The One Fiddle Tune Every Picker Loves- Salt Creek!

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with 3 different ways of playing the classic tune Salt Creek. All right, well, hello and welcome to a little lesson around Salt Creek. So this is one of those tunes where it's like I would probably put it in like the top 5 flatpicking fiddle tune favorites that you can go pretty much anywhere and people will know this tune. I know this is in the exact same category as Red Haired Boy, Gold Rush, Blackberry Blossom, Big Mon, just these tunes that are a lot of fun to play that everybody loves to play. And again, you can go to pretty much any jam session anywhere and people will know this tune. But what I want to do today is give you a couple of fresh variations on this, and I want to talk about some of the ideas that I'm using to come up with new ways of playing this, and I want you to take those ideas and use them in your own playing. I don't want you to only take what you're going to learn in this lesson and play it by rote memorization. I want you to take some of the ideas and then come up with your own fresh ways of playing this. And remember, you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. All right, but before we come up with some new ways of playing this, let's learn the basic melody to this tune. So I'm going to play this along with the backing track, and while I'm playing this basic melody, I'll also put the chords up on the screen. Remember, the chords relative to the capo, and they get 2 beats each. That'll sound like this. All right, basic melody to Salt Creek, and that's going to go like this.

Play that again. B part.

Okay, so there's a basic melody there of Salt Creek if you don't already know this tune. So on the A part Everybody pretty much will play that the same way. This last little phrase, the— I guess that's a 2-bar phrase. That'll change just depending on the person who's playing it. Um, that's the, that's the one that I like to play there. Um, you know, some people, you know, some people will play it like— there's just a bunch of different ways that you can play that last phrase right there. But that's the one I'll— okay, but everything else on the A part, almost everybody will play it that way. Now on the B part here, uh, you know, sometimes people will play that, you know, sometimes people play it like— there's just, there's room for interpretation on that stuff. But again, that's the B part that I like. Now Um, that, that is a big stretch that I'm playing right there. So if you're wanting again the same musical phrase but where you don't have to stretch as much, come up here and then it's just a little bit easier to play right there. So again, that's our basic melody there. Just one more time, let me play it up to tempo with the backing track and it'll go like this. Okay, so let's jump into a little variation on this tune, but before I teach it to you, let play it up to tempo, and that'll sound like this. This, uh, kind of first variation on Salt Creek. Let me play it slow here for you.

We'll do To the B part.

Okay, so here's, here's what I'm doing here. You know, a lot of people ask me like, Aaron, How do we improvise over fiddle tune? I don't have like a grand macro answer for you when it comes to that, but one of the things that is fun to do with a lot of these fiddle tunes, after you've got the basic melody down, what I like to do is play— I call it melody lick ping-pong, okay? And what that is is you will state the melody, play a lick, come back to the melody. And that's what I'm doing on this. So at the beginning, okay, so I've played the melody right there. Now on this next part, the chords.

1, 2, 3, 4.

So it's 1 bar, but it goes from F to D major. And so I've got a couple of these little licks that are 1-bar licks that go from our F shape to, uh, D major. Now granted, it's technically a G chord going into an E chord, but we'll just— we'll do capo speak for now. And so I've got a couple of these licks split a bar between F major and G major. So, okay, and then I go back to the melody after that. Okay, still staying on the melody. And then this really cool little phrase again that kind of splits that bar between our F shape and our D major shape. All right, so credit credit is due. That's a lick that I heard a long time ago when we used to listen to music on CDs. I had a bootleg, um, uh, CD recording of David Greer and Chris Thiele doing a duo show somewhere. I don't remember, uh, but they were doing Salt Creek and David played that lick and I picked it up and I've just used it ever since.

It's so good.

But again, you see what I'm doing right there? Melody lick ping pong. Play the melody for a little bit, jump to a lick, jump back to the melody. So that's the A part there. And, uh, so now we want to go to the B part, and I'm going to kind of do a similar thing. Um, so we'll do— okay, playing the melody, but then because our chord progression is just hanging out on this F shape, technically a G chord. Okay, so I'm throwing in a little phrase there that lets that breathe a little bit, and then coming back over here to the melody, I'm going to do it up here. And now what I'm going to do, again, since I've established the melody, is I'm going to do a G lick to an F lick and then back to the melody. Okay, so those licks work in those places right there because I'm playing them around the melody, or I'm playing them in between melodic phrases. If I only just did licks the whole time, it would just be, you know, it would just, it would just be tasteless and honestly like kind of immature. I still do that from time to time, but, um, but, but I think what makes it work is when you establish, play the melody for a couple of bars switch to a lick for a couple of bars, come back to the melody, and you're kind of dancing around with it. Okay, so one more time, let's hear that second version up to tempo. All right, let's do a third version to Salt Creek, and that'll sound like this. So let's jump in here and we're going to do, um, B part. Okay, so we're really— it's kind of the same deal, playing melody lick ping pong with it here, starting off with just our straight ahead melody, and then I'm throwing in one of those, um, F to D major licks. Back to the melody, taking the melody up an octave, and then we'll do another one of our F to D major licks. Back to the melody. Again, the same idea but with some new phrases on the A part. On the B part, so after I've established the melody, let's go into kind of an F lick and technically a G chord.

Okay.

And then we'll come up and do the melody right here into a lick.

Okay, and then now I'm going to do this little motif.

Okay, and then we'll end with this little double stop, let it breathe for a little bit, and then this little Tony Rice phrase. Okay, so again, I hope this gives you some great phrases to work with, but also I, I hope you'll see how I'm approaching coming up with fresh ways of playing this tune here. And one of my favorite ways to do it is to establish the straight-ahead melody first, but then play a little bit of a game of what I like to call melody lick ping-pong with it. Play the melodic phrase, switch to a lick, come back to the melody. And in doing that, you're still in the tune, you're still playing the song, but you're dancing around with it and you're having some fun with it. So one more time, let's do that third version up to tempo here. All right, so I know this is an absolute flatpicking guitar favorite. I hope this gives you some phrases that you can go and start turning heads at your next jam session but more importantly, I hope this gives you some ideas on coming up with your own fresh ways of approaching Salt Creek. So as always, thank you for hanging out, and I'll see you next time.