Aaron Jaxon breaks down crosspicking on "Wayfaring Stranger" in A minor, moving through D minor and F-shape chords. The focus is clean, accurate picking with a subtle swing feel, not speed. Learn the verse and chorus with detailed tabs and pick-stroke notation.
Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with a really cool bluegrass flatpicking arrangement of Wayfaring Stranger. This is just— this is a classic, classic tune in this style. And what I'm gonna be showing you today is just kind of a, like, a little melodic crosspicking version of this tune that is not meant to be played fast at all. This will be a little bit different from, like, the last couple of videos that I've shared on this channel where I'm showing you how to play really fast, like Doc Watson and Tony Rice and Brian Sutton solos. This is not meant to be played fast at all, but it does a couple of things. Number one, this is just a beautiful tune, and it's a great song to add to your repertoire if you haven't already added it. Another thing that it's gonna do is it's really gonna work on your crosspicking. And it's good because, again, like I was saying a minute ago, we're not gonna play this fast, but it's really good We're going to be doing a lot of that style crosspicking, which is just great for developing, you know, your clean picking technique and for developing accuracy. And, um, also what this tune, uh, will do is, um, I, I know a lot of people who watch my videos and maybe even take my courses, most of the time when they're playing the guitar, they're playing it by themselves at home. That's just the case for a lot of people. And so what this will do, this will give you like a little solo flatpicking guitar piece, if you will, that you can play for people, that you can play for your spouse or for your kids or for your family or for your parents or whoever. This is just a great thing where, you know, if you know, someone's like, hey, play something for me. Because, you know, a lot of times, um, you know, um, sometimes the fiddle tunes, uh, work well for that. But a lot of times, if you're, you know, just playing a Tony Rice solo or something like that, um, you know, you can obviously play that for people, but it's meant to be played in the context of a band. Whereas this tune sounds great as a solo flatpicking piece here. So anyway, some really cool stuff with this arrangement here. So as always, I've got the tab tabs for you down in the video description and in the top pinned comment, and I'll have all the pick strokes written out. So let's jump into it here. All right, so we're gonna start, we're gonna do, and then we're going to go into A minor, and we're going to do Okay, that's kind of the first phrase of this.
We'll again, we'll do—
okay, so when you're doing the cross picking, the— and just picking, you know, alternate picking across those strings We want to give that just a little bit of a swung, of a swing feel. Think of it like that and not just 1 and 2 and 3, because if we play it like this, that, like that, it's just gonna sound This doesn't have the same feel.
Okay, do you hear the difference there?
Okay, so then from there we're going to do— and then we're going to go to D minor and do— and again, I'm just cross picking right through that D minor, back to A minor. Okay, so let's stop right there and get that much again. So from the beginning, we'll do Okay, so we're going to keep going, and the next section, um, almost does the exact same thing, but the ending is just a little different. So Okay, so that's basically the second half of the verse to this song, if you will. So one more time, like second half to the verse or the A part of this tune, we'll do Okay, so one more time, let me go all the way through. Uh, again, you can call it the verse or the A part of this tune, whatever you want to refer to it as. So here we go. 1 and 2 and 3.
Go a little slower.
1 and 2, and 3.
There we go.
Okay, so now we need to go into the chorus or the B part of this tune, and that'll go like this. Okay, okay, so we really only have a little bit of new material that we have to learn because the second half of our verse or A part repeats at the end of the chorus. Okay, so what we need to get down is, um, okay, and that's over like a little F shape. And then what I'm doing on that is a 3rd string, 4th string, 3rd string 2nd string, and that's down, up, down, up.
And then we'll do— okay, so we've got Back to the F, and then we'll do— so down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up.
And then we'll go to this kind of a— it's an E chord, but I'm only making it from the 2nd fret of the 4th string.
We'll do— okay.
Just cross picking straight through that. And then the next part that we jump into, this is the second half of the verse played again. Okay, so one more time, let me play through the, um, chorus of the, um, of Wayfaring Stranger. So 1 and 2 and 3.
And there we have it.
All right. So one more time, let's kind of hear how that sounds in context. Okay, so just a couple of takeaways for this. I think one of the most important things is remember what I was talking about when you're crosspicking through these little chords here, instead of that, because if we do that, it's going to sound robotic. But if That gives us the exact feel that we're looking for here. So again, it's a great, great, great thing to practice for your picking hand accuracy. It's a beautiful classic tune to add to your repertoire. And if you practice this and get this down, this is a great like solo guitar flatpicking piece that you can play for people, you know, at home, at parties, get-togethers, you know, anything like that. It's a a great tune for that as well. So, um, again, tabs with the pick strokes and all that kind of good stuff down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. As always, thank you for hanging out with me today, and I will see you next time.
