Country Guitar Mastery: The Art of Double Stops

Hey y'all, it's Aaron coming to you today here, and what I've got for you today is what I'm calling a Country Guitar Double Stop Sequences Masterclass. What this is is a compilation of a 3-part lesson video series that I did on essential double stop sequences that you'll need to know for country guitar. So I'm super excited to share this with you. I wanted to just combine all of these lessons into one long lesson that That way, if you've seen one of the three but not the other two, you don't have to go around searching my channel to try to find the other ones there. So I'm very excited to share this with you. And hey, if you would like more of a deep dive into country chicken picking guitar, then I would like to invite you to check out my online flagship country guitar course called Country Guitar Essentials. And this course is essentially everything I know about country guitar taught for you in a very clear, easy to follow, and step-by-step manner. You'll have access to over 40 lessons with more than 7 hours of content designed to show you the essential licks, techniques, ideas, and solos to become a really killer country guitar player. So again, the link is in the video description. Let's jump into the lesson. Okay, so what I'm going to show you here is— and really what this is, this is a G mixolydian scale harmonized in thirds. Now, if when I go into theory talk right there, if you're like, Aaron, I don't know what any of that stuff is, that is totally okay. If you know what that is, great. This is not a theory lesson, this is a kind of intro to country guitar technique lesson. So if you know what that is, great. If not, don't worry about it, just learn the pattern here. So what I'm going to do here, um, All right, let me just jump into it here. And for this example, um, really for all these examples in this video, my pick is going to hit the 4th string and my thumb— my thumb— my middle finger is going to hit the 3rd string. Okay, so it's going to go like this. Here we go, here's the initial sequence. We're going to do Okay, so that's the initial sequence there. Now that's a little different from what I played at the beginning of the video, which is— it's the exact same scale, but instead of just going vertically up and down the neck, I did it like this. I went Okay, so both of those are great, but I want us to stick with this kind of— I guess it's not technically vertical, but we're kind of going up and down, up and down the guitar neck. It's, it's harm melodically vertical or whatever. Okay, nerd speak. All right, so, um, let's do that one more time here. We're gonna do Okay, and again, that's a G Mixolydian scale. Now I have chosen to do Mixolydian because, um, y'all, just in years and years— I mean, I've been playing this like country guitar for well over 20 years now, and in just all of these years of playing, uh, learning, studying, recording, performing, and teaching country guitar, I keep seeing that a lot of these country ideas played by, you know, the great, you know, the greats of, you know, the Telecaster, um, are a lot of times are based around a Mixolydian scale as opposed to a major scale. Again, not to get too deep in the theory, but like when you hear Brent Mason do something like a— or like a— that's based around a mixolydian scale, or when you hear John Jorgensen, like when he plays Hello Trouble and he does like— it's based around a mixolydian scale. Or even like Albert Lee, when you hear him play like— that's also based around a mixolydian scale. So I want, I want to get you used to playing this particular sequence of double stops. One more time, the basic pattern. Pick on the 4th string, middle finger on the 3rd string. So here's the cool thing: that's the only sequence that you've got to learn here for this lesson, but I'm going to give you, um, some variations on that. So now what we're going to do is instead of playing those as double stops, we're going to play each note one at a time. So we're going to go And now we'll do the exact opposite coming back down. We're going to hit, hit the 3rd string first with your middle finger and then the 4th string. So a real great example of that is listen to John Jorgensen's solo to Hello Trouble from the Desert Rose Band.

He does—

okay, which I'll do, uh, I'll do a lesson video on that in the future. But anyway, so one more time. Again, same double stop sequence, but we're hitting each note one at a time instead of playing them as double stops. All right, so now let me give another variation here to you. And what we're going to do is we're going to kind of, um, we're going to kind of walk into each idea. That's kind of the best way that I can describe it. It'll go like this. We'll do Okay, so again, that's going to be— and then we'll just do the opposite coming down. We'll do Okay, so again, the whole thing. And a really good example of that is the solo that Ray Flack plays to Ricky Skaggs' country version of Highway 40 Blues.

At the very end, he does like—

with that one, he's actually using the major scale on that one, but that idea— so that's a great little idea that you can use in a lot of different places. Okay, so let me give you one more variation on this here, and this one's fun. So what we're going to do here with this one This— these are triplets. They're like, um, they would typically be played as, um, double triplets or 16th note triplets, or like 6 notes a beat. Don't worry about that for right now. What we'll do is we're going to do, um, okay, so, um, again, the double stop sequences are the same, but what we're doing now is we're doing. So again, picks hitting the 4th string, but then we're doing— and we're pulling off to that open 3rd string.

And we're doing that twice.

And we're just repeating that on those double stop sequences because we can pull off to our open G. Okay, which is a really cool, really kind of flashy sounding idea. Um, there's a lot of great players that use ideas like that, but a really good example of that is, um, if you listen to Johnny Hyland's solo to Truck Driving Man by the Don Kelly Band, he does like something like that. There's a lot of great chicken picking guitar players that use ideas like that. So one more time, let me go through each one of these here, and we're going to do— so let me start off with just the basic double stop pattern.

We're going to do—

and now let's play each note one at a time. Let's kind of walk into each idea. And now let's play them as triplets.

Do it coming back down. Okay.

So again, that's just a really good introduction to a very commonly used double stop sequence, which is the— which is like a harmonized— a Mixolydian scale harmonized in thirds. A lot of chicken picking guitar players, you know, that's a— that's a Mixolydian idea. So is it.

Okay.

So, and then there's a couple of variations on there for you. Now I'm doing that here, uh, at a G, but feel free to move that around and practice that in some different places. You could come down here and do it in F, you can do it up here in an A, you can move it around a whole lot. You can do it on other strings, like down here you could do it You can move that around and practice it in some different places. And again, if you want to do the idea that I was doing at the beginning here, it's the same idea, but okay, I just like the one that goes straight up and down the neck because it's easy to add variations on that.

All right, cool. So here's what we're going to do.

So for today, for the last video that I did— and be sure to check that out if you haven't— I'm going to kind of— the structure of this one will be similar to that one. Um, and what, what we're going to do here is what I'm going to play is an A Mixolydian scale harmonized in 6ths. So again, If you don't know what any of that means, don't worry about it at all. Just learn what I'm showing you here. If you do, fantastic. So let me go through and I'm going to show you the basic pattern here. So here's what's going to happen. These ideas are going to be played on the 5th string and the 3rd string simultaneously. So as far as the technique goes, you want to have your pick hitting the 5th string and your middle finger hitting the, um, hitting the 3rd string. Okay, so let me go through and show you the basic sequence here. It's going to go like this. We're going to do Okay, so again, that's the basic idea there. So you will hear a lot of the great country players use ideas like this. If you've ever heard Ray Flack's solo to Uncle Penn, you know, he does a You know, you'll hear Johnny Hyland play like, you know, and there's just these, these ideas are very commonly used here.

So one more time, we'll do—

okay, so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna add some variations on it like I did in the last video. So now Instead of playing those as double stops, we're gonna play those one at a time.

We'll do—

and then just do the opposite coming down. Hit the 3rd string first and then the 5th. We'll do— All right, and now let's kind of walk into each idea, and we'll do it like this.

We'll do—

and then you can do that in a descending way, uh, kind of in, in, in reverse. So one more time, kind of walking into each idea. Okay, so now, now we're going to do some pull-offs and turn these ideas into triplets. So what we're going to do is we're going to do— and we're going to pull off to the open 3rd string. We're going to do Okay, which has like a really flashy effect, you know, and is really cool sounding. So again, we'll do— and then we'll just do that, um, on each shape as we move up, uh, move up the sequence. Okay, so let's go through each of these one more time here. So let's go through and do just the basic sequence played as double stops, and we'll do And now let's play each note one at a time.

And then in descending.

And now let's walk into each idea. And then let's add some pull-offs on this 3rd string to kind of make a triplet idea out of it. Okay, and again, for all of those, have your pick hit the 5th string and have your middle finger hit that 3rd string and give it just a little bit of a pop. Now you don't want to play it so hard where you're trying to rip the string off But you want those to have a little pop. Okay, cool. Let's start with, um, so what we're going to do here today is kind of like I've done in the other videos. We're doing a harmonized Mixolydian scale in thirds and in sixths. And again, I covered that in the other two videos, but today we're going to do that in A. And so the first sequence that I want to show you is that we're going to play these on the third and second strings. These are thirds in A through the Mixolydian scale. Again, if you know what a Mixolydian scale is, great. If you don't, that's fine, just learn the pattern.

Pattern. So here we go. Um, we're gonna do—

okay. And then on your, on your picking hand, I was actually just then, I was playing the third string with my middle finger and the second string with my ring finger. Just, it just kind of gives it that maximum kind of popping sound. You can also do it if you want to have your pick hit the third string and your middle finger hit the second string. That's fine too. But again, let me, let me show you the sequence again here. We're going to do Okay, so yeah, these ideas show up a lot. You'll see that used a lot by, you know, Danny Gatten and Albert Lee and Brent Mason. These ideas show up a lot, and that's why I wanted to do a Mixolydian scale instead of a major scale with these. But again, one more time. Now let's go through and we're gonna play— instead of playing those as double stops, we're gonna play each note one at a time. We're gonna do And then we'll jump into it, and, um, kind of like I've done in previous videos, we want to sort of kind of walk into each idea.

We'll do—

and then we'll do that in, um, in reverse. Okay, so again. All right, so, and here's, here's what I tell my students to do. Like, the first, um, the, the first sequence that I showed you, um, where we're just playing them as double stops, play those as quarter notes. Just 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. And then on the, um, the second way that I showed you, play each note one at a time but do it as eighth notes. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and then that third way where we kind of walk into each idea, play those as 16th notes. Uh, 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a, 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 1-e— and then it, it's, it's walking and chewing gum at the same time, y'all. It's tough. Um, so one really fun thing to do with these, um, to, to make it more musical, to make it more fun, and to also work work on your timing is to practice these with a train beat backing track. You can find these all over YouTube. You can find them at different tempos. You know, there's certain, you know, metronomes that have the option for this kind of thing. And go through and play these, those ideas, along with like a train beat like this. Okay, so you can see how that makes the whole thing, um, not only is it great to practice with because you're also, in addition to working on these melodic ideas and your technique, you're also working on your timing. So that's a whole lot of fun to do, and you can do that with all of these sequences that I have shown you in all 3 of these lessons. So I highly recommend doing that. So anyway, that's one idea that I wanted to show you. Here's another one. Again, we're doing an A Mixolydian scale, but this time We're going to do it on the 3rd and 1st strings harmonized in 6ths. Again, if the theory is over your head, don't worry about it, just learn the patterns. So that's going to go like this. We're going to do Okay, and so yeah, some very kind of pedal steel, you know, sounding ideas there. Um, so now that we played— we went through, played them as double stops, um, and, you know, rhythmically as quarter notes, let's go through now and do each one of them one at a time as eighth notes. And then back down. Okay, and then we'll walk into each idea and play it as 16th notes. Whoops. So again, as, um, as quarter notes, eighth notes. And as 16th notes. Okay, so let me do that with the train beat here. Okay, so, um, again, you can see how it's a— that's a great way to work on your timing, and it just makes these, um, a whole lot more fun, and it feels a lot more like music and a little bit less, you know, like you're doing, you know, rudiments in high school band or something like that. So, um, one more time here. So we've got, um, we've got the thirds on the third and second strings with the variations that I showed you, and we've got the sixths on the third and first strings, and again with the other variations that I've showed you. There. So anyway, take the material from this video and from the other two, and, um, and if you'll practice those, especially along with that train beat— again, you can find plenty of backing tracks on YouTube, but you can also find, um, I think there's certain metronomes that have like the little train beat feature dialed into it there— and if you'll practice all of these ideas along with that train beat, you're really gonna lay a killer solid foundation for, you know, being a good country guitar player. And honestly, a lot of these ideas you can use exactly like I'm showing you, um, in your, in your solos. I mean, if we just took something here, I'm just going to kind of— I'm, I'm coming up with this off the cuff here, so bear with me here.

But like, you know, if I was to take a You know, I could do—

let's see—

A, D, E, A.

You know, and that's like some of those thirds right there. Or if I wanted to do it with the 6, I could do like a 1, 2, 3, 4, D, E, Anyway, that's just kind of me spitballing off the top of my head there, but you can see how those ideas are absolutely usable in your country guitar solos. Um, so there's just a lot of really good things, um, that can come of learning these ideas. And again, especially practicing them with that, um, with the train beat, with the backing track as well. All right, cool.