In this YouTube tutorial, Aaron Jaxon demonstrates how to achieve high‑speed bluegrass flatpicking by relying heavily on left‑hand techniques—hammer‑ons, pull‑offs, and slides—rather than constant picking. He walks through two original solos played at 170 BPM, breaking down each phrase, chord progression (G‑C‑D), and specific picking patterns (down‑down‑up sequences) while highlighting how the left hand can carry most of the work. Jaxon references classic bluegrass licks from Tony Rice, Brian Sutton, and David Greer to illustrate stylistic context, and he explains how to execute slides and pull‑offs efficiently. Throughout, he emphasizes picking‑hand economy, encourages viewers to incorporate these ideas into their own fast‑tempo leads, and makes a brief call to subscribe for more content.
Chapters
Hey y'all, Aaron Jaxon coming to you today here, and I've got a lesson that I think you're going to enjoy. You know, one of the things that I like to do if I'm playing, you know, it's like bluegrass guitar, bluegrass lead guitar at faster tempos, or like at real fast tempos, is I like to use phrases that use a lot of hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you exactly how to play the two solos that I played at the beginning of this video. That was pretty fast. I think that was, that was at 170 beats a minute. Um, and I'm just going to show you how a lot of these phrases, um, really use a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs and slides. And it's maybe not as many picked notes as you would think. Um, so I'm just going to show you how to play this here, and hopefully you can take some of these ideas and incorporate them into your playing and use them at faster tempos. So, um, and, um, I'll I told myself I wasn't going to be one of these people on YouTube asking you to like and subscribe because I know everyone on YouTube is doing that ad nauseam. But if you're enjoying these videos and you're getting some value out of that, please hit the subscribe button because the more this channel grows, the more time and the more resources that I'm going to have into putting out more content for y'all. So please hit that subscribe button if you're getting value out of these videos. So let's jump in here and I'm just going to go through the these solos here. So let's— so with the first solo that I played here, the— it's going to go like this.
We'll do— and then we're playing over C, and we'll do Back to G.
And now we're over D and we'll do Back to G.
Cool.
So when I slow it down like that, you can see how there's like a lot more hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides than you might think when you're hearing, you know, that up to tip of You know, when you're hearing that, it kind of sounds like everything's picked, but it's not. Um, so that first phrase that I'm playing on that is, is a pretty standard kind of Tony Rice, Brian Sutton sounding lick. Okay, so that's a great one to use. I think that's a 2-bar phrase. It's a 4-bar phrase. Um, and then after that we're gonna go to C, and, um, this lick is one of my favorites to play over like a C shape. Um, and it's So, so it's almost— it's, it's a lot of hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides, um, that when you get down, you know, is, is easier for me to play it fast than if I was trying to pick all of those notes. So one more time, that lick over C. Okay, and then we're back to G. We'll do All right, and then we go to D and we've got this kind of ascending little pull-off lick that I love to play, and it's going to go like this. Okay, so here is kind of the secret to getting that. If you watch my pick while I'm playing that, all my pick's doing is this. And that's just as eighth notes, not as sixteenth notes. So you want to do this first slide with a downstroke. Now hit the next note on the third string with a downstroke, pull off, and then hit the fourth fret of the fourth string with an up.
So we're doing—
so we'll do— so down, down, up, down, up, down, up. And then you'll go through that little ascending sequence there. Okay, so, uh, okay, so it takes a little while to get used to that. But it's not as— it's not as rigorous on your picking hand as you might think. And then after that, we'll go back to G and we'll do— okay, so pretty cool stuff there. And again, there's a lot more, um, work that your left hand is doing as opposed to your picking hand. So let me go through that solo one more time here.
Um, C, back to G, to D, back to G.
Okay, so that's the first solo. Let's jump into the second one here. And, um, it'll go like this. We'll do All right, so this first phrase is almost— it's, it's, it's almost like a pedal tone. Like if you hear Yngwie Malmsteen, you're doing that. You know, doing those kind of crazy little licks where you've got— we're almost doing that down here, but we, but we move the, the note that would be the pedal note, which I don't know if it makes it a pedal note or not. This is getting complicated. But, and then, all right, so again, that, that kind of kind of gives us a little bit of a break from like the machine gun fire of 16th notes that's happening in the solo. And then after that, I'm going to go over here to this pretty standard Tony Rice, um, pull-off lick that I'd say a lot of y'all are familiar with, but it'll go like this. So same technique as that D lick from the first solo. So my picking hand is really not doing that much through there.
It's just— all right.
And then we go back to C, and again we're going to do another really cool kind of hammer-on, um, I'm sorry, kind of like pull-off lick. But this one, um, I'll change it up a little bit. It's going to have a lot of slides to it. Okay, so one more time. This is over C. All right, and then we're going to go back to G and we're going to use a repeat phrase from the first solo. All right, and then we're gonna go over D here, and we've got this.
We'll do—
and then we're gonna end it with this kind of slippery, sort of David Greer kind of thing. All right, so the lick over D here, and I kind of, I kind of took that straight from, um, uh, Brian Sutton plays that on Decision at Glady Fork.
Um, he does.
So that's like the A part, and then the B part, um, something along those lines.
But that one—
so hammer, hammer-ons and pull-offs.
And then we'll end.
Okay, so all of the second solo again. All right, so let's hear both of those again, and I'm playing these at 170 beats a minute. Here we go. Okay, so that's obviously really fast, um, and, um, but what I want you to do is just again take some of these phrases here that I've shown you and incorporate those into your playing, especially into some of the maybe leads you're working on at faster tempos. And I just wanted to show you this to show you how, you know, you can really get a lot of speed out of your bluegrass lead playing, out of your flatpicking, by putting your left hand to work. Because the picking hand in this gets a lot of attention. I have people every single day asking me about, you know, ways to develop the picking hand, and that's very important. Important for sure. This style requires as much, if not more, from your picking hand than any other style of guitar playing does. But I wanted to show you how you can really get a lot of fire and a lot of like ammunition out of your left hand using slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs in this style of guitar playing. So again, y'all, thank you so much for hanging out today. Again, if you're enjoying these videos, please hit that subscribe button, because like I said, the more this channel grows, the more time and the more resources that I can put in to create creating content and sharing my love of music and of the guitar with all y'all. So thank you so much for hanging out today, and I'll see you next time.
