Aaron Jaxon teaches the bluegrass tune "Big Mon" in two versions: a straightforward melody with alternate picking, then an advanced arrangement with octave shifts and Tony Rice-inspired licks. Tabs and backing tracks are available in the description.
Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with a lesson on Big Mind. I absolutely love this tune. It's one of my very favorite jam tunes, and I've been doing a lot of lessons around fiddle tunes for flatpicking guitar, but it dawned on me the other day that I haven't covered Big Mind. So that's what we're going to do today. I've actually plucked this lesson out of my Flatpicking Mastery 2.0 program, which you can check out down in the video description. And what I'm going to give you is just a basic melody version of this tune, and then I'm going to give you another version which I'm calling the second break, which is a lot more dense, a lot more involved, and has a lot of great licks and phrases to get underneath your fingers. This is an amazing tune to add to your repertoire. Again, it really is one of my very favorite jam tunes for flatpicking guitar, and the second version of this is also going to give you a bunch of great phrases and hot licks to add to your vocabulary. You can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. So Let's jump into the lesson on BigMind. All right, so welcome to the lesson video for Big Mine. This is a classic, classic tune that you've got to know for, uh, bluegrass flatpicking guitar. So as is the case with all these other tunes here, I'm going to go through, give you a real basic melody version of this tune, and then I'll give you a little bit more of an advanced version. Okay, so this will be the A part to break 1. We'll go ahead and throw the tabs up on the screen, and it will go like this. Okay, so that was just the basic little A part there to, uh, Big Mind. So now let's jump in and we're going to do just the basic melody to the B part. So this will be the B part of break 1. We'll throw the tabs back up on the screen and it'll go like this. Okay, so that's our basic A and B part there. Again, we're using alternate picking through this. We're playing this 16th notes, and like I explained in the first module our pick strokes are falling on the 1 and the and, and our up strokes are falling on E and, uh, we pick those 16th notes like 1, E, and 2, E, and 3. And our down and up strokes are always falling on those beats right there. So it's a pretty easy idea to remember, but it's, um, it takes a lot of practice to make that become a habit. But I do have all the tabs, or all the pick strokes written out on the tabs here for you. So one more time before we go into kind of break 2 to this, I want to go back through and just play the basic melody of the A and the B part to break one of the big minds. So we'll start with the A part. It'll go like this.
To the B part.
There we have it. All right, that's our basic melody to Big Mom here. So now let's jump into break 2 here, and I'll start with the A part to break 2. Again, we're going to make this a little bit busier, a little bit more advanced on this. So here we go. This will be the A part to break 2 of Big Mom. We'll throw the tabs back up on the screen and we'll do— so this will be the A part to break 2 of Big Mom. We'll throw the tabs back up on the screen and it'll go like this. So I'm still playing around the melody there, but I'm throwing in just a couple of little extra parts. And then on the second half of that, I'm coming up and playing the melody up, um, an octave there, but then throwing in a couple of hot licks to end it with. So again, just that little—
let me do that again here. Okay, so up here, the—
and then some little pull-offs, you know, that kind of an idea there. Just throwing that in there to kind of make this a little bit more interesting, a little more advanced, and then ending with—
okay, all right.
So this will be the B part to break 2 of Big Mama. We'll throw the tabs back up on the screen and it will go like this. And there we have it there. So I'm really just kind of taking the melody and then I'm just throwing in a couple of kind of hot Tony Rice sounding licks around that. A lot of these fiddle tunes, in my opinion, don't sound good with like a whole bunch of hot licks thrown in there, but Big Mon does. Okay, so, you know, so we're doing the melody right there, but then, you know, and And then so this up here, you know, you guys remember the position shifting runs from the second module? I'm pulling from that and then just ending with that little Tony Rice Okay, so there's just another way of, you know, thinking about the, um, the, the B part to Big Mon. Okay, so one more time, nice and slow. I want to go through the A and the B part to break 2 of Big Mon. So we'll start with the A part. It'll go like this.
B parts.
Okay, so there we have it. There's two different ways of playing through Big Mon. It's a classic, classic tune that you've got to know. For this style here. Check out some of the recordings that I've got in the links. Check out the tabs. Check out the guitar profiles, backing tracks, all of that good stuff. All right, great job, and I will see you in the next lesson.
