In this third installment of a three‑part series on blues‑scale based bluegrass lead guitar, Aaron Jaxon demonstrates his "secret sauce" for creating compelling leads: alternating and blending major and minor blues‑scale patterns while navigating a I‑IV‑V (G‑C‑D) progression. He first shows a straightforward approach using the open‑string region, then a higher‑fret version that avoids open strings, and finally a hybrid approach that stays between the open strings and the 5th fret. Throughout, he emphasizes the importance of integrating these scale ideas with traditional bluegrass vocabulary, practicing timing and technique with a 100 BPM Strum Machine backing track, and consulting the provided tabs. Jaxon also references four signature solos—Billy Strings' "Dust in a Baggy," Tony Rice's "9 Pound Hammer," Kenny Smith's "When You Go Out Walking," and Brian Sutton's phrase from "Hallelujah I'm Ready to Go"—to illustrate how the major/minor mix appears in classic bluegrass recordings. The lesson ties back to the first two videos, urging viewers to review the earlier scale‑pattern lessons and use the linked resources to internalize the patterns and develop their own lead ideas.
Chapters
Today I'm going to be showing you the closest thing to a secret sauce for bluegrass lead guitar that I can possibly show you, so you better, you better hang around.
All right.
Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today, and I wanna welcome you to the third part of a three-part series that I'm doing around blues scales for bluegrass lead guitar. You can check those other lessons out right here, and I will also link to these down in the video description. So in the first one, I showed you the basic blues scale patterns that you need to know, both the major and the minor blues scale patterns in G. In the second lesson in this series, I showed you how to take those patterns and move them through a G, C, and a D chord progression. But what I'm gonna be showing you today, and what really is the closest thing to a secret sauce that I can give you for creating amazing bluegrass lead lines, is how to mix the major and minor blues scales, move them through a I, IV, and a V chord progression, and come up with some amazing sounding bluegrass lead lines. And remember, the purpose of learning these scale patterns and these ideas is to complement the other bluegrass vocabulary-based stuff that you're learning. We're mapping out the territory here. So what happens is, is when you map out these scale patterns and then you go and pull ideas from your favorite players, whoever that is— Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Tony Rice, Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, David Greer, Brian Sutton, whoever it is that you enjoy listening to and learning from— Knowing these scale patterns is going to give you a good idea of where they're pulling from, and learning their ideas combined with these scale patterns is going to put you in a really great place to come up with your own killer bluegrass leads. So as is always the case, you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. All right, so here's what I want to show you today. I'm just going to show you two ideas here, and the first one is going to go like this. So for this first idea, I'm just going to be mixing our basic major and minor blues scale pattern, and I'm going to move it through G, C, and D. Okay, so we'll start in G and we'll do— okay, so all I'm doing right there is we're starting off with our G major blues scale, okay? And I am going in between kind of the first and second patterns there, and then I'm, I'm kind of going in between those two patterns. And then right here I'm coming down our G minor blues scale pattern 1, and then we're going to come down here and end with the major. Okay, so again, major minor. Okay, so that is the idea right there. Okay, very bluegrass sounding stuff there. Now all I want us to do is we're going to jump up to C now and we're going to do the exact same thing, but since we're moving up on the neck, we're not going to be using the open string. So we're going to do Okay, so let me do that again. Or so we're starting with C major blues scale pattern 1. Okay, kind of jumping up into C major blues scale pattern 2 and then coming down C major blues scale pattern 1.
And then back to major blues scale.
Okay, and again, when I'm throwing out all of these like pattern numbers, I'm saying pattern 1 and pattern 2 and pattern 3. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, reference the first video in this series. I've got it linked down in the video description. Okay, but one more time in C. Okay, so now I just want to do the same thing. We're going to come up to D, and I'm just going to come up here to the 10th fret, do the same thing. Okay, so again, D major blues scale pattern 1, pattern 2, minor blues scale pattern 1.
Minor blues—
major blues scale pattern 1.
Okay, and then we'll just go back to G after that.
Okay, and there we have it. That's the idea there. We're just mixing some of those major blues scale patterns with the minor blues scale patterns to give us some really authentic sounding bluegrass lead line. So now let me play that a little up to tempo and with a backing track. Remember, with all of this stuff, you don't want to just get the melodic ideas down. You want to be practicing your technique, you want to be practicing your timing, and as best as you can, making some music out of this stuff here. So I'm gonna play this along with a Strum Machine backing track at about 100 beats per minute, and that'll sound like this. Okay, so I love that example there because it just clearly shows you how you can mix those scale patterns and move them through a G, C, and a D chord progression. But the thing about it is, what happens with bluegrass is a lot of times we end up playing these ideas kind of in between the open string and the 5th fret. We use a bunch of open strings and come up to the 5th fret. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to show you a couple of ideas again that mix these major and minor blues scale ideas but go through G, C, and D but kind of hang out here in between the open string and like the 4th fret. So that's going to go like this.
We're going to do To C. To D. And then back to G.
Okay, so this is the example that I played at the very beginning of the video here, but I like this because again, we're not just taking one scale idea and doing the exact same thing through G, C, and D. That's a great place to start because it shows you how to start mapping out the territory, but what we're doing here is we're taking some ideas, again G, C, and D, that are based around these ideas that mix major and minor blues scale ideas and moving them through that chord progression. So in this first one, in G, excuse me, okay, very Tony Rice sounding idea. So we're coming out of G major blues scale pattern 1. And then minor to major. Okay, very cool. And then we're going over here to C. Now this time, instead of kind of coming up here on the neck, we're going to hang out in this area and we're going to do—
okay.
And this This first idea, this kind of C run, this is like out of our, you know, if you want to think about it in terms of blues scales, major blues scale pattern 4. Okay, and then right here we're sliding up to this kind of blues scale pattern 5. Okay, so kind of coming out of major blues scale pattern 4 to major blues scale pattern 5. And again, that scale pattern. So, but now we're going to switch to minor and then back down here to major. And on that minor, that's kind of like minor blues blues scale pattern 4, like C minor. Okay, and then back to major.
Okay, so again, for C major, minor, back to major.
All right, so with D, we're going to start off down here with like major blues scale pattern 3, up to 4, and then right here, minor, back to major. So we only hit the minor for just a little bit in that, and that's coming out of like minor blues scale pattern 2.
Okay.
And then, um, so that's, that's what we do in D.
Back to major.
Okay, and then for G, we're going to come up here and do— and again, those ideas there, because because for this, for this series of lessons, we're thinking in terms of blues scales. That kind of comes out of like G major blues scale pattern 4, and then we slide down and we do like G minor blues scale pattern 2. So, and then back to our little G run, which is G major blues scale pattern 1. Okay, so same deal here. Let me play this a little up to tempo with the Strum Machine backing track at about 100 beats per minute. I really hope that you can see what we're doing here, and I also hope that you see how this lesson layers on the other ones that we've done. So again, when I'm throwing out all these scale patterns and I'm like, major blues scale pattern 1, minor blues scale pattern 3— if you're like, Aaron, I have no idea what you're talking about, again, video description. I've got the other 2 lessons in this series linked, especially that first one. Go through, watch those, get those scale patterns in. But just real quick, I wanted to reference 4 solos that I've taught on this channel by 4 different players, and I want to show you how they use this, this little secret sauce here that I'm showing you. Okay, so the first one, and I know this is familiar to a lot of y'all, uh, the end of, uh, Dust in a Baggy by Billy Strings. And so all that, that, that, um, descending pattern is straight out of a minor blues scale. And then when we get to the ascending part, major. Okay, so great idea from Billy Strings there. Another one is like Tony Rice's, uh, 9 Pound Hammer from Manzanita, and especially that last phrase right there. So he starts off with a major and then slides up to minor, back to major.
Okay.
Another one, Kenny Smith solo. The tune is When You Go Out Walking from the Lonesome River Band. So this little section in there, he plays, um, okay, and what he's doing there, that goes from C to G. And so this little part right here over C, that's all major. But when it goes back into G after that and then just hangs out on the minor— so mixing those major and minor blues scale ideas, that solo is played with a capo on the 4th fret in B, but you, you get the idea there. And then another one that I've also taught on this channel, um, is a little Brian Sutton thing where he does a— okay, I'll play that again. Okay, and, uh, he plays this on the tune Hallelujah I'm Ready to Go. It's a gospel album that Ricky Skaggs did back in the day. And it's like the last phrase that he plays on that. But again, you can see that first half is minor, major. So anyway, there's just a couple of ideas there from 4 different players, and this really is the closest thing to a secret sauce that I can give you, um, for this style of guitar playing. So anyway, great ideas here. Again, learning these scale patterns and these ideas are a great complement to the other vocabulary stuff that you're learning in this style of guitar playing. So as always, I want to thank you for hanging out. Remember, you can get the tabs down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. And remember, down in the video description, I've also got the other 2 lessons in this 3-part series linked. So I really do hope that this helps you not only unlock the fretboard, but it shows you what your favorite bluegrass players are pulling from when they come up with their own leads. And I hope that you can use this to come up with your own killer bluegrass lead ideas. Thanks as always for hanging out, and I'll see you next time.
