In this YouTube lesson Aaron Jaxon teaches the iconic Tony Rice solo from "Nine Pound Hammer" (Manzanita). He explains the practical setup—capo on 2nd fret, playing the tune in a G‑shape (G, C, D) while the underlying key is A—and walks viewers through the solo step‑by‑step. The lesson is broken into slow, phrase‑by‑phrase demonstrations, with detailed rhythmic counting (down to 16th‑note subdivisions) to show exactly where the solo enters (on the "and" of beat 4) and how long notes are held. Jaxon highlights the solo’s musical DNA: heavy use of the minor pentatonic and minor blues scales, occasional major‑third notes, and the blending of major/minor blues ideas. He repeatedly references his own “blues scales for bluegrass” lesson and provides tabs in the video description and pinned comment. The instructional tone is conversational yet precise, aimed at bluegrass guitarists who want to internalize Tony Rice’s style.
Chapters
If I could only teach students of bluegrass guitar one solo, this is the solo that I'd teach.
All right, stick around.
Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today, and I want to show you Tony Rice's legendary solo to Nine Pound Hammer from the classic Manzanita album. I really do think this is one of the best bluegrass guitar solos ever recorded, and if you're wanting an intro into Tony Rice's style, there's not really a better solo to learn than this one. I'd hesitated in the past to do a lesson on this one just because there's so many other lessons on YouTube around this solo. The nature of YouTube is this: everyone is teaching everything on YouTube, so I might as well just jump in. You can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. All right, so let's jump in. I would say most people watching this probably probably already know the tune Nine Pound Hammer, but just in case you don't, I— you know, this tune is played in lots of different keys, um, but it's pretty standard at most jams that you can play this one out of A. So I've got the capo on the second fret. We're playing it out of a G shape here. We'll do a G, C, and D shape. And just real quick, the tune goes like this. So, 1, 2.
Well, the nine pound hammer is a little too heavy, but if for my size Buddy for my size. Well, roll on, buddy. Don't you roll so slow. How can I roll with no wheels for a toe?
So, and I'm going to speak in shapes, not in absolute chords here. But it'll—
So there's just a little review there in case you're not familiar with 9-pound hammer, but I know most people watching this probably are. All right, so I'm going to go through the whole thing nice and slow here for you, and then we'll break it down into sections, small chunk it, and analyze it a a little bit. Let's go through the whole thing here. So we're gonna go 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, so there's so many things that I love about this classic solo here, but let's talk about, um, where to come in, like what beats to come in on. So you want to come in, like if you're practicing this along with the strum machine or playing it in a jam, you want to come in on the and of beat 4. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. And I think he does do like a double stop kind of up there, like he hits the 3rd string and the 2nd and then does that slide from the 1st fret up to the 3rd fret. Okay, but it does— but for sure it's going to come in on the and of beat 4. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Okay, and then what you want to do is you want to hold that note through the E of beat 2. All right, so remember, I think of this stuff in 16th notes, and it's not even that I think of it in 16th notes— these ideas are 16th notes. Um, so we want to do 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and E and 2 E. Okay, so we're gonna hold that from the and of beat 4 through the E of beat 2. When I say E, 1 E and 2 E and— that's how we count 16th notes. Okay, so 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 e and 2 e and 3 e and 4. Okay, so just remember that on that first phrase because if you don't get that, it's going to throw the whole solo off. So come in on the and of beat 4 and then hold that until we get to the e of beats, uh, 2. So I'll just kind of count out that whole first phrase there. So we'll go 1 e and 2, 3, and 4, and 1, and 2, and 3, and 4. Okay, so just remember that whenever you're coming in on that phrase. But anyway, that— okay, so one of the cool things about this solo is he really pulls a lot from the minor pentatonic in this solo here. Now, if you haven't had a chance to check out my blues scales for bluegrass lesson and, uh, that's going to be this right here, and I'll link to it down in the video description. Go ahead and check that out. If you learn those patterns, whenever you're jumping in and learning a lot of these phrases, it starts to become familiar territory. It's not completely foreign. You kind of see where he's pulling from in these ideas. But that's that first phrase. Again, mostly minor pentatonic, but he's throwing in our major third right there. And then now where the chord switches to the D, uh, in this case we're playing a C shape, he's going to do Okay, all right, let me play that phrase again. Okay, killer little passage to, um, outline anytime you've got like a C-shape chord. And all he's doing there, so kind of outlining the notes in the C, but also doing like a little C run, if you will, and putting all that together. And so this next phrase will do Okay, so in that one he's doing that classic thing where we mix major and minor blues scale ideas to come up with some really cool sounding lines. Okay, so at the very beginning of that, we're doing major, minor, major. Okay, cool. So before we get to the kind of the second half of this solo, let me just go over the kind of the first half of this again. So again, remember, we're going to come in on the and of beat 4, hold that note through the E of beat 2. So 1, E and 2, E and 3, E and 4, E and 1, E and 2. So let's go into the second half of it here, and it's going to go like this. We're going to do All right, so again, this is why, um, you know, I would, I would do this solo if I could only teach one bluegrass solo, but I would really do this one if somebody's like, hey man, give me an intro to Tony Rice's style, because it's all spelled out here. But what he's going to do up here, um, coming into, coming into kind of the first phrase of the second half of the solo Okay, and all that is, all that is, um, again, I'd highly recommend, you know, checking out my, um, kind of blues scales for bluegrass lesson. I'll link to that down in the video description. But okay, well, we're technically in the key of A here, but a lot of times we're playing out of a G shape, so we can use a lot of those open strings. That we would use, um, if we didn't have the capo on here. But that— and that idea right there is straight out of our, like, minor pentatonic or minor blues scale pattern 3. Okay, so that's where that comes from. And then he's going to slide down here to kind of our first minor blues scale pattern, and he's going to do Okay, ending with a couple of open strings, but that's what it is. It's just those are minor blues scale ideas, and I do emphasize the blues scale part of it because it's not just pentatonic, because if it was just pentatonic, we wouldn't have—
or—
okay, anyway, that's just good stuff to to know there. But one more time, and let's keep going here.
We're gonna do—
okay, at the beginning of this little phrase, going to between minor and major, and then he's going to come up here and kind of outline. Okay, and what he's doing right there is he's taking this little— where he's using these open strings, but these notes right here sounds like I'm playing Smoke on the Water. But anyway, those notes and what he's playing there, that's like an A, a C, a D, and a D sharp. Those are right— that's A minor blues scale. Okay, A minor. He's just— he's outlining that but using open strings to get this really cool droning, almost kind of banjo thing. And then again, still like minor blues scale, but kind of out of this, um, and then he's going to end it with our good old G run. So that last little phrase there Okay, so again, this, this, the second half of this solo here. Okay, so really a lot of great A minor blues scale ideas that he's playing over the chords to Nine Pound Hammer here. And it just— it's just a legendary Tony Rice solo, and it just shows you, you know, so much of what his style was about, where he's taking this traditional bluegrass tune but he's just filling it up with these really bluesy but also, you know, kind of fast and clean bluegrass runs that is just— that's what he's known for. All right, one more time, I'm gonna play the whole thing slow for you and then I'll play it up to tempo. All right, so I'm gonna count it off at the beginning. 1 and, uh, 2 and, uh, 3 and, uh, 4 and, uh, 1 and 2. And there we go. All right, let me play it up to tempo again here for you. The solo just has so many of those great classic elements that made Tony Rice famous. So if you're a bluegrass guitar player, you have to learn this solo. You have to know it. I want to thank you so much for hanging out. Check out some of these other videos for some lessons on some of Tony Rice's very best solos. Remember, you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. I want to thank you so much for hanging out today, and I will see you next time. I would say most people watching this probably already know the tune Nine Pound Hammer, but just in case you don't, I— you know, this tune is played in lots of different keys, um, but it's pretty standard at most jams that you can play this one out of A. So I've got the capo on the second fret. We're playing it out of a G shape here. We'll do a G, C, and D shape. And just real quick, the tune goes like this. So, 1, 2—
well, the nine pound hammer is a little too heavy Buddy for my size, buddy for my size. Well, roll on, buddy, don't you roll so slow. How can I roll when the wheels won't go?
So, um, and I'm gonna speak in shapes, not in absolute chords here, but it'll, uh, 1, 2, 3, 4.
