginning again here. So we'll do Okay, so after the first phrase— so what I'm doing there, this right here, that's a very kind of Cody Kilby idea.

You know, he'll do a lot of these, you know, whoops, a lot of those really, you know, almost kind of mandolin sounding licks.

He does a lot of those, and so I'm throwing in just a little bit of that right there.

And then that's, that's our melody notes.

And then after I do the melody note there, we're over a D, or it's an F sharp, but a a D shape. So now I've hit the melody note.

I'm going to throw in this little Tony Rice, okay?

So I've already hit our melody note, I've targeted that, we're, we're playing the tune here, but then I've got a little space after that, so I'm going to fill that up with a nice little— okay, so that's kind of the first half of this first solo to Your Love Is Like a flower.

So again, we'll do—

all right, so after that, we're gonna kind of go into the second half. We'll do So just a little hammer-on right there, and then we're gonna slide up here and we're gonna do this kind of David Greer sounding crosspicking thing. We're gonna do— okay, so I'm not exactly targeting the melody right there, but what I am doing is coming up here, and that's this little— I'm leaving the 3rd string open while we're doing that, and And then we're down, up, down.

Okay, and that just—

that signals that we're about to switch to that 4 chord, but we're doing a little cross picking thing.

Again, very David Greer sounding.

Okay, and then after that, we're going to come over here and we're going to do And so what I'm doing on that passage, I'm targeting our melody note even though it's an octave up, because, uh, so I'm hitting our melody note and then I'm going into like a Kenny Smith style lick.

Okay, so we've got—

and that's over a C shape. And then we're gonna—

so that's, you know, kind of a standard sound little bluegrass passage.

And then we'll do—

and what that does, that targets our melody note, but then This little David Greer over our 5 chord at the end there. You may— on this channel I did a video doing David Greer's solo to Molly and Tin Brooks from the True Life Blues album, and he plays that little Okay, so we're— which is a great little thing that you can play over a 5 chord there.

So, okay, so that's the first solo to Your Love Is Like a Flower. So again, one more time.

So again, I'm targeting the melody note, but I'm not playing just like a simplistic melody, but I'm targeting the notes in the melody and then I'm pulling ideas from a lot of my favorite players to kind of come up with a cool sounding lead there. So one more time, let's hear that, that solo up to tempo and with the backing track. Okay, so let's go ahead and go into the second way of doing Your Love Is Like a Flower. Again, this is a solo that I came up with, but before I teach it to you, let's kind of hear that up to tempo and with a backing track. Okay, so with this one, we're going to start with this.

We're going to do one more time.

Okay, so, um, any fans of Billie Strings should, should recognize that immediately. Um, if you've ever learned Dust in a Baggie, which is normally, uh, which is in G, but okay. Very Billy idea, which he, he pulls a lot of influence from Doc Watson. So it's like a Billy strings, um, kind of Doc Watson idea.

Um, but remember, I'm targeting that, okay?

So I'm not playing a simplistic melody, but I'm targeting the notes that are in the melody. And then It's an octave up, but it's still the melody. So again, this first half— or not the first half, but this first phrase in the second "Your Love Is Like a Flower" solo.

Okay, again, very Billy Strings and Doc Watson.

Style ideas.

Okay, so we'll go into the next part of this solo now and we'll do—

all right, so starting off with a, you know, pretty standard bluegrass passage targeting the melody note right there, but then I'm going into like a Brian Sutton style lick over D. Okay, so let me take it from the beginning of this solo again. We'll do Okay, so again, targeting the melody notes, but I'm pulling a little bit from Billy Strings, I'm pulling a little bit from Doc Watson, and I'm pulling a little bit from Brian Sutton on that. All right, so now let's keep going here, and we're going to do this little idea.

We're going to do—

all right, and that's just these little sixths, but we're, we're picking it. Okay, so one more time on that idea, we'll do—

okay, so what I'm doing there, um, that's the melody.

Okay, and then these little kinds of ideas, these little—

you can actually hear Mark Mark O'Connor uses that a lot, um, like in his version of Dixie Breakdown. Cody Kilby uses those ideas as well.

They're kind of challenging because there's a string skip in there, but they're really nice.

And again, that helps us target our melody notes, um, as well.

Um, and then from there, now we'll do All right, targeting the melody.

All right, so we're over our C shape. Okay, and then to end it with, we're going to do a little floating lick here.

And then we'll do—

because again, that's targeting our melody note over our D shape.

And then that's it.

So one more time, let me play this second half of Your Love Is Like a Flower on the second version of it. So we'll do So again, I am targeting the melody of the tune, but I'm pulling from a lot of different influences, like this floating lick right here. I talked about that in my 10, you know, killer bluegrass guitar licks that everybody, every picker should know video. That's a great one. So again, pulling from, pulling some ideas from Billy Strings, Doc Watson, Brian Sutton, Mark O'Connor, Cody Kilby, doing some floating licks like in the style of Kenny Smith or Tim Stafford. And but, but doing that in the context of this tune and this melody. So one more time, let me go all the way through this second version of Your Love Is Like a a flower. So we'll do— Okay, so before we go on, let's hear that one up to tempo and with a backing track again. For this last one here, I was gonna leave this one out, but it's just— it's such a famous solo to this tune that I wanted to include it. So we're just gonna jump in and do Tony Rice's classic solo to this from the Bluegrass Album Band here. We're gonna do this note for note. And I love this solo, but like you can see in this, he completely disregards the melody. Granted, he plays some amazing licks, he targets the chord changes in a really cool way, but he utterly disregards the melody. And, you know, kind of the standard advice on most of this stuff is, you know, play the melody or play around the melody. And, you know, that's all well and good, and I agree with it, and I've showed you, you know, two solos here on how you can do that while kind of, you know, spicing it up a bit. But he just disregards the melody on this, but it's one of my favorite solos. So anyway, let's, let's, let's, let's hear that up to tempo and with a backing track here, and then we'll jump into the, to the solo. All right, so let's start off. So that's kind of the first lick, or the first phrase you want to—

and then we'll keep going.

We'll do—

all right, so let's play that much again.

We'll do.

All right, so yeah, I mean, just some great classic Tony Rice ideas. So So that last little lick that I just played right there, that's like a lick you can play over a D shape. Um, that's a— no bluegrass picker should be without this lick. Floating. All right, so from the beginning of this, this Tony Rice here, Love Is Like a Flower. All right, and then we'll keep going. We'll do All right, so that phrase, and then this last one will do So that last lick there— second half of the Tony Ross, Your Love Is Like a Flower. Okay, so one more time, all the way through the Tony Raster Love Is Like a Flower. All right, so one more time, let's hear that one up to tempo and with a backing track. Okay, so I know I've thrown a lot at you in this lesson here, but I wanted to do this because I wanted to show you how I think about coming up with leads on my own, but more importantly, a couple of concepts of how you can target the notes in the melody of a tune but play around them, spice it up, and pull ideas from different influences. Um, you know, so in, in all of these, you know, I've clearly— you know, we did a whole solo that was just Tony Rice, but there's a lot of Tony Rice stuff in here. You know, there's plenty of Billy Strings and Doc Watson and Brian Sutton and Kenny Smith and Mark O'Connor and Cody Kilby. So there's a bunch of different ideas. I like to do that, and I like to pull from a bunch of different players because as you do that, you'll start to kind of come up with your own thing. So anyway, you can get the tabs for this down in the video description. But you know, most importantly, I hope this kind of starts to get you creative juices flowing. And this will get you, you know, thinking about coming up with your own leads and your own solos and your own ideas. So I've showed you a couple of ways where you can again kind of target the notes in the melody but play around it. And then in that Tony Rice solo, show you how he plays an amazing solo that, I mean, just kind of disregards the melody, but it's awesome and it's one of my favorites. So again, this stuff is an art, it's not a science, but I certainly hope I hope that what I've shown you here today will kind of help you in coming up with your own bluegrass lead. So again, tabs in the video description and in the top pinned comment. Thanks so much for hanging out, and I'll, I'll see you next time.