Next Level Flatpicking Technique!-Secret Rock Exercises Every Bluegrass Guitar Player Should Know

Hey y'all, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you again today here with another flatpicking lesson for you. So as you can see by some of the gear that I've got back here, I am a fan of rock. I love rock music, I love rock guitar, and I've played it ever since I was a teenager in addition to bluegrass and country. I've always loved all three styles. And so what I wanted to do today was bring you a handful of exercises that come from some of the very best most insane rock shredders. And these exercises are something I like to practice every day on my flat-top guitar with the pick that I would normally use for bluegrass. And I find that when I practice these exercises that are originally intended for like rock shredders on my acoustic, that it really helps whenever I go into, you know, playing, you know, bluegrass fiddle tunes and solos and licks and all of that kind of good stuff. So I wanted to share that with you here today. Also too, if you would like to go a whole lot deeper on stuff like this, on bluegrass guitar in general, I've linked down in the video description to my flagship bluegrass flatpicking course called Flatpicking Mastery. It's got nearly 15 hours of content with over 70 lessons in there. It's basically got everything that I know about this style kind of laid out in a very step-by-step kind of way, so check that out. If you'd like to go deeper with this stuff. But here, let's go ahead and jump into the lesson here. So I'm going to give you 5 exercises here. 3 of them are going to be primarily picking exercises, and 2 of them are going to be for your, for your left hand, because the picking hand gets a lot of attention in this style, but the left hand is equally important. Okay, so these first couple of exercises I'm pulling straight from John Petrucci's Rock Discipline series. I think I originally bought it on VHS when I was a teenager, and I got a DVD copy again when I was in college. Um, but it's just, it's just a classic rock shred, um, instructional series. But some of these exercises are really good for you, um, for developing bluegrass chops. So let's start with this first one here. This first one's going to be a left-hand exercise. We're going to do some stretches here, okay? So what we're going to do— so I've got pinky finger on the 12th fret of the 4th ring finger on the 11th fret of the 3rd, middle finger on the 10th fret of the 2nd string, and pointer finger on the 9th fret of the 1st string. I just want you to strum down on that. Okay, now what I want you to do is essentially swap your middle and ring finger. Okay, so we go from here, and then we pull that ring finger back to the 11th fret of the 2nd and push our middle finger over to the 10th fret of the 3rd string.

Okay.

Okay, that's a challenging little move there. All right, so we've got— now we're gonna do this. All right, so we've got pointer finger 9th fret of the 4th, middle finger 10th fret of the 3rd, ring finger 11th fret of the 2nd, pinky finger 12th fret of the 1st. And then we'll kind of do that same thing with your middle and ring. We want to swap. Okay, so just right there, we'll go from here As you can hear, these exercises sound terrible, but they're great for getting the blood flowing to your fingers. I like to practice these every single day whenever I first pick up a guitar. Just a good way to start getting, again, the, the blood flowing into your fingers, start oiling that machinery. Okay, now what we can do is do the same thing, just move everything over a string. So now we're on the 5th, 4th, 3rd, and 2nd strings. Same deal. Again, these sound horrible. And then we can move them to the 6th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd strings. They just sound absolutely horrible. But again, we're just— those are great for getting the blood flowing into your fingers, and it's a great thing to practice whenever you first pick up a guitar, whenever you're, you know, going to start a you know, practice session or something like that. So now if you want to make this exercise a little more challenging, a little more challenging, we'll do the same thing, but I want you to take your pointer finger, just move it down a fret. All right, everything else will stay the same. And we'll do that also whenever we come over here. Just move that pointer finger down a fret, and then we'll come over here, same deal. As you can see, moving that finger down a fret did not help this idea to sound any better. But again, we're just getting those fingers nice and stretched out. So if you do that and you want to make it even more challenging, keep your pointer finger, uh, a fret below where we started. Now take your pinky finger and move it up a fret. Oh boy.

All right.

Careful not to hurt yourself. But that's just— that's a great thing to practice. It'll just start you, you know, if you'll do that for a little bit, you'll feel the blood start to flow into your fingertips. You get nice and warmed up. It's a great thing to practice. And if at any, you know, if you're playing that one, that last version, and you're finding that that's super easy and you want to make it harder on yourself, if you're a real masochist, just move everything down because the frets get bigger on the neck. Come down here, do this. Oh yeah, brutal. Brutal. Anyway, I just, I love that. I've used that ever since I learned it way back in the day, and it's just, again, it's a great thing to practice just to get your, to get your left hand warmed up a little bit. So, so that's one idea that comes from John Petrucci's Rock Discipline. Here's another one. Now with this one, this is, I mean, it's, it's a little bit more of a picking exercise, but it's also a fretting exercise here, and I'll play a little bit of it for you. It's gonna go like this. As you can hear, that exercise doesn't sound particularly good either. But let me come down here and show you like the basic idea, and then I'll show you, you know, the benefits of practicing this. So we'll do— all right, so that right there, so that's first fret of the sixth string, up to the, um, 2nd fret of the 4th string, 3rd fret of the 3rd, 4th fret of the 1st. So we're doing— and then we're kind of doing the opposite coming back down. So we'll do 1st fret of the 1st string, 2nd fret of the 3rd, 3rd fret of the 4th, 4th fret of the 6th. Okay, and we're using just straight alternate picking through that. And then what you can do is just move it up one fret at a time, and you can go all the way up to the, you know, 12th through the 15th fret if you want. You can do just move everything up a fret.

Whoops.

So I think on the tabs for this, which by the way I forgot to mention at the beginning of the video, if you'd like to get the tabs for these exercises, I've got the link in the video description and in the top pinned comment. In the tabs, I think I just have it go up through the 5th fret, but again, you can go all the way up and then come all the way back down if you want.

You know, you can do—

whoops.

You know, you can go all the way up, all the way down.

You can really kind of do what you want to. But again, the basic idea is this right here. So what's really cool about this exercise is that, again, it's for your, your picking and your fretting hand. On the picking hand though, you really have to develop your accuracy, and you also have to minimize tension in your picking hand, which is one of the most important things in bluegrass. And the reason is because we're skipping strings so much on this. So whenever you're playing that, you cannot have a lot of tension in your picking hand and execute that idea. It's not going to work.

You can't—

I mean, I guess you could, but it's going to sound terrible. And so if you want to— and again, you can take this at whatever tempo that you want to. Probably better if you practice it really slow, but again Okay, so we're just skipping a lot of strings. Our pick has to be really accurate, and you have to minimize the tension in your picking hand. And, and however that you hold your pick is probably fine, whether you brace a finger or two, or whether you don't, whether it's kind of floating, whether you maybe kind of lightly touch the bridge back there. That's all fine. But the, um, but what you want to do is just minimize the tension in your picking hand while you're going through and playing that. So that's a fantastic exercise for that. Now If you want a modification on that exercise and you want to make it harder, okay, try this. Ah, again, sounds terrible, but it's great for developing your technique. And what we're doing is we're essentially taking that same idea, but we're mixing it up a little bit. So now what we're doing, we're starting on the 1st fret of the 6th string, and then we're jumping up to the 3rd fret of the 3rd string. Huge jump with your pick from the 6th string to the 3rd. Then we hit the 4th fret of the 1st string and then come back and hit the 2nd fret of the 4th string. So just massive, massive string skipping there. And so your picking hand really, really has to be accurate. In order to play that cleanly. And then like I did with the other one, you can just move that up the neck. Okay, so that is a great one, um, as well. So there's two, um, kind of picking/fretting exercises that are really great for developing your picking hand accuracy and are great for your fretting because your left hand— your left hand's having to work hard through that as well. And again, all of these exercises so far have come from John Petrucci's Rock Discipline series. Um, so I've got one more picking exercise that I want to show you here that I just love, and, um, It's, it's, it's gonna go like this. Let me just play it here for you and then we'll break it down.

We're gonna do— let's do that again.

Okay, so that's the basic idea there. And what we're doing is we're just kind of taking like an A major, kind of that E shape, you know, if you do, if you do the CAGED system there, that kind of E shape A chord. And we're just breaking— we're turning that into an arpeggio. So like, the arpeggio will be 5th fret of the 5th, 7th— I'm sorry, 5th fret of the 6th, 7th fret of the 4th, 7th fret of the 5th, 6th fret of the 3rd, 7th fret of the 4th, 5th fret of the 2nd, 3rd fret— I'm sorry, 6th fret of the 3rd, 5th fret of the 1st, 9th fret of the 1st, 6th fret of the 3rd, 5th fret of the 2nd, 7th fret of the 4th, 6th fret of the 3rd, 5th fret of I'm sorry, 7th fret of the 5th, 7th fret of the 4th, 5th fret of the 6th. Saying this shit out loud is like way harder than playing it. Again, you can check out the tabs for this stuff, but that's, that's the basic arpeggio. And then what we're gonna do with the pick here, or at least the This is my favorite way to do it, is pick each note twice, just using straight alternate picking.

Just— okay.

So I'm sure you can clearly see the benefit in practicing that. Because we're skipping a string every time, and we're using straight alternate picking through that. So that's going to be great for, again, developing your picking hand accuracy, and it's also good for building speed as well. So what, what John Petrucci does in Rock Discipline is instead of just having you stay there in that one place, he has you move around. So I'm going to show you the way that he does it. So we start there in A on the 5th fret. And then we're going to move up to the 8th fret and play this out of C major. And then we're going to move up to the 12th fret and play it out of E major. And then we're going to move down to the 9th fret to play it out of, um, C sharp major. And then we're gonna move down to the 3rd fret and play it at a G major. And then move it up to the 7th fret and play it at a B major. And then move it down to the 2nd fret and play it at an F sharp major. Okay, so let me go through all of that again.

So we'll start with A up to C to E, down to C sharp, G up to B. Down to F sharp.

Okay, so that's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Okay, um, that's just— that's how he shows it, um, in the, uh, in the series. I like doing that because, um, your, your, your picking hand should be you know, not on fire, but it should be heating up at the end of that. I mean, that's a lot of, um, that's a lot of work for your picking hand, which is the purpose of doing the exercise there. Um, so I like that sequence. I think it's great. You don't have to do that. You can come up with your own. Um, I think that was 7 that he did. You might want to come up with 3 or 4, however you want to do it. Um, but again, the, the main thing there is just to get that main idea where we're doing alternate and we're skipping a string every single time. So, um, let me show you one other little modification on that, which is instead of starting with a downstroke, go through all of that and start with an upstroke.

So we'll do—

okay, so again, start with an upstroke. And you can go through that whole sequence up to C, to E, down to C sharp, G, B, F sharp. Okay, so I like going through and doing that arpeggio, playing each note twice, but you can, you can go through and play them once. You can do it 3 times. Oh, I need to practice that. But anyway, you can do it 3 times if you want.

You can do it 4 times.

There's an endless amount, um, there's a, you know, an endless amount of ways that, um, You can do this. It's my personal favorite. I like doing it twice. I find that that really works for, uh, for me there. So anyway, so there's 4 ideas again coming from John Petrucci's Rock Discipline that again, I think if you'll practice that on your flat top acoustic guitar with the guitar that you play for bluegrass, with the pick that you use for bluegrass, I think you'll find that whenever you go to practice your fiddle tunes or, you know, your licks, you know, or whatever it is that you're practicing in the context of bluegrass, I think that you'll find that that stuff becomes a little bit easier to practice. One other exercise that I wanted to show you, again, because that first stretching exercise, that's a little bit more of a warm-up exercise, it's not so much a left-hand exercise per se, but I want to show you a left-hand exercise. Now this one I believe originally comes from Steve Vai. I think he published this like in a Guitar Player magazine, maybe in the '80s, but it's, it's fantastic. And what I want you to do on the left hand, pointer finger, 5th fret of the 1st string. And then what we're gonna do is I just want you to do hammer-on and pull-off with your ring finger on the 7th fret. You can speed up and slow down, but do it for 1 minute, okay? I'm not gonna do it for a minute right here, but after you've done that for a minute, now let's switch. Same thing, keep your pointer finger where it is, but now we want to hammer on and pull off with your middle finger on the 6th fret and just pull off in between that 6th and 5th fret for 1 minute. And after you've done that, again keeping that pointer finger where it is, let's bring that pinky finger up to hammer on and pull off on the 8th fret, from the 8th to the 5th, for 1 minute. All right, and then after that, put your middle finger on the 6th fret of the 1st string and hammer on and pull off with your ring finger on that 7th fret. You guessed it, for 1 minute. And after you've done that, bring that pinky finger up. Now we're going in between the 8th fret and the 6th fret. Do that for 1 minute. All right, and then to end it off with, to make this as brutal as possible, put your ring finger on the 7th fret of the 1st string, hammer on and pull off with your pinky for 1 minute. All right, so you might want to kind of stretch your hand before and after that you do that exercise. Um, I love that little left hand exercise. I really do try and practice that every single day. And, um, but, but I don't, I don't want you to hurt yourself there. Um, so, so if you're finding that a minute is too much, do it for 30 seconds. But what you want to do is you want to go through that whole sequence and don't stop. Okay, so right here, middle and ring— I'm sorry, index and ring, index and middle, index and pinky, middle and ring. Middle and pinky, ring and pinky. There we go. If you practice that every day, you know, you really start to see some strength build in your left hand. Because like I was saying at the beginning of the lesson, obviously we pay a lot of attention to the, to the picking hand in bluegrass because this style requires more out of your picking hand than almost any other style does. But the left hand is equally important, so we don't want to neglect that. But anyway, there's 5 little exercises that come from John Petrucci mostly and Steve Vai that, again, if you'll practice these on your acoustic guitar with the pick that you normally use for bluegrass, I think that you'll find whenever you go and, you know, you're practicing your bluegrass fiddle tunes or your solos or your licks and all that kind of good stuff, I think that you'll find that stuff is a little bit easier to play. It's stuff that I like to practice every single day. And I guess one other thing I wanted to say before I sign off, which is I, I don't recommend just sitting around and doing like technique exercises, you know, for 6 hours a day. Um, basically these are meant to be a complement to the, the music that you're working on and that you're playing there. So, you know, if you've got, you know, if you've got an hour to practice, you know, maybe spend 15 or 20 minutes on this stuff and spend the other 40 minutes, you know, working on tunes and solos and licks and all that kind of good stuff. That's just a recommendation there, but I've just seen this a lot with, with players over the years, and I've been one of these players before who, you know, will spend all their time doing technique exercises, and then when it comes time to actually play music they're kind of short on things to pull from because they've just been practicing, you know, that kind of thing, which is a great exercise, but I don't recommend spending most of your time there with that stuff. And yeah, and also, if you would like to check out another video where I show you some more like bluegrass-based and like acoustic guitar-based exercises specifically for flatfoot flatpicking, check this one out right here. But again, hit the video description to get the tabs here, and also in the video description I've got a list of my online courses, specifically my Flatpicking Mastery Course, which basically has everything I know about this kind of guitar playing in there. So I'd love to see you on the inside there. As always, thank you for hanging out. I really hope that these exercises help you in your bluegrass playing, and I'll see you next time.