Mastering Country Guitar Techniques- Double Stop Pull Off "Chicken Pickin" Ideas

All right, y'all, hello and welcome to another country chicken picking lesson here. I'm, uh, I'm super excited to share this one with you because these are some of my favorite country guitar ideas. I always love playing these. It's just, um, I don't know, to me these ideas kind of sum up a lot of what chicken picking is all about. They've just got that, you know, you know, it's just got— it just sounds like chicken picking. Um, and, um, Another cool thing about these are they're, they're very usable through, you know, common country chord progressions like G, C, D, D, G, and A, A, D, and E. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you how to play these through G, C, D, D, G, A, and A, D, and E here. Um, but it's, it's pretty simple, and you'll find that these, uh, that these are fairly easy to play when you combine them with a hybrid, you know, uh, pick and finger technique, and also using your some, some pull-offs down here as well. So again, um, hit the link down below the video description to get the tabs for this and in the top pinned comment. And let's jump into it here. So what I'm going to do here, I think I've got 5 different chords that I'm going to show you how to play these ideas over, and then I'm going to go through and show you how to run those through a 1-4-5 chord progression. So let's, let's start with G here, and here's what we want to do with G. So we're going to do— okay, and remember, that's just our standard standard triad right there. And, um, what we're going to do is have your pick hit the 4th string and then have your middle finger hit the 3rd string and your ring finger hit the 2nd string. All right, so we're going to do— but then what we're going to do is we're going to pull off, um, from the 3rd string.

We're going to do And we're gonna do that, um, let's see.

We're gonna do that 3 times and then we're gonna end with, we'll just hit that 4th string first and then we'll hit the double stop. We'll do. So the idea will sound like this.

We'll do. And we're gonna play that idea 2 times. So we're gonna do—

so real quick, um, before we go on, for the rest of these ideas that I'm going to show you there, we're going to stick, um, with that kind of motif and that technique. It's going to be the exact same thing. Now I'm going to move it around, my left hand's going to move around. But that using that picking pattern and that idea on your left hand, we're going to use that for all of these ideas. Okay, so I'm not going to go super into depth as we're moving these around here, but remember, we'll do pick on the 4th string, middle finger on the 3rd, ring finger on the 2nd, and then we're going to do— doing the pull-off, uh, the pull-off on the 3rd string.

Okay.

Um, sometimes you'll hear, you know, great players like Albert Lee will actually pick that.

He'll do like—

I've tried to do that, I can't do it. Um, so, so I just kind of— I just do a little pull-off right there, and it, it, it— I can execute the same idea, um, with about the same amount of articulation, plus it's way easier. So again, Okay, that's one place to do it in G. Here's another one. We're going to come up here. So that's pinky finger on the 9th fret of the 4th, middle finger on the 7th fret of the 3rd string, and pointer finger on the 6th fret of the 2nd. Again, technique's going to be the same.

We're going to do—

again, doing the pull-off on the 3rd string, we're pulling off from the fretted, the fretted note on that 7th. Fret to the open string, doing— okay, so that's 2 of these ideas over G.

We've got— and then we come up here.

Okay, so that's 2 over G. So I'm just gonna go through the chords here. So now let's do 2 over C. And so for C, we're gonna start here. We're gonna do— all right, and that is with your pinky finger on the 8th fret of the 4th string, pointer finger on the 5th fret of the 3rd and the 2nd string.

And it—

but again, technique's the same. I'm just pulling off to that open 3rd string. Okay, that's one place to to do it in C. Here's another one. We're gonna do a little triad up here, and that's ring finger 10th fret of the 4th string, middle finger 9th fret of the 3rd, pointer finger 8th fret of the 2nd. Same deal though. Okay, so again, 2 different places to do it in C, and then up here Okay, so that's two different ways of doing it in C. Now let's do two different ways of doing it in D. All right, so for D, we're going to use our second shape for G that we did a minute ago, this little dominant 7, um, like with the major 3rd down here, and then I think that's the 5th, and then the— yeah, exactly. So we've got the 3rd, the 5th, and the dominant 7 right here. We're just going to move that shape down here and we'll do And then we'll come up here for another way to do it in D, kind of like the first way of doing it in C a minute ago. Just move it up 2 frets. Again, technique is the same, technique is the same. Pick on the 4th string, middle finger on the 3rd, ring finger on the 2nd, and then we pull off to the open 3rd string. So 2 different ways of doing it in D, and then up here Okay, so now while we're here, let's do 2 in E. And all we're gonna do in E is do the exact same 2 that we did in D, but we're just gonna move everything up 2 frets. We're gonna do— so for E, same thing as D, we just move it up 2 frets. And for E, And then we'll do the same as that second one we did in D, just move it up 2 more frets. I hope you can see why I like doing these so much, because it's just—

it's easy.

And it's easy to really feel the groove when you're playing these too, especially if you got like a really solid drummer playing like a train beat or something along those lines. It does— it's like the only beat I ever play along with, but they're, they're fun to play with.

But it's easy to feel the groove when you're playing All right, so that was 2.

Again, in E one more time, and up here.

Okay.

So now we've got— I've got one more, and we're gonna do— we're gonna do an A. But in A, I've got 3 of them, okay? So the first one in A, I want us to do right here. So that's 4th fret of the 4th string, and then I've got the pointer finger on the 2nd fret of both the 3rd and 2nd strings. Again, technique's the same though. That's one way of doing it in A. Another one is to come up here and do this triad, same deal. And then a third way to do it in A is up here in this little dominant 7 shape, like we've done with— we did that for G, D, and E. Okay, this one. So one more time, 3 different shapes in A.

We've got up here and up here. Okay.

So that's, um, that's a few different ways of doing these ideas over 5 chords. We did G, C, D, E, and A. Okay, um, so now, yeah, G, C, D, E, and A. Okay, yeah, that's right. All right, so now let's do these through 3 chord progressions. Let's do it through G, C, D, D, G, A, and A, D, and E.

Okay, so for G, C, and D, we're gonna do for G And then we'll come up here.

For C, we're going to do—

and then up here.

For D, G, and A, we'll do— I'm sorry, not D, G, and A, just D.

Up here.

Back to G, C, and D.

So one more time, we've got G. To C, D, back to G.

Okay, so there's that through G, C, and D. So real quick, let's hear how that sounds with the backing track. Okay, so now that we've done G, C, and D, now let's do D, G, and A. So for D, G, and A, you know, we'll have a lot of repeat ideas from the past chord progression, but let's go ahead and start with D down here.

We'll do for D, and for G, we'll come down here.

Okay, so that's for G. Now for A, I want us to go through all 3 for A.

Let's do— and let's go back to B after that. Okay.

So let's hear how that sounds with a backing track. Okay, so now that we've done G, C, D, and D, G, and A, let's do A, D and E. Okay, so that's gonna be— we're gonna do down here for A, up here. So we'll do all 3 for A, and then for D we'll come down here, and then for E let's just move that up 2 frets. Then let's go back down to A. All right, so let's hear how that sounds with the backing track. All right, very cool. So, um, so anyway, these are just— these are some fun— there's some very usable ideas that I think really sums up a lot of what chicken picking is about. It's that, that picking finger technique, getting that kind of deliberate staccato sound. Anyway, you can hear, you know, a lot of the country guitar greats. Obviously these are most associated with Albert Lee, but you'll hear Brent Mason use them a lot. You hear Johnny Hyland use them a lot. You hear Guthrie Trapp use them a lot. I mean, they're just really cool, very usable country guitar chicken picking sounding ideas here. So, all right, thanks so much for hanging out today. Remember to hit the— down in the video description and in the top pinned comment if you'd like to get the tabs for this lesson, and I will see you next time.