Mastering Country Guitar: Unlocking the Power of Double Stops and Bends

Hey guys, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today here, and I've got a really cool lesson that I'm excited to share with you. You today. Um, what I'm going to be talking to you today about are double stops with bends, like— and this really gives your guitar playing a really authentic country sound. And we're kind of sort of mimicking like a pedal steel guitar here. Um, but I've got some really cool ideas that I want to share with you, and I'm going to show you how to move it through a chord progression and you know, just immediately be able to implement these ideas into your guitar playing. And hey, as always, if you'd like a free little 30-minute, almost kind of a country guitar crash course, hit the link down here below. I've, I've jam-packed just about as much valuable information into a half hour as I can on that. I'm going to go through and show you the essential ideas and licks and techniques and a couple of solos that you need to really lay a solid foundation for learning country chicken picking guitar. So please check that out. And let's jump into the lesson here. All right, so here's what we're gonna do. So these double stops with bends are like a really essential part of country guitar here. You know, I've made other videos talking about, you know, the double stops, you know, and the pick and finger technique, you know, all of which are super important to this style. But another big part of this is these double stops with bends. So let me run through the first little idea here and kind of give you a feel for what we're doing. So we're gonna do Okay, so the way that I am— and what that is, I'm going through C to F to G and then back to C. And really, those ideas are kind of like out of our, you know, if you were to do a, um, you know, like a little major pentatonic. I'm kind of running that through C and then up to F and then up to G. And those ideas are coming off of the third and second strings. Okay, and what that— what you want to do there, so, so I'm holding the eighth fret of the second string. I like to hold it with my pinky, um, and then I'm bending the 7th fret of the 3rd string, and I'm doing that bend. I'm doing a, I'm doing a whole step bend, so I'm bending up to that 9th fret. So what you hear is that little, that little nice sounding, you know, kind of major 3rd interval right there. But I'm doing, and I'm doing, so we'll bend, bend again Release, and then, and then I've got my pointer finger on the 5th fret of that 3rd string and pinky finger on the 8th fret of the 2nd for that nice little 5th sounding interval right there. So we'll do— all right, and then just play that twice. Okay, and then I'm just moving everything. We're going to do the exact same idea, but I'm going to come up to again pinky finger on the 13th fret of the 2nd string middle finger on the 12th fret of the 3rd, and we're gonna do— okay, and then just move that idea up 2 frets and we'll do the same thing. So now we're over a G chord, and then we'll go back to C. Okay, so again, you could hear how that kind of mimics a pedal steel guitar. 'Cause what a pedal steel— well, I'll pretend like I know what I'm talking about here. I've never attempted to play pedal steel. If you've ever been around one of those things or been around a pedal steel player, there's a lot of moving parts on that thing. But what they'll do a lot of times is they'll pick a string and they've got a pedal down there and they'll hit that and that will bend the string and they'll usually hit that in combination with one or two other notes that they don't bend and it gives it that really cool kind of classic country sound. Okay, so that's one idea through C, F, and G. So, um, I've got another one that I want to show you here. Now this time we're going to move over to the 1st and 2nd strings, and what we're going to do is this: we're going to do up to F, up to G, and then back to C. Okay, so with this one here, again, I like to use my pinky here, and that's on the 8th fret of the 1st string. And then I'm going to put my ring finger, um, on the— I guess that's the 8th fret of the 2nd. And then I like to have my middle and pointer finger on the 2 frets below my ring. On the, um, on that second string. That way my wrist has a little bit more power to bend that. And we're going to do— so bend, bend again, pick it again, and then release. All right, and then just move that up to the 13th fret and we'll do the same thing. And then up to the 15th fret and we'll do the same thing. And then back down here to the 8th fret. Okay, so you can really hear how we're starting to mimic, you know, a pedal steel guitar there. Okay, so let's try another one here. Now for this next one, I'm going to play it like this. I'm going to go— okay. So with this one here, um, 15th fret. Yeah, and then pinky finger on that 15th fret, ring finger on the 15th, and again middle on the fret below that, index on the fret below that, just like we did with the other idea. And we're going to do— and then I'm going to give it a— so again, we've got And then we'll come down here for F, and then up here for G, and then back up here for C. Okay, so a really cool one right there. And again, I'm going through C and I'm going through F, and I'm going through G. So I've got one more that I want to show you here, um, and it's going to go like this. We're going to do Okay, so with this one, with this one, what we're gonna do, um, I've got my pinky finger on the first fret of the first string— first fret, the 8th fret of the first string— and then my middle finger is hitting the, um, the, uh, 7th fret of the 3rd string, and I'm picking the— I'm hitting the 3rd string with my pick and the 1st string with my middle finger. So I'm going— so again, we're bend, bend again, release, and then end with a little octave. And that gives us the little, the little 6th interval. Again, sounds very pedal steel-like, you know, you know, has a really kind of a classic pedal steel sound. So again, And then we'll come up to F, same idea, up to G, back to C. Okay, cool. So a couple of things to, um, to kind of wrap with here. With all of these, here's the challenge with these is you want one finger staying completely stationary and not moving at all, but you want the other one doing a whole step bend. And that's challenging to do. And country players aren't the only ones to do this. I mean, a lot of rock players, you know, you hear, you know, we'll use that a lot, but we really use it a lot in country guitar. So that's a challenge Um, but you'll, you'll get, you'll get that through practice. So like on that first example here, so like right there, my pinky is not moving at all, but my middle finger is doing a whole step bend. So that's challenging, that's difficult to get down, but you'll get it with some practice. And it's that way with all the other ideas. So you want the one finger staying really stationary, that way that note doesn't change pitch at all. But then you want the other note doing a whole, a whole step bend. Okay, cool. So let's hear how all of those ideas sound played with the backing track. I just, I wanted to make this as kind of a little introduction to these double stops with bends, ideas. There's obviously a bunch of other ways that you can use this, you know. Um, there's a bunch of these, and you can do like single note ideas around them too, like, um, all right. So I'm going a little off the cuff there, but there's, there's a lot that you can do with these, and it's a big part of this kind of guitar playing. But I wanted to give you just those 4 ideas because that will give you kind of an introduction to the technique. It'll show you how you play them through a chord change. And as always with, with this stuff, I recommend practicing that with the train beat. Practice it with the train beat because you work on your timing and it just makes it a lot more fun. I've just, I've been getting back into that here lately, and it's just, you know, it's— you kill two birds with one stone. You, you, you work on your timing and you make your timing better, but it also makes everything you're playing just a whole lot more fun. So I recommend doing that. But anyway, dive into those ideas, and you know, you can use those immediately to really get some, some authentic country sounds in your guitar playing. So again, Thanks as always for hanging out. Remember to hit the link down below to get that free little 30-minute country guitar crash course that I've put together there. I'm going to show you, um, you know, the essential licks and techniques and ideas and even a couple of note-for-note solos to help you really lay a solid foundation for learning country chicken picking guitar. So hit the link to grab that, and I will see you next time.