Hot Licks In Classic Tunes!- Use 3 Hot Bluegrass Guitar Licks In Bill Monroe's "Molly And Tenbrooks"

Hey guys, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today, and I've got a really cool lesson that I'm very excited to share with you. So what I'm going to show you here is a couple of really hot kind of bluegrass guitar licks that move up and down the neck. But I'm going to show you then how to put them into the context of a really classic bluegrass standard. I wanted to do this because a lot of time when people are learning this kind of guitar playing, whether they're learning bluegrass guitar or maybe country guitar, um, there's almost a tension between learning, say, like licks and phrases and passages and learning tunes. Because ultimately we want to learn both. You want to learn the tunes, the classic tunes of this style, the fiddle tunes, the bluegrass standards, the instrumentals, all of that great stuff. But on the other hand, you also want to learn licks and phrases and passages, and that's like building your vocabulary. So we have like repertoire and vocabulary. So, um, what I wanted to do is teach and combine both of those approaches today in this lesson. So the tune that we're going to be using is Molly and Tin Brooks, and this is about as classic of a bluegrass tune as you can get. The original bluegrass Bluegrass Boys, Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys recorded this, I think, on their first recording, 1946, with Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt. And, uh, so this is a classic bluegrass tune here. Um, so I know a lot of y'all have probably heard this tune or are familiar with it. If not, let me go through just like a verse of it real quick here for you. So I'm gonna play it in G. A lot of times, um, people will play this in like B-flat or B. I'm gonna play it in G, um, for today's lesson. But the tune essentially goes like this. It's like 1, 2, 3, 4.

Run, oh Molly, run, run, oh Molly, run. Tin Brook's gonna beat you to the bright shining sun, to the bright shining sun, Lord, the bright shining sun.

So that's the basic melody, and those are the chords to it here. So it's just G, C, and D, um, although there's a couple of little changes you want to be on the lookout for. So we'll do 1, 2, 3, 4. Start with G. 1 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, to C, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4. Okay, so there's a lot of quick little like 2-bar chord changes there, but, um, I've linked to the original Bill Monroe recording and to the Bluegrass Album Band recording of Molly and Timbers. But anyway, Let's jump in here, and I'm going to give you just a real kind of simple melodic solo to Molly and Tim Brooks in G. Um, and let's go ahead and hear that in context with the backing track. And remember, you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. So fairly simple here, uh, and I'm sticking pretty close to the melody, but let's jump into it here and we'll do Okay, so one more time. One, two, three. Okay, so, um, I'm taking really not a whole lot of liberty with the melody on that. There's— toward the end, I'm kind of playing around it a little bit, but that's a fairly simple melodic solo to Molly and Tin Brooks. So that's a great thing. You want to start off with that, make sure that you learn that first, because what we're gonna do for the, for the rest of this lesson here is— so this first part of Molly and Tin Brooks, so I think that's Okay, so it's really like a, like a, like a bar and a half or like a 6-beat phrase. Okay, so that part we're gonna substitute for some of these other licks that I'm gonna show you here. But just remember, before you go on and learn the rest of this, go ahead and learn that first little solo to Molly and Tin Brooks right there, and then we can kind of proceed with the rest of this. But proceed we shall. So let's go in here. Now that we've got our basic melody, now that we know what tune that we're playing over here, let's learn some hot licks here. Now, I have covered these licks before. I actually cover this in my Flatpicking Mastery course, but I've also covered it here on YouTube. And you can check some of these passages out in this video and also in this video. So if you're wanting a little bit more of a deeper dive into these you can check those out. So I'm gonna go through these fairly quick here, but let's start with this first little G kind of position shifting hot lick, and that's gonna go like this.

Okay, again.

Okay, I'm pretty much using straight alternate picking through that. On the left hand though, you want to watch when you get right there. Make sure that second fret, you hit that with your index finger, middle on the third, middle on the fourth, because then that puts your hand in the position to play the rest of that in a really efficient way. So that's our first little passage.

Here.

Okay, so what we want to do is we want to, we want to essentially substitute the first phrase for the, for the Molly and Tinbrook solo with this phrase. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to change up the end of that lick just a little bit. So we're going to do— whoops. Okay, and then we're gonna play the rest of that first Molly and Timbrook solo that I showed you exactly like it is. Okay, so taking this first little position shifting hot lick and putting it into Molly and Tin Brooks. Okay, so let's hear how that sounds in context with the backing track. So I hope you see what we're starting to get at here. Again, we're still— we're playing Molly and Tim Brooks. And we're playing around the melody, but we're taking a couple of licks that we like here and we're just kind of plugging it into the tune. All right, so let's, let's, let's learn this second lick that's gonna go a little further up on the neck, and that's gonna go like this.

I'll play that again.

Okay, so that is going to be up here. We'll do Okay, so it's a, it's a little position shifting run that has, you know, a little bit of Tony Rice influence in there. So, um, kind of emphasizing the left hand here. That's very important when we go from 5 to 6 to 7. You want to do index, middle, middle again to put our hand in the position to play. So let me stop right there and play that again. And then when we come back down over here to the 7th fret, use your ring finger to slide and complete the rest of the lick. Okay, so that's that lick kind of by itself as like a standalone bluegrass hot position shifting lick there. Now let's switch up the ending of that just a little bit to fit it into the context of Molly and Tin Brooks, and that'll go like this. Okay, so that's what we'll change at the end of that lick. Still doing the slide with our ring finger, but we'll come up here. All right, and then the rest of the Molly and Tin Brooks will be exactly like we did in the original and in the, the version with that first position shifting lick. Okay, so now let's hear how that lick sounds with Molly and Tim Brooks' in context with the backing track. Okay, so let's try this here. I'm going to give you one more little bluegrass position shifting lick that's going to come all the way up to the 12th fret and come back down. It's going to go like this.

I love this one.

Let me play it again here for you. So that's how that lick would sound just kind of as a standalone bluegrass lick.

Okay.

But now we need to change it up just a little bit to fit it into the context of Molly and Tin Brooks, and we'll do it like this. Okay, one more time. And then guess what? We play the rest of that solo just like we've played it every other time. Okay, so let's hear how that version sounds in context with a backing track. So remember, I've got the tabs for all 4 of these Molly and Timbrook solos down in the video description and in the top pinned comment for you. I just, I just wanted to give you an example of how you can take some of these licks and phrases and passages that maybe you've been learning from me or from some other players and kind of plug them into a classic bluegrass tune like Molly and Tim Brooks. This is just one way of doing it. Obviously there's an infinite amount of ways that you can do it, but it's a way that I like to do it. It makes sense to me, and again, it gives us some cool sounding licks and phrases, some hot licks, but we're also honoring and playing in the context of a really classic bluegrass standard here. So anyway, hope you've gotten a lot out of this lesson and I hope this kind of, you know, gets your creative juices flowing and starts to help you see how you can take some, you know, different passages that you're learning and plug them into some of these classic tunes and come up with your own leads. So as always, thank you for hanging out, and I will see you next time.