How To Create Unique Bluegrass Solos Fast

Today I'm gonna be giving you the quickest thing to a bluegrass guitar soloing hack that I can possibly give you. Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today. And I want to share with you a little bit of a hack that you can use in coming up with your own bluegrass solos. If you'll apply what I'm going to show you here in this video, not only will you be able to use these ideas across a ton of different bluegrass tunes, but it will give your solos a really unique sound, and you can come up with these pretty fast. So one of the great things about being a guitar teacher is that I get to learn a lot from my students. And a while back, one of my very favorite students— he's one of the members of my Pickers Insider Circle community— his name is Dave Saleh, and he Aaron reached out to me and he said, man, I have found this turnaround that happens in like 90% of the bluegrass songs that I've sampled. It's definitely piqued my interest. So we jumped on a call and it was kind of crazy because I had played these tunes for years, but I just hadn't put it together that this little turnaround happens in so many of these tunes. So what is a turnaround? A turnaround, for our purposes here, is just the last 2 bars of the section that we solo over. Now we're gonna just be talking about the bluegrass vocal tune side of the traditional bluegrass repertoire today. And so if you've ever been to a jam or listened to this music at all, you'll know that the format for this stuff, again, when it comes to like bluegrass vocal tunes, usually goes like this: instrumental break, verse, chorus, and you just repeat that until the song is done. Alright, so say you're playing Little Cabin Home on the Hill. Banjo kicks it off, you sing a verse, you sing a chorus, instrumental break, verse, chorus. Okay, so we normally solo over the verses here, but the last 2 bars, we call that the turnaround because it just turns us back around into the verse. What is this magic turnaround that happens in all these bluegrass tunes?

It's this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Do that again.

1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, so we're gonna get 2 beats of G, 2 beats of D, and 1 bar of G.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

This happens in a ton of traditional bluegrass vocal tunes. Here's just a real quick sample of a few. Okay, um, Nine Pound Hammer.

Well, the nine pound hammer is a little too heavy. It's for my size, but it's for my size. Well, I run on Don't you roll so slow.

Here it is.

How can I roll when the wheels won't go?

So how can I roll when the wheels won't go, or the wheels won't pull, or whatever the words are right there? 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, so there is that. How about Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

I was standing by my window on a cold and cloudy day when I saw All that earth come rolling for to carry my mother away.

For to carry my mother away. 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, so there it is in Will the Circle Be Unbroken. How about another jam classic? How about The Old Home Place?

It's been 10 long years since I left my home in the holler where I was born, where the cool Cool fall nights make the wood smoke rise, and the fox hunter blows his horn.

And the fox hunter blows his horn.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

All right, are you seeing this? So there's just 3. Now I have put together a playlist of 25 classic bluegrass songs that use this 1-5-1-1 turnaround. You can check that out down in the video description. And, uh, you know, just enjoy listening to it. It's just a lot of great bluegrass music. It's all traditional bluegrass, um, with some of it I go back to the original, you know, um, Flatt and Scruggs or Bill Monroe recordings, but then some of the other ones it might be like Tony Rice, uh, you know, singing Flatt and Scruggs, or Vince Gill singing Bill Monroe. But it's a lot of great music, and they all use this little turnaround. So that's— and again, that 25-song playlist is an— again, it's just sample. There's way more tunes than that that use this little turnaround here. So if this turnaround happens this frequently in the traditional bluegrass vocal side here, we should learn how to solo over that. So I want to give you 3 ideas that you can use to solo over this really common turnaround. Okay, so let's go ahead and go into idea 1 here. Okay, so idea 1 is gonna go like this.

We're gonna do— all right, let's do that again.

Okay, so this has a very Billy Strings and Doc Watson feel to it. Okay, so if you remember, you know, Billy's solo to Dust in a Baggie from the original studio recording, he kicks it off with it. Okay, so with this one, we started off in a similar way, but then we We target the notes that happen in that quick D shape that we go to, and then back to G. Okay, I like doing that on these turnarounds. I like targeting the notes that happen in that quick D there. What most guitar players do, you know, over these turnarounds is they just play like a 2-bar bluegrass lick, usually like kind of a Tony Rice sounding idea, like, which is fine, which is great. We all do it, but I like targeting those notes in that little quick D. I think it just sounds— I think it just sounds cooler. If I wanted to get all highfalutin with it, I could say it's, uh, it's more harmonically sophisticated, uh, but I just, I just think it sounds cooler that way. So, okay, so there's one idea that we can use over this turnaround that happens in a ton of different bluegrass. Let's do another one here. And this one's gonna go like this.

We'll do— okay, let's do that again.

So with this one, I'm just taking our basic G run, but again, then right here I'm coming up and targeting the notes that happen in that quick D and then back to G.

Okay, so we're doing D back to G.

So there we go, there's another idea that we can use over this turnaround. Pretty cool there. So two ideas so far.

We've got this one, we've got this one. Okay, let's do one more here.

And with this one, I'm going to give it like a— I'm going to give it a Brian Sutton feel to it.

And we're going to do— let's do that again. Okay, so we're going to slide in one more time.

Okay, same deal, we're targeting the notes that happen in that quick 5 and that quick D, and doing that little Brian Sutton kind of, and then coming back and ending on G. Okay, so now we have 3 really cool ideas again that target the notes that happen in that quick 5, that quick D, but that you can use in this turnaround that happens in so So many bluegrass tunes here. So now let's apply these. So we're gonna take 3 ideas, and I'm going to apply all 3 ideas into classic bluegrass tunes. So we're gonna apply these ideas into really, really classic jam tunes here. So what I'm gonna do first here is I'm gonna apply all 3 of these ideas to Little Cabin Home on the Hill. I'll play each solo very melodically, very simple without being simplistic, but I'll play it the same up through the first 6 bars. And on the last 2 bars of this, I'll insert each of these turnarounds, and that'll sound like this. Okay, so pretty cool. I keep it melodic, I keep it tasteful, but then at the end we throw in just a little bit of flash and it really gives the whole thing a unique sound. Okay, so I want to do the exact same thing that I did with Little Cabin Home on the Hill, but I want to do it with the Old Home Place. So with this one, I'll be playing it with the capo on the 3rd fret out of B-flat, which you have to do when you're playing the Old Home Place. And again, I'm going to play each solo the same up through the first 6 bars. I'll keep it really melodic And then we'll throw in just a little bit of flash by applying each one of those turnarounds to the last 2 bars, and that'll sound like this. So inevitably, people are going to want the tabs for all 6 of these solos here. Again, I'm not going to do that. I will give you the tabs for the turnarounds themselves, but the name of the game with this lesson is not to learn 6 solos by rote memorization. It is to understand that this turnaround happens all of the time, and it's to take these ideas plug them into this turnaround and then plug them into a bunch of different tunes. So I want you to get creative with this stuff. Okay, so that's just 3 ideas that you can use over this very common bluegrass turnaround here, but that's just 3 ideas. You could come up with an infinite amount here, and you can apply them to an infinite amount of tunes. So I hope that you're starting to see how many possibilities are available to you by being aware of this turnaround and by being able to solo over it. So it really is a little bit of a bluegrass soloing hack. And we're, you know, we're on YouTube here. I'm incentivized to present everything to you in the form of quick hacks, secret tricks, and easy fixes. And where I can give that to you, I will. But one of the things that you really cannot hack is just being familiar with this music, is knowing this music, knowing these tunes, knowing these melodies. You cannot hack that. But again, to the extent that I can help you do that, I will. So I want you to check out the playlist below. Again, it's just 25 classic bluegrass tunes that all use this turnaround. Again, it's the 1-5-1- 1 turnaround. It's the most common turnaround that happens in the vocal side of the traditional bluegrass repertoire. And again, massive shout out to my student Dave Saleh who brought this to my attention. So take a couple of these ideas here, get them underneath your fingers, but then from there get creative with that. Know these songs, know these melodies, be able to hum these melodies, try and play these melodies on the guitar as you're able to hum them and get familiar with these tunes. That part you cannot hack. But some soloing ideas over the most common turnaround that happens in these tunes, that we can hack. And I hope you take some of these ideas. I hope you're able to see how infinitely applicable they are, and I hope it gets your creative juices flowing, and I hope you have a lot of fun with this. So remember that you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. I really hope this lesson unlocks some creative potential for you. I hope you have a whole lot of fun with this, and I'll see you next time.