The Coolest Flatpicking Tune Ever!?-Learn Kenny Smith's Classic Bluegrass Guitar Tune "Studebaker"

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today, and what I want to do today is I want to show you how to play Studebaker by Kenny Smith. This is one of the coolest flatpicking guitar tunes ever recorded, but before I teach it to you, let me play it for you. And remember, you can get the tabs down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. So let's jump into it here, and I think what I want to do before I start showing you how to play the melody to this. Let me give you the chords for the A part of Studebaker, uh, just to give you a little backdrop and a little context for how this is going to sound. So, um, for the A part on Studebaker, and again capo on the 4th fret, and I'll be playing this out of a G shape, technically a B chord, but I'm gonna go 1, 2, 3, to F, back to G, 2, 3.

Now we'll go to C, 2, 3, 4, G, 2, 3, 4, G.

2, F, 2, G, 2, 3, 4, C, 2, D, 2, G, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, so that's the chords to the A part. And this tune is in the Strum Machine. You can just— if you've got the Strum Machine app, which if you're learning bluegrass guitar, you absolutely should have a subscription to the Strum Machine, um, but Studebaker is in that. You can just go type in Studebaker by Kenny Smith and it'll pop up in the original key, everything. It's awesome. So that's the chords to the A part of Studebaker. Let's jump into the main melody here. And so this kind of first phrase that you want to get down is going to go like this.

We'll do—

okay, that's kind of the main melody, the main head to this song. So again, Okay, so at the beginning here, pretty straightforward, but we want to— let's start with a hammer from that open 4th to the 2nd fret.

Same thing on the 3rd string, but let's pick both of them, and then we'll do, and then So that's, that's our first little lick here. And then we're gonna jump up here, and I'm speaking relative to the capo.

We'll take our middle finger, slide from the 5th up to the 6th fret, and we'll do—

okay, so we'll do Little pull-off right there.

And then we'll come over here to our 3rd string. And again, speaking relative to the capo, like 7th to the 5th fret pull-off on the 3rd string. And let's bring our pinky up. We'll do a little bit of a stretch here to this, uh, this relative to the capo stuff throws me for a loop. Ah, so, um, let's see here, 7 to 5. So 9th fret, it's technically the 11th, but okay.

So we'll do, and then end with that 3rd string open.

So let me play that first phrase again here for you. So we'll do Okay, so that's where you want to start with this. I would recommend just getting that down first before you move on. Practice it along with the strum machine, maybe practice it along with like a drum track or a metronome. But that's like the main phrase to this tune that you want to get down. Speaking of practice, I need to—

okay.

And then you can slow it down. Okay, so now let's keep going, and we're gonna do So that's open 4th string to the 3rd fret of the 4th string, and then we'll do— so Pull off right here, and then we'll do— okay, so that last little phrase Okay, so, um, kind of like the second half of the A part to Studebaker. Okay, and then it just plays that twice. You just repeat that whole phrase 2 times for the A part to Studebaker. So again, it's gonna go like this. We'll do And then you just play that twice, and that's, that's the A part to Studebaker. I love this tune. I love the little I just— it's so cool. Um, so A part to Stu DeBaker. Okay, so now we're gonna go into the, um, the B part here. And there's some, there's some really cool ideas in here, a couple of challenging things. But, um, let me just kind of go into it here, and I'll play all the way through the B part here for you nice and slow. So this is the B part to Studebaker. We'll do And then it goes back into the A part after that. Okay, so again, on this B part— and I meant to do this before I played the melody— let me play the chords here real quick.

So the chords for the B part of Studebaker: 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4, D, 2, 3, 4, to C, 1, 2, 3, E minor, back to C, and we'll do D, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, We'll go to C. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

And then it goes back into the A part. And again, I've got the chords written out for you on the tabs. And also check— make sure you check this tune out in the Strum Machine. Okay, so, um, back to the melody of Studebaker, or the B part of Studebaker. Here we'll do I'd recommend starting with that. So this one has like a little bit of syncopated rhythm to it, um, and it's almost— it's, it's almost like he's, he's doing with a flat pick what a banjo player would do with 3 picks. Okay, so, um, So that's the first little phrase to get. And so this next one we're gonna do— whoops.

Okay, okay, so this next phrase we'll do All right, so, okay, so, and then we're gonna go into this little— it's almost like an E minor add 9, and we've got some cross picking right there.

So that's down on the 6th, up on the 5th, down on the 4th, up on the 3rd. Um, okay, and then we're going to do— whoops, Okay, so that's just a hammer-on from the 2nd fret to the 3rd fret, middle index to middle finger, and then 3rd string open, which sounds really cool, especially those 2 phrases back to back.

Good.

Okay, so it's a great accuracy exercise as well.

And then we'll do Okay, so again, like the first half of the B part of Studebaker will do.

Um, okay.

So again, um, 1, let's see here.

All right, and then we'll go into like the, uh, the kind of the second half of the B part here. We'll do So similar to the first phrase, but just a little different.

Um, and then we'll keep going.

Okay.

And then after that, we just go right back into the A part again. Okay, so one more time, let me go all the way through the B part of Studebaker here. So we'll do And then we go back into the A part after that. Okay, so let me do this here. Let's go through, and I'm just gonna do the whole thing nice and slow for you. So I'll do the A part. So really, the format of this tune, it's like A, A, B, A. Okay, so the A part twice, we do the B part, and then we'll do the— and then we'll do the A part one more time after that. All right, so let's start from the beginning. We'll go 1, 2, A part.

A part again. B part.

All right, so there we go.

And again, you got the tabs for this down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. I've got I've got the chords written out there for you, and also check out this tune in the Strum Machine. You can practice this at any tempo that you want. But one more time, let's kind of hear how this sounds up to tempo and with a backing track. Okay, so I just, I love this tune. Kenny has always been one of my absolute favorite guitar players in this style. And if you haven't checked out Kenny's playing and you're into this kind of guitar playing, you are really missing out. He, I think, originally came onto the scene with the Lonesome River Band back in the '90s. He's on— there's two albums. I think one of them's Talking to Myself, and I think the other one's called One Step Forward. Just great, great, great hard-driving bluegrass music, and he plays a bunch of amazing lead guitar on there. His solo albums are great, and of course all the stuff he's done with the Kenny and Amanda Smith band is just freaking awesome. So I want to thank you for hanging out. And, you know, one of the reasons why I like to teach, you know, tunes like this from Kenny Smith, or like Decision at Glady Fork from Brian Sutton, or Impulsive from David Greer, or Pyramid Country from Billy Strings, is, you know, a lot of these types of tunes, you know, they're almost— I'm not sure exactly what the phrase is that I'm looking for here, but it's almost like You know, guitar players, when they go out and they do solo records, they'll have like a tune or two that's kind of— it's almost like their statement, okay? Um, you, you know, and I definitely think this tune is, is kind of that for Kenny Smith. A tune like Impulsive is like that for David Greer. I think Decision at Glady Fork is— it's just, you learn a lot about a player's style and about the way they think by learning tunes like this. I don't I don't teach you this just so you can become an automaton and a copycat, but if you can learn a couple of these from a few different players, you can really start to get a feel for how they process ideas, and you can start to borrow from different players and kind of come up with your own thing. So that's why I like to teach these, not just to be a copycat, but to kind of really dig in and see how the greats of this style come up with ideas, come up melodies, how they play around chord changes, and it's just really cool. And again, and if you'll do this with a couple of different players, you can start to pull, you know, from different people and really kind of come up with your own thing. So anyway, love this tune. I'll also link to the original recording down in the video description because that's what I've based this lesson off of, is just exactly what he plays off of the original studio recording from this tune. So as always, thank you for hanging out, and I will see you next time.