The Right Order To Learn Bluegrass Guitar

One of the biggest patterns I see with people learning bluegrass guitar isn't that they're not practicing enough. It's more that they don't know what they should be practicing. They'll learn like a cool lick over here, maybe a scale pattern over here, maybe a fiddle tune over here, maybe a Billy Strings solo over here, but there's no real order to it. So after working with thousands of guitar students in nearly 20 years of teaching guitar, I've noticed 3 stages that I see most guitar students going through, but especially students of bluegrass guitar going through. And in this lesson, I'm going to be walking you through all 3 stages so you can identify where you're at, but more importantly, you'll know what you should be working on next. So I know a lot of people are probably going to be like, Aaron, how the heck are you going to make a video about guitar playing and you're not even going to hold a guitar in the video? Yeah, I'm just not today. I'm just not. Um, I think this is the only one that I've ever made where I'm not holding a guitar. I really hope this kind of feels like just a straightforward, down-to-earth, intimate conversation, like you're sitting here in my, you know, hopefully well-lit basement and we're just talking guitar together. So what I'm sharing with you today is really becoming the key framework that all of my teaching on this channel is based around. I love YouTube and I love the opportunities that it provides. It allows you and me to connect with each other, which is awesome. We can do that from anywhere in the world. I love it. YouTube is a tremendous resource, but the downside of it is this, is that you get bogged down with way too much information. Because the YouTube algorithm just serves you videos that it thinks you're going to watch, not necessarily what's going to help you grow and improve as a player. Now, who is that good for? It's good for YouTube, it's good for the platform, and also— and again, I'm just kind of being as honest as I can be, just kind of pulling back the curtain for you for a little bit— it's really good for people like me, people who are content creators, because it gets our videos out in front of of a bunch of new people. So it's good for us. But again, if you're trying to grow and you're trying to improve, or you've been playing for decades and you're just like, Aaron, I am so sick and tired of staying stuck in my playing, consuming YouTube video after YouTube video after YouTube video is not necessarily the best way to do it. So that's why I want to share with you what I call the flatpicking path. And so real quick, I just want to give you a real quick overview of the flatpicking path here. These are 3 stages. The first stage I call the aspirant, and that's where we build our foundations. The second stage is what I call the traveler. This is where we really develop the language and the vocabulary of bluegrass. And the third stage is what I call the high flyer, and this is an advanced stage where you start to develop your own voice as a player. Now I do want to say this, these are not necessarily rigid labels. But they're a great way to identify your current developmental focus. And this is not just some random thing that I came up with. I didn't just get on my favorite AI. I didn't just get into ChatGPT or Claude and be like, hey, come up with a framework for me for this. This is actually something I developed a couple of years ago. And y'all, it's just based on working with a lot of students. Whenever I first started teaching this stuff, Um, online at least, back in like 2022, I was, you know, just posting some videos on Instagram and TikTok, and it was, you know, Big Mon at 160 beats per minute, or, you know, just stuff like that, you know, a bunch of hot licks, really fast stuff. And, you know, I just had a lot of people in the comments being like, hey man, I want to learn this stuff. I'm a, I'm a rock player or a metal player, and I went and saw Billy Strings, and, you know, I was blown away, and I want to learn this stuff. So whenever I first started teaching this stuff, I immediately started teaching like really advanced material. But whenever I would jump on like Zoom lessons or whenever I would have students join my courses, and I would start to, you know, get to know some of the people that I was teaching, it became very clear that there are foundational developmental things that have to get set first before people can kind of get into that really, you know, advanced Billy Strings and Tony Rice and Brian Sutton stuff that they were all wanting to learn how to play. So again, this is based on a lot of data. I've had thousands of students go through my online courses. I have done hundreds of Zoom lessons. I have even done a couple of, um, live challenges, uh, that I hosted over Zoom, you know, that had in between 75 and 100 people on there. And I would walk people through this framework. So, I want to share this with you here. And again, y'all, this— I've got a lot of data behind this. I'm not just kind of, you know, shooting in the dark and kind of randomly pulling this stuff out. I have seen this over and over and over again. So, I wanna bring that graphic back up here. Again, the Aspirant, the Traveler, and the High Flyer. Okay, about 60 to 65% of my students, and when I say my students, that includes viewers of this YouTube channel, that includes people who are in my online courses, that includes people I've done Zoom lessons with, and it really includes most people learning this style. About 60 to 65% of people are aspirants, they're in that first stage. About 30 to 35% of people are travelers, they're kind of in that intermediate phase. And then about 5 to maybe 10% of people are what I would call a high flyer. They're in that advanced stage. So I want you to keep that in mind as you're watching this. There's a pretty good chance that if you're watching this, you're probably in that first stage, in the aspirant stage. But one other thing that I have noticed is that a lot of people who are really engaged with what I do, and these, you know, usually end up being a lot of the people in my online courses, but also, you know, people who have come and done VIP days with me or who are in my like premium group coaching programs or who have become one-on-one students, a lot of those people are travelers. So I get a lot of people who are— who really resonate with what I teach on this channel tend to be travelers. But again, most of the people, 60 to 65% of the people who are, you know, watching this stuff and learning this stuff are aspirants. So I want you to keep that in mind as I go through and just kind of break down each one of these levels here. All right, level 1, the aspirant. I love this stage. This is where your foundations are set. If you don't have this, nothing else matters. Everything is gonna be shaky, everything is gonna be unstable, and you're constantly going to run into issues as you try to progress with this. But the good news, With this is that the stuff to work on in this stage in the aspirant is very simple. Number 1, foundational technique and timing. Alternate picking, alternate picking as 16th notes, alternate picking in combination with picked notes and hammer-ons and pull-offs, and making sure that you're playing that in time using either a metronome, a train beat drum track, the strum machine, some type of objective tool. to help keep you in time, because timing is so, so, so, so, so important in bluegrass. We have to emphasize it a little bit more than we do in other styles, because generally speaking, when we're talking about playing bluegrass— bluegrass is an offshoot of old-time string band music, which means we don't really have a drummer. Sometimes you'll see bluegrass bands playing with a drummer, but more often than not, when you go to your local bluegrass jam, there's not somebody set up with a drum set. Okay, so our timing has to really be on point. So foundational technique and timing, getting that stuff down. Okay, and then from there, we just want to apply that foundational technique and timing to 10 simple bluegrass tunes. That's it, 10 simple bluegrass tunes. I tell people to do 5 Solos to simple bluegrass vocal tunes, and 5 fiddle tunes. Okay, so just a really quick and easy way to know if you're in the aspirant level or not. I just ask people this simple question: can you play at least 10 bluegrass solos/fiddle tunes? It could be a combination of both. It could be 10 fiddle tunes, it could be 10 bluegrass solos, doesn't really matter. But can you play them cleanly in time by memory at about, you know, 80 beats per minute, in between 70 and 80 beats per minute as 16th notes? And you do that fairly easily. Now you have to be very honest with yourself, you have to get really honest, but more often than not when I ask that question, you know deep down in your gut if the answer is yes or if it's no. So if the answer to that question is no, that's great. This is the stage that you want to be in. And I also want you to think about it like this. Don't think about this as like, oh, I'm a beginner. Not necessarily. I have had several students who were like really advanced fingerpickers or who were really great blues or blues rock or even, um, metal players. But the muscle development required to play bluegrass. And not just the muscle development, but the repertoire development is so unique and it's so unlike other styles of guitar playing that you still have to go back and learn this foundational material. So don't think of the aspirant stage as beginner because it's not beginner guitar. Think of it as a foundational stage. So you might even be a very advanced player in another style But if you're brand new to bluegrass, I almost always have everybody start here in the aspirant stage. So y'all, that really is it— foundational technique and timing, and then apply that foundational technique and timing to 10 simple tunes. So most students, just by working through this material and committing to a focused practice routine, can get up to about 80 beats per minute with most of these tunes here. So again, those are the core areas of development for the aspirant stage: foundational technique and timing, and then applying that foundational technique and timing to 10 simple tunes. And try to get to where you can play at least a handful of those tunes at about 80 beats per minute. That's a good goal to shoot towards, but I want to emphasize this because I've taught this to people before and they only focused on the 80 BPM thing. That was the only thing they focused on. That's the least important part of this. Foundational technique and timing, 10 simple tunes. That is it. Put the horse blinders on, take the pressure off. You don't need to be bouncing around, you know, and consuming a bunch of YouTube videos. Just that. And by the way, if you would like a playlist to guide you through this stage right here, I have put this playlist together and I will link to it down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. That is the first stage in the flatpicking path. That is the foundational stage. I see people over and over and over skipping over this stage and they run into problems as they try to progress in this style. So that's stage 1. That's what I call the aspirant. So the second stage in the flatpicking path is what I call the traveler. Now, how to know if you're in the traveler stage? I would just put the same question to you that I put to you when we were talking about the first stage, when we were talking about the aspirant. Can you play 10 bluegrass solos/fiddle tunes, or 10 fiddle tunes? It could be a combination of both, it doesn't matter. Can you play those cleanly and in time by memory at about 80 beats per minute as 16th notes? And if you hear that and you go, yeah, Aaron, I, I got that down, I got that down for sure, I'm not lying to myself, I can do that. So if you answered yes to that, there's a good chance that you're in the second stage, in the traveler stage. Now you might not be, you might be a really advanced player, but again, y'all, based on working with a lot of students, you know, there's a good chance that if you asked— that if you answered yes to that, that you're in the traveler stage here. Now, the focus in the traveler stage is really developing the language and the vocabulary of bluegrass guitar. And I know that's a little bit vague, but when I'm talking about language and vocabulary, you want, you know, musical phrases and licks and ideas that sound like bluegrass. So to make this even more specific, more concrete, and to just really get down to the brass tacks here, I've come up with a new framework that I call the— I call it the 3 Tens. Okay, and so what I have students do here in this Traveler stage is I tell them to learn 10 great bluegrass phrases/bluegrass licks, learn 10 solos to classic bluegrass vocal tunes, and and learn 10 fiddle tunes with basic versions and more advanced versions. The 3 10s there give me 10 great bluegrass phrases, 10 solos to bluegrass vocal tunes, and 10 fiddle tunes with basic melody and more advanced versions. And yeah, it is a lot of work, but this is work that is worth doing because what are you doing here? You are absorbing the language, you are absorbing the vocabulary by learning this stuff. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make whenever they get to this stage is they immediately want to jump into improvisation. They want to start, you know, coming up with their own solos and their own licks, and they want to improvise over fiddle tunes. And they're like, Aaron, how do I improvise over Blackberry Blossom? And, you know, things like that, which is great, we're gonna get you there, I promise. But at this stage, you you have not absorbed enough of the language, enough of the vocabulary to be able to use that in your playing. So again, the best way that I can simplify this, the best way that I can just kind of make it really concrete and just give you like the no BS brass tacks here, the 3 10s. Give me 10 great bluegrass licks or phrases, give me 10 solos to classic bluegrass vocal tunes, give me 10 fiddle tunes with basic melody and more advanced versions. And don't worry, I'm not going to tell you to just go on and figure it out all on your own. I got you covered. Okay, so for learning great bluegrass phrases, you know, I'll go ahead and put this one up on the screen here. This is the most viewed, um, video on my YouTube channel, uh, which is, which is awesome. But you know, I just teach you 10 great bluegrass phrases, um, in that. Those are great to learn. Another great one— it didn't get nearly as many views— but is this one right here. And in that, I give you 7 of my very favorite kind of 2-bar bluegrass licks, and I show you how to plug all of them into How Mountain Girls Can Love. So in that sense, you're kind of killing 2 birds with one stone. You're getting some great phrases, but you're also plugging them in, all into like a classic bluegrass vocal tune. Now, for the 10 solos to classic bluegrass vocal tunes, We want these to be more advanced than the stuff that we were learning in the aspirant stage, but we don't want it to be so advanced that, um, it's just kind of, you know, out of reach for where you're at here as a player. So again, I got you covered. I got you covered. Check out this lesson right here. Um, this is 5 really great kind of traveler intermediate level solos to some classic bluegrass vocal standards. Learn those. That is a great thing to learn. And I've also put this playlist together right here. So I've done a handful of these lessons where I show you how to play a kind of beginner, intermediate, and advanced solo to some of these classic bluegrass vocal tunes. And so I've put all of those together in this playlist. Learn the solo in the middle of each one of those, not the beginner or the advanced, but kind of the intermediate one in the middle. That is perfect for this level. So Those 2 things will give you your 10, um, solos to bluegrass vocal tunes. And then for the fiddle tunes, you know, I've shared this in several of my lessons, but I've got a fiddle tune playlist. I'll put it up on the screen here, and I'll link to all of these, all of these videos that I'm referencing. I'll link to it down in the video description. But again, give me 10 fiddle tunes with basic melody and more advanced variations on this. And yes, y'all, this will take time to get through. And remember, at this level, you haven't absorbed enough of the language and the vocabulary to start coming up with your own solos or playing like yourself, all of that kind of good stuff. But working through the 3 tens will give you an amazing foundation of bluegrass language and vocabulary that you can pull from as you progress in this style. Now, are those the only things we want to work on here? No, you want to be continuing to work on your technique, on your timing. And at this level, it's probably a good idea to start adding a specific speed building part to your practice routine. Now, this video today is not going to go into the specifics of, you know, how to practice, how to memorize tunes, how to review, when to move on. Now, if you do want to check that out, I'll throw this lesson up on the screen right here, and I will link to it down in the video description as well. But at this stage and the traveler stage. Remember I said that you should, um, you know, when you get into the stage, you should be pretty comfortable playing a handful of tunes at about 80 beats per minute as 16th notes. So one of the things we want to do here is we want to try to start shooting, you know, above 100 BPM, even trying to get into like 120, 130 territory, because a lot of these tunes that we play sound really good at, you know, in between 120 and 130. Beats per minute. So it is a good idea to start adding like a deliberate speed building part to your practice routine here. And the best speed building lesson that I have shared on this channel is this one right here. I've shared a lot of speed building lessons on this channel, but the most comprehensive one is this one right here. Check it out, and I will link to it down in the video description as well. Now some people may ask me like, Aaron, what about, you know, fretboard mastery? What about scales and arpeggios and triads and chord inversions and all that kind of good Good stuff. I absolutely recommend learning that stuff. But, and again, this is a bluegrass-specific lesson. This is a bluegrass-specific lesson. I would recommend doing a deep dive on that stuff after you've mastered the 3 10s, or after you've really committed the 3 10s to muscle memory, unconscious competence, all of that good stuff. Okay, so once you have mastered that, once you have really learned that stuff, and that's going to take a while, Then if you need to do a deeper dive on your fretboard mastery, this is a great place to do it. But I do put that secondary to the 3 10s for a very specific reason, and here is the specific reason. And instead of explaining it to you, I want to share a quick story with you. So, um, this was a long time ago. This was back when I was, I was, I was 16 years old, I think. And I had been taking guitar lessons for a little while, and I, I don't really remember, but something just happened to me when I was like 14 years old, and I just got obsessed with the guitar. I'd practice all the time. Every chance that I had, I had a guitar in my hands. And I had a great guitar teacher, you know, who was really big on scales and music theory and harmony and chord formulas and all that kind of good stuff. So by the time that I was 16, I really understood musical music theory. I really understood the fretboard, um, and I even went and did a jazz camp at Berklee when I was 16 years old. So I knew all my scales, all of my modes. I could look at like the chart of a jazz standard, like All the Things You Are. I could comp the chords through that. I could play the arpeggios through that, all of that kind of good stuff. So, you know, being able to do that at 16 years old, I thought I was You know, I thought I was a pretty big deal. You know, maybe even, you know, maybe even a little bit of a of a prodigy, perhaps. You know, I thought I thought I was hot shit, man. And I remember a couple of weeks after coming home from that jazz camp, I had got invited to like a little bluegrass jam. And I remember when when somebody asked that, I was like, I was like bluegrass. I was like huh G C and D. I was like, you know, I've been up at Berklee, you know, playing jazz standards, you know, playing through jazz standards. You know, I know all my scales and my modes. I can play the melodic minor scale, you know, all that kind of good stuff. I was like, I'll show up. I was like, but you know, it'll be not a challenge, is what I thought. And I remember I got to the jam and another kid showed up who was a year or two older than me. And he was a guitar player. And I remember he showed up and he was wearing like overalls and, uh, like a, like a Realtree camo hat. And I remember looking at him and being like, oh, bless his heart. I was like, I'll probably have to show him a thing or two here. And, uh, you know, we started playing some music and it did not take very long for him to blow my ass out of the water. Like, he made me look dumb. After a couple of tunes, I kind of just stopped playing and put my guitar back in the case. Why? He knew bluegrass music up and down. He didn't really— he knew like maybe a couple of scale patterns, but certainly not to the extent that I did. But he had been playing bluegrass music with his family since he was a little kid. He knew the tunes, he knew the vocabulary. He had been listening a lot to, you know, like Tony Rice and Dan Crary and Doc Watson, Russ Berenberg, and Kenny Smith. Since he was a little kid. Um, he had great timing and rhythm because he'd been playing this music with people since he was a little kid. And there I was, you know, with, you know, my, my fretboard mastery, and he blew me out of the water. So that is why I tell people to develop vocabulary and repertoire, technique and timing Really get a good grip on that. And then if you need to do a deeper dive into your fretboard mastery, that stuff is great too. But you have to remember, knowing your instrument, knowing those things is the alphabet. This music is the actual vocabulary. And by the way, if you do need a deep dive that's, you know, I've tailored specifically to bluegrass players, check out some of these— check out this playlist right here, and it will pretty much give you everything you need to know. When it comes to the fretboard mastery, especially for bluegrass players. Okay, so before I go on into the 3rd stage here, I do want to reiterate that about 90 to 95% of my students— and I do believe that that includes viewers of this YouTube channel— are going to fall into the first 2 stages, into either the aspirant stage or the traveler stage. So just keep that in mind as we keep going here. All right, the High Flyer. So I do have a couple of High Flyer students, but not many. They're in a minority, but I wanted to talk about this a little bit. I do want to talk about it a little bit, but I'm not going to spend nearly as much time on this. Again, just because most of my students are in the previous 2 stages. So you do want to continue to learn more advanced material. This is a great place to do that. Place to really start studying the great players of this style and really start tackling really advanced, you know, Brian Sutton and Billy Strings and Tony Rice solos. But you don't want to just learn them and be done with it. You want to start studying the ideas that they're using in their playing. That way you can combine influences from your favorite players to start coming up with your own leads. This is also a great place to, instead of you know, maybe learning, um, you know, some ideas from either a YouTube video or an online course. This is a great place to start developing your ear by going through and learning ideas, licks, and tunes from your favorite players by ear. Because at this point, you've developed enough of the vocabulary, you've, you've developed the, um, the kind of muscle strength that you need to execute on these ideas. In the Traveler Stage, you went through and you learned the 3 tens, and so now you've absorbed enough of the language. So whenever you go to try to figure some of this stuff out by ear, it's not gonna sound like a complete foreign language. You'll have a basic grip on this, and it'll help you figure this stuff out by ear. So ear training and learning things by ear, figuring things out by ear, is a great thing. To do here as well. This is a good place to start tackling improvisation, learning how to improvise over vocal tunes, learning how to improvise over fiddle tunes. That's a great thing to do here, again, because you've built foundations in the previous levels. From there, more advanced speed building, because bluegrass can be a really fast music. So starting to dip your toes into playing some fast grass is a great thing to do here. Deeper fretboard knowledge and theory is also a great thing to tackle as you get into the High Flyer stage. And this is a great place to start putting your own spin on some of this stuff, again because you've studied the greats, you've developed the language and the vocabulary, you've got your foundational technique and timing down, and now you can start to develop your own voice here. So the goal at this stage is a whole lot less like, can I play bluegrass, and it's a whole lot more like, what do I want my bluegrass playing to sound like. So again, I'm not going to spend nearly as much time in this stage because most of my students fall into the aspirant or the traveler stage, but I do want to review here. So the 3 stages are this: the aspirant, that's where we build the foundation. The second stage is the traveler, where we learn how to speak the language. And the third stage is the high flyer, where you develop your own voice. So remember that the goal of those stages is foundation, language, and voice. So just a few more takeaways before we close out for today. You do not need to be practicing everything all the time. You need to identify where you're at, and then you need to focus on the things that that particular stage requires. And please remember this with all of these stages: everything you learn, you want to be able to play it cleanly in time and from memory. Okay, cleanly, in time, and from memory. If it's not clean— sloppy sucks, it just does. Sloppy sucks. Um, if it's not in time, it's not going to work in bluegrass because your timing really has to be on point. And by memory, if you're having to look at tabs when you're playing something, you don't know it well enough. Okay, so what I want you to do is let me know in the comments which one of these stages Are you in? Which one of these are you most identified with? The aspirant, the traveler, or the high flyer? And remember what I was saying, most people are aspirants and travelers, but I would love to hear from you. Let me know which stage that you're in down below in the comments. And remember, I have linked down below all of the lessons that I referenced in this video. So if you're an aspirant, I've got a playlist for you down below that'll guide you through that stage. If you're a traveler, I've got lessons down below that will guide you through the 3 10s and give you your fretboard mastery and speed building and all of that good stuff. So this is one of the most important lessons that I have ever shared on this channel. I hope this gives you some clarity. I hope it helps you take the pressure off. I hope it helps you reduce the noise and the clutter that so many of us are experiencing in this day and age, and I hope it shows you what to work on. I hope this gives you a path to follow. Most importantly, I hope this helps you make tremendous breakthroughs in your playing. Thanks as always for hanging out, and I will see you next time.