Jaw-Dropping Bluegrass Guitar Solo- Learn Cody Kilby's Epic "Goin' Back To Old Kentucky" Solo

Hey friends, Aaron Jaxon coming to you today here, and I've got a really cool lesson here. I'm going to kind of go through and break down Cody Kilby's solo to I'm Going Back to Old Kentucky. From Ricky Skaggs' Tribute to the Father of Bluegrass album. If you'd like to get the tabs for this lesson, I've got that linked down in the video description, so feel free to hit that link to get the tabs for this lesson. And let's jump into it here. All right, so at the very beginning here, this first phrase Okay, so that was— I mean, that was a little bit more than just one phrase, but at the beginning there, so, so far So far, that's pretty standard kind of Tony Rice-influenced bluegrass lead ideas. One of the things I did want to point out though is at the beginning there. So as far as the timing on where that comes in, 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a, 1. So again, most of these bluegrass solos are played as 16th notes, and we count 16th notes like it's 4 notes per beat. 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a. Um, which feels really dumb to, to count out loud, especially on camera here, but, um, that first phrase will come in on the e of beat 2. 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a, 1. Okay, I I just like to point that out because a lot of times if I don't, my students will automatically think that a solo starts right on, say, like beat 1 or right on the downbeat. Sometimes they do, but in this case it doesn't. 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a, 1. Okay, so that's just something to keep in mind when you're learning this.

So one more time.

Okay, and then we're gonna jump over here. We're gonna do— which is really cool because, I mean, those are— but the timing on that, he separates that a little bit to give this solo a little breathing room. And then— okay, so familiar notes here, but, but the timing is— he he kind of rearranges that just a little bit to again give this solo a little bit of breathing room there. All right, and then we're going to jump into this next phrase, which is going to go— okay, so again, which is a really cool run that you can use over like a D shape. All right, okay, so one more time from the beginning. 1 and 2. Okay, so let's keep going. Okay, so coming out, um, kind of the second half of this solo again. Okay, so I love that little passage right there, especially the— because I like how that's, that's being played over just a G, over the 1 chord right there, but When you throw in that while it's being played over a G chord, it gives it just a little bit of tension, but it's deliberate tension that adds just a cool flavor to this solo here. So again, coming out of And then this little line, so the timing on that, so that, so there's almost like a 16th note triplet there, and then it resolves back up here to this E, which is the, the 5 of our G chord there. Okay, so one more time, let's do— and then he's gonna do this really cool little descending run, which is gonna go Okay, so again, from up here, so we'll do— so make sure when you do that slide right there, do that with your middle finger, and then right here, do that with your ring finger, and that helps you position shift down. To get to where you can play the rest of this solo.

And then we're going to do—

so that's where that goes to that quick 5, uh, and then we end with a pretty standard G run right there. So one more time, um, Whoops. Okay, so let me do this here. Let me just go through this whole solo one more time here. I'm gonna play it really slow, and then after that I'll, I'll put the performance video back up and you can hear how this sounds up to tempo and in time. But first, let me just go through the whole thing one more time, play it nice and slow here.

So, where the sky's always blue.

Okay, so let's hear how that sounds up to tempo and with a backing track again. So a couple of things to take away from this, and I didn't want to— I didn't want to talk a lot at the beginning of the lesson video here, but a couple of things I do like to— I do like to clarify here. When it comes to— whenever I'm doing these lesson videos where I break down a specific note-for-note solo from a specific player, I'm just using my ear. I'm doing the best that I can with my ear. In some cases, there's live, you know, live performances of the player, you know, playing it exactly like they played it on the record. Um, in a lot of cases, live performances are hard to find, or if there are live performances, they change the solo up quite a bit. So I'm doing my best, and I'm just kind of using my ear with all of these. So there might be a couple, you know, notes here or there that I didn't quite nail, but I do try my best to get exactly to what they're doing on the original recording. But here's the thing with this: I don't want you to just take this solo and just be like, this is the solo that I play when I play Going Back to Old Kentucky in A. I play this solo over that song and that's it. What I want you to do here is, is learn this, but then dig in and then use a bunch of these phrases and use those to build your repertoire, your vocabulary, your toolkit, your bag of tricks, whatever freaking metaphor that you want to use there. But you're adding to your arsenal and you're building and enriching your vocabulary there. So for instance, you know, a couple of phrases, you know, the first phrase, you know, that's a pretty standard sounding Tony Rice idea. But as we go through the solo a little bit more, which that kind of is too, but that's a great little passage that you can use over, over like a D-shaped chord. Okay, and then from there, um, That's mostly just over a G shape right there, because then there's like a quick 5 chord in there. And so most of that is played just over a G chord. So, um, there are so many places in bluegrass that you could use that run. I mean, it's, it's, it, you know, I mean, think of a tune like you know, like, like Pike County Breakdown. I'm kind of all over the place there, but, um, there's just a lot of different places that you can use that in. And that little is a great one to use over a G shape right there. There's a lot of players that use, you know, variations on that. You know, you hear Brian Sutton, you know, play something like, you know, you know, sometimes you'll hear David Greer, you know, do something. And that's kind of, again, just using that little, using that little kind of flat 7 shape to add a little bit of tension into your bluegrass solos there. So, so two things there. I wanted to show you this note for note, because, because I think there's value in doing that. But we're not just doing this so you can just become a clone here and just only play this solo whenever you're doing this specific song. I want you to look at some of these phrases and add it to your arsenal and spend a little bit of time each day in your practice sessions just, just allowing your mind to roam free. Just get creative and jam along with some backing tracks or some tunes, whatever it is, and allow yourself to pull from some of these ideas and start to put them together in your own way. As far as I can tell, that is, that is how a lot of the really, really, really great masters of the guitar come up with their own ideas. You know, you can even hear Eric Johnson You know, talking about how he would pull from Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, but he'd also pull from Jerry Reed and Chet Atkins, and he'd also pull from jazz players like Wes Montgomery. And, you know, you can hear, you know, obviously, you know, you can hear a big, massive Clarence White influence in Tony Rice's playing. You can hear a big Tony Rice influence in Brian Sutton's playing. And, and kind of the way that you will eventually come up with your own way of putting solos together is by taking little bits and pieces from solos like this, adding it to your bag of tricks or your toolkit, whatever you want to call it, and then letting that come through in your own playing there. So anyway, that's enough rambling there from me. But, but the, the big picture there though is I want you to just— to not just use this whenever you're playing this specific song. Take these ideas and incorporate those, build up your vocabulary, and let those come through in your playing. So, all right, thank you so much for hanging out. Again, hit the link down below to get the tabs. And, um, all right, I appreciate you hanging out, and I'll see you next time.