Epic Billy Strings Flatpicking Tune!-Learn "Pyramid Country" Note For Note

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with a really, really cool lesson here. So I'm going to be breaking down and showing you how to play Pyramid Country by Billie Strings. Now this is one that I think, you know, he plays this one live all the time. So the version that I'm going to be showing you today is from the original studio recording. I just know that there's a ton of live recordings of him playing this because he does it at almost all of his live shows. And he usually plays it, or at least the second solo, he plays it a little bit different than what he plays on the original recording. I'm gonna be referencing the original recording here. So this tune is pretty interesting because the kind of the head, the main melody of this tune is fairly simple to play for like a bluegrass flatpicking tune. But then the second solo that he plays on this is an absolute beast. And I challenge any of you Billie Strings haters out there to learn this solo, Learn the second solo in the song, learn it note for note, and then work on it until you can play it at about the same tempo that he does, and get back to me and tell me if you still think he sucks. I've learned a lot of bluegrass solos from almost all of the greatest players, and this is one of the most challenging that I have ever learned. So anyway, there's a word to all the haters out there. Um, but I'm gonna break it down here for you, show it to you note for note, and you can get the tabs for this tune down in the video description. So let's go ahead and start with the main melody, kind of the head of this tune here. That's— it's fairly simple. Now you've probably been able to see I've got my capo on the 2nd fret and I'm in drop— if we didn't have the capo on, that would be drop D, but since we have the capo on the 2nd fret, this is in drop E. That's very important. So, okay, so technically this tune is in the key of E, although we're playing it out of a D shape. And again, we've got that 6th string tuned down to match our 4th string. Okay, so let's start with kind of the A part of the, of the main head, the main melody of this tune, and it's going to go like this. We're going to do Okay, and then we just play that twice. So this is cool, it's fun to play. There's a bunch of pull-offs here to the open strings, and again, just this, this main head here. And then we just play that twice, and that is the A part to Pyramid Country. Just a couple of little technique things on that, um, on that part right there. So do a hammer-on with your index finger, but then when you get over here to this 2nd fret of the— and again, I'm speaking relative to the capo here— the 2nd fret of the 4th string for this slide, I like to do that with the ring finger. Okay, so that may take a little bit of practice because it's a little trippy there, but then it puts you in the position Okay, so it's a really cool sounding phrase there. So one more time on the, uh, A part. Okay, play that twice, and that is the A part to Pyramid Country. Now let's go into the B part here, and what we're gonna do is— so normally we'd play G like this, but as you can see, that sounds terrible because we're in drop E. So you're gonna make your G like this, ring finger up here on the 5th fret, again speaking relative to the capo, and then— okay, so we'll hit that, and then we'll do Uh, let's see here. I'll do it again.

And then we'll play that again.

And that's the B part. Okay, so Okay, so that's the A and the B part. That's the main head of this tune. So a really cool set of melody. It's really fun to play on the guitar because you've got a bunch of like pull-offs to the open strings. One more time, let me do just the, just the main melody, the head to the A part and to be part of Pyramid Country. Here we go.

The A part again.

B part. Okay, there we go. So again, really cool and really fun to play on that main melody of the tune. So let's, let's jump in to— again, this is the second solo that Billy plays on the original studio recording. So one more time, I know I played it at the beginning of the lesson video, but real quick, let me go ahead and do a performance video of the second solo to Pyramid Country. Okay, so as you can see, there's a lot to this one here, but I've, I've been teaching this one to my students for a while now. So I've got a pretty good grip on it. Um, and, and again, I always try to, um, just kind of preface this stuff with, you know, I'm using my ear to decipher this stuff, and this is kind of as close as I could get to the original recording. But it's pretty dang close here. But anyway, let's, let's jump into it here, and I want to do this first phrase on, again, the second solo of the original studio recording to Pyramid Country. And it's going to go like this. We're going to do Okay, so that's kind of the first little phrase that he plays on this. And that's just a really great little lick to play out of a D shape. You can play that anywhere. Um, okay, uh, one more time. All right, and then he's going to come up to, um, kind of the next phrase of this tune, which is really cool. I haven't really heard a lot of bluegrass players play ideas like this, but I think it's cool. And it goes like this, um, uh Okay, so again, all right, so what he's gonna do right there— and again, I'm speaking relative to the capo here— this is 5th fret on the 5th string, and then he's kind of doing like a 5th, but then he's picking all of that. So that's 5th fret on the 5th string, 7th fret of the 4th, and then open 4th. And then he does that 4 times right here. He does— and then we're gonna go from 5th again, speaking relative to the capo here, 5th up to— I guess this would be like the 8th. Does it twice right there. And then down here to the 3rd. Okay, so again, that whole passage right there, we'll do 4 times right here, twice up here, twice down here. Okay, so again, and then, um, And that's kind of how he ends that, or at least that, that's kind of how I think of that. It's kind of like the second phrase to this solo. So, okay, so I guess before I jump into the next part, let's just kind of put everything together that we've done so far on the second solo. So we'll do Okay, so the next part here, here's what he's going to do.

He's going to do, um, all right, um, okay.

And that idea is fairly simple there. So, so after that, we're gonna do, um So that little part right there, I'm picking a down pick on that first fret of the second string. So pick a down pick on that, pull off, down on the second fret of the third string, up on the third string open. Okay. So right there, you're going to do that 5 times.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Okay, 5 times on that. All right, and then all you're gonna do is just slide on your left hand everything up 2 frets, and we're gonna do that exact same thing 3 times. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

3.

Okay, so it's the exact same thing that we did down here, but you'll just move everything up a fret, do it 3 times. Or at least that's how I like to think about it. So, um, 1, 2— let me do it a little slower here—

1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

1, 2, 3, All right, and then after that we're going to come up to this little kind of first inversion, again technically an A triad, but it would be like a G shape. And we're gonna do— all right, which is like kind of straight out of one of my cross picking exercises, like— but, um, so that's down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. Okay, so again, that phrase right there will do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3. Okay, so again, let's just— let's, let's add that to what we've got so far, or what we've done so far on the second solo. So we'll do Okay, so after we've got there, we're gonna do So coming out of— okay, and now we're going to go into probably the most challenging part of this whole solo. I know you may have been, you know, getting through it this far, be like, what? Yeah, so this next part is, um, it does like a crazy little crosspicking thing that just sounds so cool here. And I'll do my best to just kind of slow it down and break it down for you here. But again, coming out of— so this next part is going to go like this. We're going to do Oh my gosh, let me do it again here. Um, so, um, okay, and I think he— that's kind of—

I mean, it's just—

it's something a banjo player would play, but we're just doing it with a flat pick, which is a lot of what crosspicking is. And you can hear that, you know, in a lot of different places in Billy's playing. But this particular— this particular passage is kind of crazy.

But again, okay, let me play it one more time.

I'll play it really, really slow. Slow here will do. One more time. Okay, so yeah, any of y'all out there that are hating on Billy Strings, learn this, learn this, and, and practice it to where you play it at the tempo that he does. Crazy stuff. That's also like the ultimate crosspicking exercise. I love it. All right, and then we're gonna do So after we come out of that, we're gonna do— all right, so just two notes there. And then we're gonna do this. And so what that is, you know, just a kind of a very Tony Rice sounding thing. But this right here, we're gonna do that 5 times. So we're gonna do— so coming out of—

so 5 times on that. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Yeah, so we'll do it 5 times on that little lick there. And then we'll do again, very Tony Rice sounding. So again, coming out of that little crazy crosspicking part, okay. And then, so let's, let's do this. Let me take it from that really crazy crosspicking part through that lick right there. So we'll do— let me do it again. Okay, and then to end it off, we're gonna do— okay, so that last part, when you're like listening to him do it, it sounds crazy, and it is crazy, and it's challenging to execute but the idea is fairly simple. We're gonna— okay, and then come down here to the 3rd fret, and we're gonna do some cross picking here. We're gonna pick down on the 4th string, up on the 3rd, down on the 2nd, and then come down to— and then come down to the 2nd fret of the 4th string, down to the 1st fret of the 4th string, And then fourth string open.

Okay.

And then the way that you'll pick that down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. And then we're going to go to the third fret of the 5th string. And it's kind of the same idea here. Pick down on the 5th, up on the 4th, down the 3rd, down to the 2nd fret of the 5th, up, down, up. Okay, so let's do down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, and then come up to the 3rd fret of the 5th string, pick the 5th string, and then 3rd string open, 4th fret of the 5th string, 3rd string open.

And then we'll end with—

and there we go. So that last little phrase All right, so man, what a beast of a bluegrass solo. Again, anybody hating on Billy Strings, come learn this solo, work on it, play it, practice it, and get it up to the tempo that he plays it at, and then tell me he sucks. I mean, I'm sorry, this is a— it's, it's an amazing solo. Let me go through the whole thing one more time. I'll go through it all, the, the whole second solo, nice and slow here.

So we'll do How about that?

But I love that solo. There's some really cool ideas. There's some, you know, cool, you know, kind of classic bluegrass sounding licks like he plays at the very beginning. And then there's some of these other ideas that are really— he's the only person I've ever heard really kind of use these. You know, you'll hear Tony Rice use ideas like, you know, or You know, you'll hear a lot of bluegrass players use those ideas that use a lot of hammer-ons, which I love those, but this one's cool because it's like fifths. Those other ones were thirds, or, you know, Tony Rice did that all the time, but this one would be in fifths and he's picking everything.

It's cool, it's cool.

He's the only person I've ever heard do that. And then, um, you know, a bunch of great crosspicking ideas in here that you can use you know, as licks in your playing. You can use, you know, to build your vocabulary and are also great for just like exercises like this. That's a great little— or even this, like Just sit around and play that like a bunch of times a day. It will massively improve your picking technique. So a bunch of cool ideas in that second solo. So it's a— it's an ambitious undertaking, but again, you know, I hope this video has helped. And remember, you can slow this video down so you can slow down the slowdown sections, and I've also got the tabs for you down in the video description. But there's one more thing that we got to learn because he plays a really gnarly— so he plays the first solo, which is like the main melody of the tune. He plays the second one. He does a third one, but he just plays the main melody again, and him and the banjo player are playing that in unison. But then he ends it with a really cool, gnarly-sounding little bluegrass lick, and that goes like this. That's a All right, so that's just, that's just a classic Billy lick, and it's going to go like this. One more time. So the main thing to watch out for is at the, at the end. Normally when, you know, we would— but we're in drop E, so we've got a— there's a bit of a stretch there. So one more time, and there we go. All right, so, um, So anyway, some really cool and fairly simple ideas in the main melody of this tune. A freaking beast of a second solo, and then a really cool lick at the end there. Okay, so one more time, let me go back and I'm gonna play the first solo, the second solo, and the outro lick one more time up to tempo here. All right, so thank you for hanging out with me today. I've been wanting to do this lesson for a long time because there's a lot to this tune. But, you know, don't think that you have to kind of eat the elephant all in one bite here. If you want, just get that kind of main melody section down Work on that for a little bit. It's really fun to play. It's fairly simple. And then, you know, when you're ready, you know, jump into that second solo. There's just a bunch of great phrases again that you can use for building your vocabulary and that you can also use as picking exercises for building technique. I'm gonna be incorporating a bunch of those kind of into my practice routine after, you know, kind of going through and, you know, really analyzing this stuff for this lesson. Lesson video. So, uh, remember, get the tabs down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. As always, thank you so much for hanging out, and I will see you next time.