The Most Important Flatpicking Lesson Ever!-Foundational Technique Masterclass

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you. So what I've got for you today is a masterclass around bluegrass flatpicking lead guitar technique. This video is a compilation of the past 3 lessons that I've done on this channel, which were a 3-part series around foundational bluegrass lead guitar technique. I had to put this lesson together because as a teacher, I see this over and over and over again. People get into this style because of the massive wave of interest that we've seen over the past 10 years, and really over the past last 5 years. But when they get in, they immediately want to start learning all the hot licks. They want to learn how to play fast, how to improvise, and they want to tackle all of the hot Tony Rice and Billy Strings and Brian Sutton solos. But the problem is, is they haven't laid this really solid foundation. And that is what I'm going to be showing you today. If you will practice what I'm going to show you in this lesson, I promise you it is going to build you a rock-solid foundation. It's going to pay huge dividends, and it is going to serve as an amazing springboard as you go through and you continue to learn, grow, and improve in this style. So this is a longer lesson. This comes in at a little over 50 minutes, but don't worry, down below the video I've got everything organized into chapters so you can push ahead to any part of the video that you want. You can also get the tabs down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. So again, I know this lesson is going to serve you well in all of your future bluegrass flatpicking endeavors. All right, enjoy. Okay, so alternate picking 16th notes. So what we're gonna do on this part here, we're gonna kind of kill two birds with one stone because we're gonna set the foundation with our technique and our timing. So in bluegrass, technique and timing are not really separate things. Think of it almost as like two sides of one coin. They play into each other, and in order to get a good grip on your technique, you've also got to get a good grip on your timing. So So make no mistake about it, the foundational bluegrass lead guitar skill is alternate picking 16th notes. Let me say that one more time: the foundational bluegrass lead guitar skill is alternate picking 16th notes. Okay, now I know a lot of people tab bluegrass leads out as 8th notes. That's fine, but again, when we're talking about the music and where these notes fall and where these leads fall rhythmically in the music, it is as 16th notes. It is not as 8th notes. Period. These are 16th note lead ideas that we play when we're playing fiddle tunes. Those are meant to be played as 16th notes. When we're playing lead breaks to vocal songs, those are primarily played as 16th notes. Now people will ask me, they'll say, Aaron, does that mean we're never going to play 8th notes or quarter notes in bluegrass lead? Not at all. Of course we'll play those, but they're mostly played as 16th notes. And if you can get a good grip on alternate picking 16th notes, whenever you come across a passage of 8th notes or quarter notes or half notes or whole notes, you'll be over-prepared to execute those ideas in an efficient manner. Okay, so let me illustrate alternate picking as 16th notes here. Okay, so I've got my little metronome clicking at 50 beats a minute. Okay, so 16th notes at this tempo, or at any tempo, are going to be 4 notes per beat. Okay, it'll go like this: 1, 2, 3, 4.

We'll do 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and 4 and 1 and 2, 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

Okay, so I may have been getting a little ahead of it in some places right there. Um, that's actually a really challenging thing to do. The big picture idea there is that we play 4 notes per beat, okay? And we count that like 1 and 2 and 3, e and, 4, e and, which, when you're counting that out loud, it feels ridiculous, it sounds ridiculous, and you're like, gosh, I hope no one hears me saying this. It's fine though, because that's how we're going to count these 16th notes as we play those. Okay, so there's that. There's kind of the timing part of that. But now let's talk about the technique part of that. So we're going to do alternate picking on that, and alternate picking is picking down and up. But even more more importantly than that, you want your downstrokes falling on certain beats and upstrokes falling on certain beats. We'll do a downstroke on beat 1, we'll do up on E, we'll do down on and, up on, uh, all right. So again, down on 1, up on E, down on and, up on, uh, okay, that's it. That is alternate picking.

1, e and, uh, 2, e and, uh, 3, e and, uh, 4, e and, uh.

Okay, and that is alternate picking. That is our alternate picking technique, and we'll stay consistent with that. Now inevitably, people love to be like, but Aaron, what about economy picking? Or what about down-down-up picking? Or what about places where we do 2 downstrokes in a row and all that kind of stuff. They'll bring that stuff up, and we do this. You'll hear the greats of this style like Clarence White and Tony Rice, and even before them, like George Shuffler, will do like, you know, cross picking. Like, that's great, but that is the exception to the rule. When we're getting this stuff down, we want to focus on what we're going to be doing most of the time. We want to focus on the most important things, and the most important things is alternate picking 16th notes. Now I've included a little graphic here that I'm going to throw up on the screen right now, okay? And it just illustrates what I'm talking about. We want downstrokes on 1, up on E, down on and, up on a, okay? So I've included that down in the email with the tabs and the backing tracks and all that kind of good stuff. So take that, download it, print it out, frame it. But I want you to burn that idea into your brain because it is the foundational technique of this style. So I want to give you 5 simple open string exercises here to really hammer home your alternate picking and your alternate picking at 16th notes. So example 1 will be this.

We want 1, e and, uh, 2, e and, uh, 3, e and, uh, e and, uh, 1, e and, uh, 2, e and, uh, 3, e and, uh, 4, e and, uh.

Okay, and that's just alternate picking on our open 3rd string there. Okay, and our next exercise will go like this.

1, 2, 3, 4. And 1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, uh, 3rd exercise will go like this.

We'll do 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay.

Example 4 here, we'll do 1, 2, 3, 4. All right, and then example 5, we're gonna do like a full-on crosspicking pattern here, and we'll do 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, so real quick, let's talk, let's talk about tone here. So when we're talking about tone, everybody wants to talk about gear. Everybody wants to talk about the, the, the guitar and the strings and the pick and all that other kind of good stuff. And people also love to talk and talk and talk and talk about hand positioning and pick slanting and escape motions and rest strokes and all of this other stuff. Oh my gosh. Um, which is fine. I'm not knocking anybody that teaches that, but the thing about it is with the hand positioning, you have to find what works for you. We're all wired a little bit differently. You have to figure out what works for you. But once you do that, you want to minimize the tension in your picking hand, okay? You don't want to have a whole bunch of tension in your hand and in your shoulders and in your body. You want to relax, get that smooth sound. And then from there, um, now this is important, like your pick position, um, you know, relative to the bridge into the sound hole. I like to hold my pick kind of right at— right where the sound hole starts. I find if I go up into the sound hole, it, it's it's okay, but it just doesn't quite have the bite that I like for it to have. You know, it just doesn't quite have the edge. But if I go too back, like toward the bridge, it's too harsh. So I like it right about where the sound hole starts. So that's a great place to keep your pick whenever you're playing this stuff. And then with all of these exercises, so you want to play these at 16th notes and you want to practice them in time. One other thing that you want to make sure that you're doing is we don't want a harsh staccato sound. We don't want—

we don't want that.

We want this as smooth. We want it like butter, nice and smooth there. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to play these simple little picking exercises along with two of my favorite tools to practice my timing with. Now earlier you heard me play some of the stuff with the metronome. That's actually not my favorite tool to practice with. I like a train beat backing track and I like the Strum Machine. Okay, so real quick, let me play those five exercises along with the train beat backing track. Okay, so now I'm going to do the exact same thing, but I'm going to do it along with the strum machine this time. Okay, so I just love using those to practice my technique and my timing with this stuff. So just to kind of review real quick, remember the foundational skill of this style is alternate picking 16th notes. You have got to get familiar with playing 4 notes per beat and having your downstrokes fall on 1 and and your upstrokes falling on E and A. From there, you want to practice your timing. My 2 favorite tools to use are the TrainBeat backing track and the Strum Machine. And from there, remember what I was saying about tone. Keep your pick kind of right about where the sound hole starts, not too far back here next to the bridge and not too far up into the sound hole. Keep that smooth sound while you're practicing these. Not this. So as simple as these little exercises are, I promise you that spending a little bit of time every single day working on this stuff is going to tremendously beneficial to your playing. Understanding this foundational technique of alternate picking 16th notes is going to be a tremendous value as you go through and you start jumping in to more advanced bluegrass lead guitar material. So in today's lesson, what we're going to talk about is using alternate picking in combination with hammer-ons and pull-offs. Now, this throws a lot of flat pickers off because when we're doing this, we seem to violate the fundamental rule of alternate picking, which most people think is just picking down and up all the time. It's not. Alternate picking is actually more about having your downstrokes fall on certain beats beats, and your upstrokes fall on certain beats. Now, I would recommend, if you haven't had the chance yet, watch the first video in this series around alternate picking. I do a deep dive on that. I give you some really simple exercises to drive the point home. Now, I'm not going to reiterate that very much in today's lesson, but I do recommend checking that video out. You can check that out right here, and I will also have that linked down in the video description. So, okay, let's go ahead and jump into today's lesson. So what I want to show you today are a couple of exercises, and I want to go ahead and start with this one right here.

We're going to do— let me play that again.

Okay, so this is what I call the bluegrass scale. Now, if you've been watching this channel for any length of time, or if you've ever taken any of my online courses or anything like that, you know that I don't approach bluegrass from a scales-based frame. Not that I don't think you should learn scales, I absolutely do, but when it comes to bluegrass, you want to think more in terms of a vocabulary and a repertoire-based approach to learning this stuff. But if somebody you know, was like, Aaron, is there a bluegrass scale? This is the scale I'd show it— that I would show to people. And all it is, it's a major blues scale in G that uses open strings. Okay, so anyway, but what we're going to do here, we're going to apply our alternate picking as 16th notes through this scale. Okay, and that's going to go like this.

We're going to do 1, E and, uh, 2, E and, uh, 3, e and a, 4, e and a, 1, e and a, 2, e and a, 3.

If you want a good ear training exercise or a good vocal exercise, sing your pick strokes through that if you're a super nerd like me.

1, e and a, 2, e and a, 3, e and a, 4, e and a, 1, e E and a 2, E and a 3.

That is too much fun. All right, so there's that. But again, um, you know, I want to bring your attention to the pick strokes. And like I was saying, and like I covered in the first video in this series, our down strokes are falling on our downbeat and and, and our up strokes are falling on E and a, because that's how we count 16th notes. One E and a. So one more time, I'll do it real slow here.

One E and a, two And 3, and 4, and 1, and 2.

Okay, so real quick, now that I've played our little bluegrass scale using all picked notes and using alternate picking as 16th notes, What I want to do is just play it along with a little train beat backing track. This is not fast, this is at about 80 beats per minute, but I wanted to do that just to give it a little bit of rhythmic context.

Okay, so that'll sound like this.

So that's how those pick strokes are falling, and they're falling exactly where they need to be. Downstrokes on downbeats and ands, upstrokes on E and up. Okay, but now what we want to do is we're going to play that, but this time I'm going to— instead of just using straight picked notes, I'm going to use a combination of hammer-ons and pull-offs. And that's going to go like this. Okay, so let me play that one more time here for you.

Okay, so let me do that, and I want to count it out 1, e and, uh, 2, e and, uh, 3, e and, uh, 4, e and, uh, 1, e and, uh, 2, e and, uh, 3.

And what I hope that you're seeing is that those pick strokes fell in the exact same place. All I did was when I was using hammer-ons or pull-offs, I would just leave the pick stroke out. That's it. That's it. The pick strokes are falling in the exact same place. 1, 2, 3, and 4, and 1, and 2, They're falling in the exact same place that they did in the previous example where we used all pick notes. But what throws people for a loop is when you start doing those, that results in you doing sometimes 2 downstrokes in a row or 2 upstrokes in a row. Like right here, 1, e, and, uh, 2. We did 2 downstrokes.

Okay.

But that's not breaking the alternate picking rule. That is the alternate picking rule.

Down, up, down, hammer down.

One, and, uh, because that's an, uh, right there. So normally we would have hit that with an upstroke, but we did a hammer-on right there. And then now our next note falls