The Cody Kilby Bluegrass Solo You HAVE To Know!

Today I'm going to be showing you one of the coolest solos by one of the baddest pickers in bluegrass. Stick around to learn this amazing guitar break. Hey there, it is Aaron Jaxon coming to you today. What I want to show you is a guitar break from one of the absolute best players ever to play this style, and that is the mighty Cody Kilby. So the break that I'm gonna show you today comes from Ricky Skaggs' Tribute to the Fathers of Bluegrass album, and this is the break that he plays on the old classic I'm Goin' Back to Old Kentucky. I wanted to show you this because this tune is about as traditional of a bluegrass tune as you can possibly get. But Cody plays an amazing solo to this, and he throws in a couple of kind of unexpected ideas that work really well for this tune. I'll link down to the original recording down in the video description of this lesson, and as always, you can get the tabs for this down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. Okay, so you've heard me play it up to tempo at the beginning of the video. So what I want to do now here is I'm just going to go through the whole thing nice and really slow for you, and then we're going to take it section by section, and I'll break it down, play it slow, and analyze it just a little bit here for you. All right, I'm going to count myself in here, so we'll go 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2. Okay, so there is that all the way through here. So for me, um, you know, whenever I'm playing the solo or I'm teaching it to students, I think of this solo in kind of 4 different chunks here. So with this first one Okay, I'm not sure exactly how many bars that was right there. Here's what you need to know about this solo whenever you're coming in. This solo comes in on the E of beat 2. Now, um, if you've been watching this channel for a long time, I really recommend thinking about bluegrass leads as 16th notes because that's how they fall in the music. I know a lot of people tab it as 8th notes and think about it as 8th notes. That's great too, um, but again, the way these ideas fall in the music is as 16th notes. So when I say E 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a. Okay, so 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a, 1-e-and-a. Okay, so like if you're playing this along with the strum machine, um, you, you want to— and a lot of times the, um, it's, it's set to this by default. Which is she'll give you like a 2-bar count-in. Um, I say she depending on if you have the AI voice turned on, but 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. All right, that's usually what it sounds like. A lot of times I'll have the voice turned off and I'll just have it go and count it in like that. But you do want a 2-bar count-in, um, and then on that second bar you want to come in on E of beat 2. So like 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2.

Okay, so anyway, that's where to come in on that.

But again, this, this phrase here Okay, so nothing really crazy out of the ordinary. I mean, that's— those are some obviously like Tony Rice inspired passages. I like this first passage though because mixing that major and minor blues scale, which we've talked about a lot on this channel. That's a big part of bluegrass.

And then he comes in here, and again, that's kind of hanging out of our minor. And then he comes over here.

So throwing in some space, throwing in breathing room. A little bit of syncopation in there helps the solo breathe a little bit. Okay, so again, that's kind of the first passage, like the first phrase in this solo. And then now, now it goes over here to our 5 chord, our, our D shape. If we're playing it out of, uh, with a capo on here, it's technically an E chord. And he does— okay, so Okay, or I think— okay, so one more time on that. Okay, so I hope that that maybe becomes one of your, um, next like favorite D licks. I'm going to say D lick, I mean D shape lick, because that's just a great little one to use right there. Okay, I just love that little lick there, and there's a bunch of other places that you could use it. You know, um, if you're ever playing like John Hardy, you know, and you've got that 3 bars of D at the end, you know, that'd be a good place to try to throw that lick in. Something along those lines. But that's just a great little, um, lick and little passages you can add to your vocabulary there for when anytime you're playing over that D shape. Chord. Okay, so that's, that's kind of how I think about the first two sections of this solo. So one more time from the beginning. 1 and 2. Okay, so let's keep going here to this next phrase, and it's going to go like this. All right, I love it. Okay, and so what he's doing there— now the chords on that part, it's just staying on that 1 chord, it's staying on the G.

But what he's doing—

so this part right here, he's targeting what's technically technically G. It's, it's the flat 7 from A, and he just runs through that real quick, but then comes up here and resolves to this kind of 5th of our, um, again, G shape, but it's technically an A chord. It adds just a little bit of tension before resolving. All right, and then this little—

that's just one of those things you've got to practice that a lot.

I think there's a triplet in there, but really the key to getting that is having your pull-offs really nice and clean and full. All right, Brian Sutton uses ideas like that all the time too.

All right, so again, so that's what what he's doing there.

He's— while our harmony and while the chords are just hanging out over that G shape, it's technically an A chord, he comes in and it gives just a little bit of tension before resolving there. And that's what makes this solo really interesting. Okay, so again, that's kind of the third section of this solo. All right, so now let's go ahead and end it with this last phrase, and we're gonna do— okay, so let me play that again here. We'll do. Okay, and then so what he's doing right there, that's a little descending, and he's outlining— he's kind of outlining the chord tones for like an A7 chord. Again, G shape right there, but it's actually an A7 chord. So he's doing— and so that right there, that's our C-sharp, that's our major third. And he's pulling off from that 10th fret to the 9th fret, that's D to C-sharp. And then right here, he's sliding from A to G. So that's our major third, our flat 7. And then right here we're sliding from, uh, let's see here, I think that's, that's a D to E to D.

Um, and then he's ending going from the major third to—

I'm sorry, the minor third to the major third, and then ending with the root note there. Okay, again, just a really interesting phrase to throw into a really, really traditional bluegrass tune. Okay, and so that's kind of what he's doing there. We've got our major third, our dominant 7, going from— I think that's the, that's the 5 to the 4, and then—

all right.

And then he's going to come in with this kind of minor pentatonic, and then we're going to do again minor blues scale, minor pentatonic right there. And then it kind of holds that, that little major 7 in and then goes into that. So again, that last phrase here. So there we go. So many really interesting and really cool ideas here in this one. So one more time, I want to go through it nice and slow, whole thing for you. Okay, so we'll go 1 and 2. All right, there we have it. Such a cool solo from Cody Kilby. Let me go ahead and play it up to tempo here for you again. So one of the things I always like to tell my students whenever I'm teaching them this stuff is don't let the speed that this material is played at intimidate you. Now, if you can play it up to this tempo, awesome, that's great. Believe it or not, this solo is kind of— it's one of Cody's slower solos, one of his slower breaks. Cody is— oh my gosh, he's, he's like the bluegrass humbler. If anytime I'm ever thinking, yeah, I'm getting pretty good, I go listen to me, some Cody Kilby. And man, it puts me back in my place really quick. So, um, yeah, even though this, this is definitely not one of Cody's fastest solos— he's got tons of other solos that are way faster than this— but don't let the speed that he plays this at intimidate you. Take this as slow as you need to. And what's cool about modern technology— I mean, there's a lot of downsides about modern technology, but a lot of the good sides about it, especially for learning guitar, is you know, we have a tool like the Strum Machine app where you can practice along, um, with backing tracks for this tune at any tempo that you want. But the thing about it is you're watching this on YouTube, and YouTube has speed control. Oh man, oh gosh, that's like the coolest thing ever. You know, just hit the link that I've got down in the video description, go to the original recording, and slow it down as much as you need to to be able to play along with that. I mean, it's so cool that we have the ability to do this. But even more importantly than that, You know, don't let the speed keep you from adding these amazing ideas to your vocabulary, because that's the thing here. Whenever I'm teaching somebody a note-for-note solo like this, my aim is not to make you a clone and to make you an automaton. We do this to build our vocabulary and to be able to kind of study the way, you know, a legendary player like Cody Kilby comes up with bluegrass solos. Okay, so that's just something to think about whenever you're going through and learning this stuff. And remember, I do have the tabs for you down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. And if you'd like to check out another lesson where I take some of the ideas in this solo and I plug them into a classic bluegrass standard like Clinch Mountain Backstep, check this video out right here. I know you'll get a whole lot out of it. As always, thank you for hanging out, and I will see you next time.