How To Start Improvising on Bluegrass Fiddle Tunes

If you love playing fiddle tunes for flatpicking guitar but you'd like to start doing some improvisation and coming up with your own variations on these tunes, today I'm gonna give you some ideas and some examples that you can start using in your playing to make these fiddle tunes your own. Okay, so one of the most common questions that I get from people when it comes to learning bluegrass and learning flatpicking guitar is improvisation. Everyone's always asking about improvisation, improvisation, improvisation, improvisation. And people are usually wondering about improvisation as applied to fiddle tunes. And so I do want to get this out of the way at the top of the video. Make no mistake about it, that improvising, especially over fiddle tunes, is an advanced skill set. But here's the thing, and I promise I say this with love, most people who are asking that question, they're their time would be much better spent developing technique, timing, repertoire, and vocabulary than it would be spent trying to improvise, especially over fiddle tunes. That being said, this is one of the most common questions that I get, and it's one of the most fun things to do in this style if you do it right. And so this lesson is meant to be a kind of introduction to fiddle tune improvisation. This is not meant to be a real big extensive advanced masterclass around the subject, but I want to show you a couple of ideas and give you a couple of examples that you can use, you can learn in this lesson, and then you can start applying this to other tunes that you enjoy playing. You can get the tabs for these examples down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. And if you'll stay to the end of the lesson, I'm going to share with you some mistakes that I see a lot of people making when they're trying to do this. I'm going to show you how to avoid that. I'm going to give you a couple of big picture ideas that will really help you in this. So here is the big idea that I want to present for you today. If you're wanting to start doing a little bit of improvisation and coming up with your own variations on fiddle —do this: play a game of melody lick ping pong with the tune. Alright, let me say that one more time: play a game of melody lick ping pong with the tune. And some people are gonna say, Aaron, what the hell is that? So even if you've never heard that phrase before, you have heard your favorite players do it. And I mean, it's very difficult to get away from the influence of Tony Rice—not that you would ever want to get away from that—but you've heard him do it all the time. Here's one example. Now, he recorded recorded Gold Rush several times, um, in his career. And so I'm kind of pulling from a couple of different versions that I've heard him play. But, um, for example— and I would say a lot of y'all know this tune— but that's our basic A part.

And then the B part, that's the basic melody there.

So he would play ideas like this in a tune like Gold Rush. See what I mean? Melody, lick. And then on the B part, he would—

so again, we'll—

from the melody lick, melody. So again, playing a game of melody-lick ping-pong with the tune. What I want to show you here, I want to show you a couple of examples in two different tunes here. But the first tune I want to show you is Temperance Reel. Now, I'm not going to show you how to play like the basic melody of Temperance Reel in this lesson. If you do want that, you can check this one out right here, and I will link to it down in the video description. I'll just play a real quick example of the A, um, and the B part here. So for the A part And we play that twice.

B part.

All right, and then on the chords on that for the A part, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. And then, and we play that twice on the B part.

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

Okay, so again, coming up with your own variations on this, doing a little bit of improvisation, you have to know the basic melody and you really have to know the chords to these tunes here. But what I want to show you now is how I can take that melody lick ping pong idea and apply it to Temperance Reel. Okay, so all I'm going to do, I'm going to take one part of the A part and one part of the B part and use that as a kind of open-ended space to insert some licks, insert some of my own ideas, do a little improvisation. And so here's what I'm going to do for this first phrase. I'm going to keep that as my melody. I'm going to play it that way. But now on this next one, it goes to E minor from one bar. 1, 2, 3, 4. This is where I'm going to insert a lick, okay? And so for this first idea, um, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to do just a real standard kind of E minor blues lick, all right? And then after that, I'm going to go back into the melody, okay? And then I'm going to do that again. I'm going to, I'm going to play that melody again. And so now it goes back to E minor for 1 bar. Again, I'm going to insert a little lick here.

I'm going to do—

and then I'm going to go back to the melody after that. Okay, so I'm mostly playing the melody, but again, I've got one little section in there where I keep it open-ended. I insert my own ideas and do a little bit of improvisation. Okay, a part to the melody of Temper Trill, playing a little game of melody lick ping pong with the tune. 1, 2, 3, 4. And there we go. Clearly there's more than one ways to do it, but again, this is kind of an intro to fiddle tune improvisation here, and you're going to be much better served by giving yourself some restraints on where you improvise than leaving your options open-ended because you're going to get overwhelmed and there's just going to be too much going on. Okay, so let's now go to the B part here. So the B part. Remember the chords: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, okay, so what I want to do here is the same thing I did on the A part. I want to give myself one place on here where I can leave it a little open-ended and throw in some of my own ideas and do a little improvisation. So what I'm going to do here where the chord starts off with 1 bar of E minor and then goes to 1 bar of D. I'm gonna let myself, um, take a little liberty on that 1 bar of D, okay? But that's it for the B part, okay? So what I'm gonna do is this: I'm gonna go melody, D lick, melody, D lick. There we go. Okay, so what I'm doing there, it's the same thing I was doing on the A part. I'm giving myself one specific place to again take a little liberty with it, do a little improvisation, inject my own idea. So all I'm doing when I get to this D right here is I'm just doing a 1-bar D lick right here. I'm doing, you know, very common sounding kind of Tony Rice bluegrass phrase. And then the second time through, I'm just coming up here. Okay, again, very common one-bar D lick, and you can come up with that, you know, you can do whatever you want to right there. So I'm just doing a one-bar D bluegrass lick right there and then going back to the melody after that. So that's the big idea there, playing melody lick ping pong with the tune. But with this one specifically, we're giving ourselves some constraints. So on the A part, I'm just letting myself kind of improvise over that 1 bar of E minor. And on the B part, I'm letting myself, you know, come up with some licks and take a little bit of liberty and improvise on the part where we go to D for 1 bar. So anyway, let me go ahead and play that whole thing up to tempo and with a backing track here. Let's apply the same idea into a very, very, very common and popular fiddle tune for flatpicking guitar, Red Haired Boy. And again, I'm not here to teach you, you know, the how to play Red Haired Boy. You today. If you want to check that out, you can check out this lesson right here, and I will link to it down in the video description. It's a real quick melody on the A and the B part. We play that twice on the B part. Okay, and then the chords for the A and the B part: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.

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

All right, play that twice for the B part.

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

Okay, so again, I want to apply this melody lick ping pong idea, the Red Haired Boy. So here's how I'm going to do it here. I'm going to start off with the melody lick. Okay, so why did I do that lick in that way? Because the chords for that part are 2 beats of G and 2 beats of F— excuse me, 2 beats of a G shape, 2 beats of an F shape. The technical chords are A and G. Okay, so we've got 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, so, so what I want to do— so that's a, that's a lick that gives me 2 beats of a G shape, 2 beats of an F shape. There's a million different licks that I could come up with right there. That's just the one that I'm doing right here. So we've got, so we've got melody, lick, melody, and then I'm going to go to a lick. And the reason why I'm just kind of doing this one bar, you know, is because over the chords there, 1, 2, 3, 4, so it only goes to that 5 chord, the D shape, technically an E chord. It only goes to that for 1 beat. So I'm perfectly fine to just play a 1-bar, um, you know, G lick or A lick over that. Okay, okay, so for this A part on Red Haired Boy, we'll start off with the melody.

Lick, melody, lick.

Okay, then I'm gonna keep going here and do the same thing, but I'm gonna use some new licks and phrases. Melody, lick. Melody.

Lick. Okay, so again, melody, lick, melody.

And again, I'm doing this, um, because the chords— 1, 2, 3, 4— and then we go back to the melody an octave up, and then lick. Okay, this B part, I'm going to keep the same licks. I'm going I'm gonna keep the same phrases, but the melody is gonna change in a couple of key places, and that'll go like this.

Melody, lick, melody, lick, melody. Lick, melody, lick.

Okay, so there we have it here. But again, I'm doing the same thing. I'm playing the melody, switching to a lick, coming back to the melody there. So let me go ahead and play that with a backing track, and that'll sound like this. I mentioned at the start of the video that I did want to share a couple of ideas with you here, a couple of mistakes and pitfalls to avoid as you're going through and doing this. So number 1, whenever you're starting to dip your toes into doing some fiddle tune improv, do not start with Blackberry Blossom and Whiskey Before Breakfast, okay? Because remember, I said this is one of the most common questions that I get— improvisation and improvisation over fiddle tunes. But right after that, everyone wants to know how to improvise over Blackberry Blossom and Whiskey Before Breakfast because they're two of the most common and popular tunes here. Do not start with those tunes, especially not with the A part. Why? Both of those tunes have really busy melodies, but not only that, they have really busy chord progressions. Blackberry Blossom has a chord change every beat. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. And Whiskey Before Breakfast has part of the A part that has a really busy chord change. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. So do not start with those tunes whenever you're dipping your toes into fiddle tune improv. And again, I'm just saying this because I hear this over and over and over again. Everybody wants to improvise, everybody wants to improvise over fiddle tunes, and it's usually Blackberry Blossom and Whiskey Before Breakfast that they ask about. So Take like the tunes that we covered today that have a little bit more harmonic breathing room to them, okay? Like Temper Trill. 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4.

It's got some breathing room and it's easier to come up with ideas over a tune like that. That's idea number 1. Try not to start with any of these tunes that have really, really busy melodies and really busy chord progressions. Number 2: realize that these fiddle tunes are different. When we're talking about improvising on the vocal tune side of the bluegrass repertoire, there's actually a lot of similarity in the chord progressions, there's a lot of similarity in the harmonic phrases, and there's even a lot of similarity in the melodies to a lot of these tunes. There isn't on the fiddle tune side. These are different. So if you're out there looking for a secret trick or a hack that's going to help you just kind of improvise over all the fiddle tunes, you're setting yourself up for failure. So that's idea number 2: just know that these tunes are different. Brings me to idea number 3: whenever you're starting to dip your toes into fiddle tune improvisation, don't try to improvise over fiddle tunes. Start with one tune today, and start with one tune, and start with one part on the A part and one part on the B part. Because when we're doing this, we want to set constraints, because if we don't have that, we're just gonna be like a leaf in the wind. We're gonna be blowing around too much. But if you can start with one tune and one section of one tune, you can start to come up with your own ideas and get a feel for how you can insert your own ideas and improvisations into these fiddle tunes. And then number 4 is this: just remember that this is an advanced skill set. Being able to do this assumes that you have already got a well-developed technique timing, repertoire, vocabulary, and mastery of your fretboard. So if all of those things are not already at a really solid level in your playing, I think your time is going to be better spent developing those things than it is going to be on improvising over fiddle tunes. But that being said, this is one of the coolest things about this style of guitar playing. Hearing your favorite players come up with variations on this stuff on the fly is just a great thing. We all love it. We all want to be able to do it. And so what I wanted to show you here today was a way that you can start dipping your toes into this stuff. Remember the big idea: play a game of melody lick ping pong with the tune. So I really hope this lesson has given you some ideas that you can start to implement in your own playing. Remember that you can get the tabs for Temperance Reel and Red Haired Boy down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. As always, I want to thank you for hanging out, and I will see you next time.