In this instructional YouTube lesson, Aaron Jaxon introduces bluegrass crosspicking, defining it as alternate picking across three or more adjacent strings. He explains why crosspicking is valuable for developing precise alternate‑picking technique and for mimicking banjo rolls and fiddle shuffles in a musical context. Aaron then presents three progressively more complex crosspicking patterns, detailing the string order, fret positions, and the subtle drone note that gives a banjo‑roll feel. He shares practical technique advice on pick grip, wrist placement, and a light touch against the bridge. After demonstrating each pattern, he applies them to three classic bluegrass tunes—Mark O'Connor’s rendition of “Dixie Breakdown,” the B‑section of “Beaumont Rag,” and the B‑section of “Bill Cheatham”—showing how each pattern can emulate specific banjo or fiddle phrasing. The lesson concludes with a humorous quote attributed to Doc Watson about practicing under a shade tree with iced tea, emphasizing the importance of consistent, relaxed practice. Links to tabs are provided in the video description.
Chapters
Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with a bluegrass crosspicking lesson. I'm going to give you 3 different patterns to help you develop your technique, and then I'm going to show you 3 different tunes to help you apply these patterns in a musical context. All right, stick around.
So I guess what I wanted to go ahead and get out of the way first here is what is crosspicking.
Now it's not this secret thing, there's not like a secret magic technique that we're going to use here. All crosspicking is is alternate picking across adjacent strings, and it's usually across 3 or more adjacent strings. So instead of just picking down and up, say, on my open 4th string, if I'm going to crosspick, I'm going to pick down on the 4th string, up on the 3rd, down on the 2nd, up on the third.
Okay, so we're still down, up, down, up, but I'm picking across the fourth, third, second, and first strings.
Okay, so this is great for a couple of different reasons. It's great for just developing your alternate picking technique, because in order to— that requires a greater level of accuracy than it does if we're just going to pick on that fourth string open. So it really forces your technique to develop, and it forces your accuracy to get to the point where your picking is really clean. So it's great just for technique practice. But in a musical context, especially in bluegrass, what it's great for is mimicking, say, a banjo roll and also a fiddle shuffle. Like, you know, a fiddle shuffle, like if you hear a fiddle player doing like Orange Blossom Special or something like that, we can sort of mimic this by doing crosspicking. So that's the technical and the musical application here. And remember, you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comments. So what I want to do first here, let me give you 3 different crosspicking patterns that you can start to practice and get familiar with, and then I'll show you some of these crosspicking patterns in a couple of classic bluegrass tunes. So let's start with this first crosspicking pattern here. It's going to go like this. Okay, so what I like to do with this I'm doing the 5th fret of the 4th string. I'm doing the 3rd string open, and I'm doing the 2nd— I'm sorry, the 3rd fret of the 2nd string.
Okay, I just—
I like that.
I like those 2 drones right there.
They're the same note, that 5th fret of the 4th string and the 3rd string open. They're the same note. I like that because it gives it a banjo roll feel. I mean, it's not quite the same as that That'd be a good one. But anyway, that little drone sound gives it kind of a banjo roll feel. So if you want, you can put your middle finger down here on the 4th fret of the 3rd string and just do—
okay, that's fine too.
But I'm— for now I'll do— and all we're gonna do here is just pick down on the 4th string, up on the 3rd string, down on the 2nd, and then come back and do up on the 3rd, and just repeat that.
Okay, pretty cool there.
Now that's a pretty simple idea, but I promise you that just practicing that and practicing that every day will be of tremendous benefit to your technique. Because like I was saying at the beginning of the video, your pick has to be very accurate in order to maintain that alternate picking while you're picking across those strings. So that's kind of like a basic banjo roll. You're kind of mimicking a banjo roll. Okay, and I didn't really get a chance to talk about this at the beginning of the video, and people are always asking me about this, um, but as far as like the, the way that I like to hold the pick, just between the thumb and the forefinger. You can see over here on the, um, on the picking hand angle on the camera over here, and I just, I, I, I, I'm, I'm not floating. My, my, the back of my wrist is touching the bridge but I do it as lightly as possible, and I'm always trying to lighten up my touch. I'm not— it's not a hard brace like that. It's not like— I just keep it really soft, really light. Again, it is touching it. I'm not kind of like floating like this, like a lot of amazing flat pickers do. I've tried to do it that way before, and it just doesn't work for me. Um, but I just kind of just lightly touch the bridge there. So you have to figure out what works for you, but that's, that's what I'm doing. So again, one more time, this first crosspicking pattern.
Okay, that's a great thing to practice to get started with cross picking here.
All right, so the next pattern that I want to show you here, we're going to make that one just a little bit more complicated. Okay, we're going to do this, we're going to do— okay, so, um, let's see, down on the 4th, up on the 3rd. Down on the second. Now we're gonna come back and do up on the fourth, down on the third, up on the second.
Okay, so that's the main pattern to get down here.
Down on the fourth, up on the third, down on the second.
Come back and do up on the fourth, down on the third, up on the second. Okay, okay, so we'll essentially do that pattern twice.
We'll do And then let's end with, um, one pattern from the previous pattern that we learned.
Okay, so we'll do, do that again, and then do the first pattern. Okay, so that whole thing together. Okay, so there we have it.
The challenge in that one is down on the 4th, up on the 3rd, down, and then jumping back and doing up on the 4th string right there. That's, that's the challenging move right there. So what's great about this pattern is, is it also mimics a banjo roll, but it also kind of mimics a fiddle shuffle. Again, kind of going back to Orange Blossom Special, you know, fiddle players can do that with the bow all the time. And so we can't do the same— like Bill Monroe said, like, you can't make the shuffle with a pick like you can with the bow. And he was exactly right, but we can kind of mimic it to a certain extent. Okay, so again, that's a great thing to practice. There's a great little cross picking pattern to practice there. All right, let's do one more here. This one's going to go like this.
Okay, one more time there.
Okay, so with this one And I am gonna go ahead and put my middle finger down on this 4th fret of the 3rd string.
And then with this one though, let's start on the 3rd string, pick down on that, up on the 4th string, down on the 3rd, up on the 2nd. And that's our pattern. And just repeat that.
Okay.
Great little thing to practice there.
Okay, so it sometimes—
it almost feels like your pick is getting stuck, so you have to make sure that, you know, you're keeping a loose wrist on here and you're letting your hand flow. But again, So one more time here, all 3 patterns.
So pattern 1, we're just doing this down on the 4th, up on the 3rd, down on the 2nd, up on the 3rd.
Okay, pattern 2, we're making that a little more complicated.
Down, up, down, up, down, up.
Okay, so that's pattern 2. One more time.
And then pattern 3, we're starting on this 3rd string. We're doing— okay, so all 3 of those patterns are fantastic for practicing, and they're great for just developing your general alternate picking technique. Some people will do cross picking, doing like down, down, up, but for me, I like to just keep it straight alternate picking here. I think it just sounds a little cleaner. And also too, it's great for just practicing your general alternate picking, because if you practice that kind of stuff and you go back to playing like your regular bluegrass lead lines, you'll find that those are a lot easier to play after you practice crosspicking. So now I want to give you a musical application of each one of these here real quick. So I'm going to show you 3 different places in some classic bluegrass tunes where you can apply these crosspicking patterns. So that was just like a little excerpt from Mark O'Connor's classic flatpicking version of Dixie Breakdown. It's one of the craziest flatpicking performances of all time. And if you want to feel even worse, he was like 14 or 15 when he did that and won the National Flatpicking Championship. Crazy stuff here, but I want to show this here to you to illustrate that first crosspicking pattern that we learned here. So what he's doing is just a series of triads and open strings up here, and he's doing—
and then— so you remember that first cross-picking pattern that we learned.
Just if you watch my picking hand as I go through that passage, that's all he's doing. Going after that. There's a whole lot more, but that little passage is a great example of that first crosspicking pattern. And the reason he's doing that is because Dixie Breakdown is an old Don Reno banjo tune, so he's mimicking that banjo roll. He's mimicking that really fluid Don Reno banjo roll. But we have to do that just— but we have to do that just using a flat pick there. So one more time, that little passage there.
Let me play it slow.
So that's a great example of that first crosspicking pattern there from Mark O'Connor's Dixie Breakdown. So that is a little excerpt from the classic Beaumont Rag. This is the B part to Beaumont Rag, and again, this is using that second crosspicking pattern that we learned earlier, the one that goes where we do down up, down, and then swing back and do the upstroke on that 4th string. Okay, so we're going to do that here in Beaumont Rag like this. We're going to do Okay, and there's several different ways of playing this, but that's usually how everybody plays that on the B part here. Again, it's that little— okay, and what we're doing is we're mimicking a fiddle shuffle right there, because I think that tune goes back to Bob Wills. I think that's a Western swing tune originally. Don't kill me if it's not. We're mimicking a fiddle shuffle on that. That's a great example of that second crosspicking pattern that we learned. Okay, one more. So this is the B part to Bill Cheatham, and this is a very David Greer-inspired version, but this is applying that third pattern we learned where we start in the middle string and go—
okay, and that's gonna go like this.
So that'll go like this. Okay, so I'm going through even down here on this lower octave.
That's where we're applying that pattern.
Okay, and it gives it, you know, almost, you know, it's kind of a banjo roll but also kind of a fiddle sound too. And then we bring that up an octave for the same effect. Okay, so there we have it. There's 3 different patterns and there's 3 different applications of those patterns and some of these classic bluegrass tunes. Now, if you're ready for the secret, if you're ready for the bonus tip, here it is. Somebody once asked Doc Watson what the secret was to mastering crosspicking, we're getting real really good at crosspicking. And he said, son, get yourself a big cold glass of iced tea, find you a big old shade tree, and sit underneath it and practice. And that, friends, is the key. Take it from the master, take it from the GOAT of this style. You have to practice this stuff a lot, but once you get this down, it will make your alternate picking in general better, and it will give you so many cool musical applications that you can use in your playing. My baby son is throwing a fit right now, so I have to get off of here and go tend to him. But I want to thank you as always for hanging out. Check out some of these other videos for a little bit of a deeper dive into some of this other stuff here. As always, thank you for hanging out, and I will see you next time.
