Flatpicking Secrets!- Simple Ideas And Exercises For Unlocking Powerful Bluegrass Technique

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with another bluegrass lead guitar lesson. So in years and years of working with hundreds of students, I've seen that one of the biggest challenges that students have, especially with bluegrass, but honestly with lead guitar in general, is developing a good and solid alternate picking technique and getting that technique to the level of, if you will, unconscious competence, which is really just a fancy way of saying that you know how to do the right thing without thinking about it. It's become a good habit. That's a big challenge that a lot of students have when learning this stuff. And kind of an adjacent challenge to that is how to use alternate picking in combination with hammer-ons and pull-offs and slides. That's kind of a wrench that gets thrown into the mix there, because once you start doing that, there's phrases where you'll end up doing 2 downstrokes in a row in certain areas and 2 upstrokes in a row in certain areas, and it just gets a little confusing. But I'm here today to tell you that there is an absolute method to the madness, and if you can understand and execute just a couple of basic ideas it will make learning all of this stuff, both alternate picking and using hammer-ons and pull-offs in combination with alternate picking, it'll make it much easier. It'll make it make a lot more sense, and I think it'll really serve you well on your journey of mastering this style of guitar playing. So as always with my lessons, hit the video description to get the tabs for free, and also in the top pinned comment. All right, let's get to work. All right, so let's jump in here. So I want to start with this, um, this is just kind of a general rule to follow when you're doing alternate picking in the context of bluegrass lead guitar. I mean, alternate picking period, but especially in the context of bluegrass lead guitar. So most bluegrass lead is going to be played as 16th notes, and I'm sure most of you know what a 16th note is, but But if not, or you just need a little refresher here, 16th notes will get 4 notes per beat. So if our beat's right here, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 16th notes will be 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a, 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a. Okay, 4 notes per beat, and I like to count that as 1-e-and-a 2, E, and 3, E, and 4, E, and feels dumb when you're playing and like, like you're playing and then saying that out loud, but I promise you that's valuable, especially if you'll notice where your pick strokes fall on each of the beats. Because generally speaking, what we want to do is we want to do down on beat 1, we want to do up on E, we want to do down on and, and we want to do up on Uh, all right, down, up, down, up.

1-e-and, 2-e-and, 3-e-and, 4-e-and.

And again, just as a general rule to follow, you can absolutely break this. It's not, you know, the, the law of the land, but just generally speaking, we want to be doing the downstrokes on the downbeat and on the and.

1 and, and we want to be doing the upstrokes on E and, uh, 1 E and, uh, okay, down on 1, up on E, down on and, up on, uh, 1 E and, uh, 2 E and, uh, 3 E and, uh, 4 E and, uh.

That's the general rule to follow. Um, so now instead of me just playing like an open string right here Let's come down here and let's take a musical example. So if there ever was a bluegrass scale, in my opinion, it's this one, and it's going to go—

okay.

And then what that is, that's a major blues scale. It's not really a major pentatonic because I'm using the— that little flat 5 in there. But, you know, that scale right there, or that sequence of notes, is where we get our—

or our—

or even, you know, those kinds of ideas, melodically speaking, kind of come out of that group of notes, that scale, if you want to call it that. Um, so I want to start with this. Now let's let's, let's, let's talk about the rhythm that we're going to play that at and the technique that we're going to use. Okay, so the rhythm, like I was saying a minute ago, 16th notes.

1, e and a 2, e and a 3, e and a 4, e and a 1, e and a 2, e and a 3.

Okay, and then with our pick strokes, remember what I was saying earlier, we're going to keep the— we're going to do down strokes on the downbeats and on the and And we're going to do upstrokes on E and, uh, 1, E and 2, E and 3, E and 4, E and 1, E and 2, E and 3. Okay, let me go through and play that again. You can really kind of zone in to my picking hand on this.

1, e and a, 2, e and a, 3, e and a, 4, e and a, 1, e and a, 2, e and a, 3, Okay, so you can see when I'm doing that, we're doing downstrokes on the downbeats.

And when I say downbeats, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3— those are our downbeats. We're doing downstrokes on the downbeats, and we're also doing downstrokes on the and.

1, e, uh, 1, e, and. And then we're doing upstrokes on e and on, uh, 2, and, 3, and, 4, e, and, 1, e, and, 2, e, and, 3, and, 4, e, and, 1, e, and, 2, e, and, 3, and, 4, e, and, 1, e, and, 2, e, and, 3, and, 4, e, and, 1, e, and, 2, e, and, 3, and, 4, e, and, 1, e, and, 2, e, and, 3, and, 4, e, and, 1, e, and, 2, e, and, 3, and, 4, e, and, 1, e, and, 2, e, and, 3, and, 4, e, and, 1, e, and, 2, e, and, 3, and, 4, e, and, 1, e, and, 2, e, and, 3, and, 4, e, and, 1, e, and, Okay, so just depending on where you're at, um, you know, in your, you know, your journey as a guitar player, um, you know, all of us have to go through a period where we're kind of new to that technique.

And when we're playing an example like that, or a fiddle tune, or anything else, or scale, um, you know, we have to consciously think about it. Um, and that's, that's a challenging thing to do. It takes some time to again get that to a level of unconscious competence, which is just kind of a fancy way of, you know, saying doing the right thing without having to think about it. Essentially making it a good habit. It takes a little while there. But as you can see, there's a deliberate method that we like to follow on that because— and I'm not sure exactly why this is. I think it probably has something to do with like the laws of physics or motion or inertia or gravity or a whole bunch of other stuff that I really don't know anything about. But it does seem like that whenever we're doing our downstrokes and our upstrokes on those beats that I was just talking about, that it kind of puts us into alignment with a lot of those laws of physics. And, um, therefore it just makes— it makes these musical ideas a little easier to execute, and it also makes them sound smoother and cleaner, in my opinion. But anyway, that's about as deep as I'm going to go on to, like, the why this works. It just does work. Now, so I've gone through that scale and we've gone through using, um, picked notes there, and I would recommend starting there. Be able to go through that whole scale and count that out or say that out as you're playing it.

So as you're doing your alternate picking, go 1, E and 2, E and 3, E and 4, E and 1, E and 2, E and 3. Maybe try and sing it.

Okay, could be a good little, a good little thing to try there. But you want to get that down with the pick strokes, and I want you to count out those rhythmic beats because you can start to see how, um, you know, we like to use down strokes on the downbeats, and we essentially like to use up strokes on the upbeats. Okay, now a lot of students kind of start to get that idea and they understand, you know, the, the idea behind alternate picking because the idea is fairly simple but the execution is challenging. However, I think what throws a lot of students for a loop is whenever we start to incorporate and start to use hammer-ons and pull-offs in combination with picked notes. However, what you're going to see is that we're still going to use downstrokes where we need to use downstrokes and upstrokes where we need to use upstrokes. So what I want to do now is I want to go through that scale again, but this time I'm going to use a combination of pick notes with hammer-ons and pull-offs. It's going to go like this. We're going to do One more time. Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna go through that whole example, and this time I'm gonna try to call out the pick strokes and the hammer-ons and pull-offs as I'm playing. Bear with me, I'll do my best here.

So we're going to do down, up, down, hammer, down, up, down, up, hammer, up, down, up, down, pull-off, down, up, down, up, pull-off, up, down, up, down, pull-off, down.

Okay, so what we're going to do there— there's going to be a lot of, um, places, especially when we start to use the hammer-ons and pull-offs, where we end up doing 2 downstrokes in a row or 2 upstrokes in a row. But what that is, that's not— that, that's not in, um, in contradiction to the alternate picking idea that I was showing you a minute ago. It's, it's perfectly in alignment with that. And so I want to show you here.

So we're going to do down, up, down, hammer, down. Okay, down, up, down, hammer, down.

That's still— we're still using our downstrokes where we need to be using them rhythmically speaking. Down, so 1, e, and, uh, 2. Okay, so it's this time we did that, uh, that was a hammer-on instead of a picked note, so we skipped that. And then that next note on beat 2, we hit that with a downstroke.

1 and 2.

Okay, do you see what we're doing there? Do you see how it's still the same? The, the downstrokes still fall where they're supposed to, and the upstrokes still fall where they where, where they're supposed to.

Okay, so down, up, down, hammer.

Let's keep going.

Down, up, down, up, hammer, up.

Okay, so right there we've got 2 upstrokes in a row.

Down, up, down, up, hammer, up.

Okay, but that's still, rhythmically speaking, that's exactly where our upstrokes need to fall. Because right here, uh, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3. So we end up having 2 upstrokes in a row right there.

2, 3.

Because we for, for the downbeat on beat 3, we did a hammer-on. And so on that next note, which is going to be, um, is going to be an E, we need to be picking up on that, which is exactly what we do.

2, 3.

Okay, I hope this is starting to make sense. The pick strokes are still doing what they did on the previous example where I pick everything. We're just leaving some out. That's all we're doing. We're just leaving certain pick strokes out, but we're still staying in alignment with our down strokes falling on downbeats and our up strokes falling on upbeats.

So down, up, down, hammer, down, up, down, up, hammer, up.

Let's keep going.

We'll do down, up, and now we're going to come up here, and we're gonna do down, pull-off, up, down. All right, down, pull-off— I'm sorry, down, pull-off, down, up. Down, pull-off, down, up. And that's 4-e-and-up.

Again, downstrokes and upstrokes are falling right where they need to be falling.

Down, let's see, 4, E, and up.

All right, so remember, down, a 4, E, we do a pull-off to the E, down, uh, 4, E, and then we're going to come over here and do, um, a downstroke, down, up, 4, E, and up. Okay, again, Downstrokes are falling on downbeats, upstrokes are falling on upbeats.

Down, uh, 4, and, uh, okay, so let's keep going here and we're gonna do 1, 2, 1, and, uh, 2.

So that little passage right there, I'm doing down, up, pull-off, up, There.

1, E, and, uh, 2.

Again, downstrokes are falling where they need to fall, upstrokes are falling where they need to fall. There's just a couple of places where I'm leaving out, um, certain downstrokes and upstrokes because I'm doing a hammer or a pull-off instead of a picked note. That's all it is.

1, E, and, uh, 2. 1, E, and, uh, 2.

And again, that's down, up, pull-off, up, down.

And I think that was beat 2. 2.

And then we're going to come over here and we're going to do, um, uh, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3.

And then we're doing down, up, down, pull-off, Down, up, down, pull off, down. 2 and 3.

Again, downstrokes are falling where they need to fall, upstrokes are falling where they need to fall as well. So again, just kind of doing the descending part of this.

4 and 1 and 2 and Okay, and then with the pick strokes, that's down, pull off, down, up, down, up, pull off, up, down, up, down, pull off, down.

And again, our, our down strokes are falling on our down, or on our 1 and and our upstrokes are falling on E and on, uh, and we're staying consistent with that. Just when we do hammer-ons and pull-offs, there's just some of those pick notes we just leave them out, but the rest of it stays consistent.

Okay, so that's going to be 1, 2, and 3, and 4, and 1, E, and 2, 3. Down, up, down, up, down, hammer, down, up, down, up, hammer, up, down, up, down, pull-off, down, up, down, up, pull-off, up, down, up, down, pull-off, down.

Okay, so again, We're still keeping that 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a. Downstrokes on B on the 1 and the and, upstrokes on the E and the ah. Stay consistent with that. And I find that when you do, um, it just makes everything easier to execute, and it makes it sound cleaner, and it makes it sound smoother as well. So let me play the example one more time, and I'll go through it just using picked notes, and then I'll go through it using hammer-ons and pull-offs.

So picked, and remember, 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2 and a 3.

And then with the hammer-ons and pull-offs, okay. So they both sound cool. The articulation is a little bit different there, but again, with both examples, the downstrokes are falling like on our downbeats and our upstrokes are falling on our upbeats. So really what I hope this lesson will help you do is if, if, if you're going through and you're really trying to get your alternate picking down and you're trying to go through and play some of these tunes and solos and ideas, you know, with good technique, but you're getting a little confused, it's like, I don't understand, like in some places I'm using 2 downstrokes in a row and 2 upstrokes in a row, and I don't really understand the method to the madness. I hope I've been able to show you, and I hope that I've been able to kind of articulate the method to the madness. It actually is pretty simple, but the execution of it can be challenging. And just getting it to the point of that unconscious competence, just making it a good habit, takes time and it takes practice. Again, but there there is a method to the madness. So again, I will have all of the details down in the tabs there. I'll have all the pick strokes there written out for you. Remember, um, you know, the, the first thing to get on this is that, uh, get the scale and be able to count that. 1, e and 2. And as you're counting that, notice how your downstrokes fall on your downbeats and your upstrokes come on your upbeat. And then once you get that, then incorporate the hammer-ons and the pull-offs, and you'll see that it's just the same thing. And that when we're doing the hammer-ons and the pull-offs, we're just leaving some of the picked notes out. So, all right, I want to thank you so much for hanging out today. Again, hit the link down below to get the tabs for this. I'll have all the examples written out and all the pick strokes and all of that good stuff. I really do hope that this will help you out in developing, you know, a really, really solid alternate picking technique and a great alternate picking technique in combination with your hammer-ons and pull-offs. All right, thanks for hanging out today, and I will see you next time.