In this YouTube lesson Aaron Jaxon teaches a classic Tony Rice solo from the Ricky Skaggs & Tony Rice duet album, focusing on the section that follows the lyric “there’s more pretty girls in the world.” He explains why the solo is a must‑learn for any bluegrass picker, provides tabs (linked in the description and pinned comment), and walks through each phrase step‑by‑step. Jaxon highlights musical details such as the Doc‑Watson‑style opening lick, the exact entry point on the “E” of beat 4, pick placement near the bridge for added grit, and the tempo (≈60‑65 BPM) using a metronome. He demonstrates how to practice the phrases slowly, suggests optional extra notes, and offers transposition ideas (e.g., moving a phrase from F to G or E). Throughout, he stresses that the goal is to expand a player’s bluegrass lead vocabulary rather than merely copy Rice, and he encourages viewers to explore the full duet album and his other Tony Rice solo lessons.
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Hey there, it is Aaron Jaxon coming to you today, and I have got a really cool lesson here. This is one of my absolute favorite all-time Tony Rice solos. It's another one of these solos that I just kind of think every picker should learn. And the good news is it's fairly short, and for a Tony Rice solo, it's fairly simple. Now, objectively, that doesn't mean it's very simple, but for one of Tony Rice's solos, it's fairly simple. But there's some great passages, some great phrases in here, some great licks, and it's just a really amazing solo for building up your bluegrass lead vocabulary. As is the case with all of these lessons, you can get the tabs for this down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. Okay, and I've linked to the recording that I'm referencing down in the video description. This comes from the Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice duet album. This song has more than one guitar solo on it. I think Ricky plays a solo and Tony plays at least two. He might play a third one on this, I don't really remember exactly, but this is the one that comes in after they sing the first chorus, after the—
there's more pretty girls in the world.
And then after that, I think it's at like 35 or 36 seconds in the solo. But anyway, that's enough there, so let me just kind of jump into it here. And so this first little phrase on here, okay. So one more time on that first little phrase. Okay, so, you know, he kicks it off. It's, it's almost kind of, almost kind of like a little Doc Watson sounding phrase, and then and then ends it with a little bit of cross picking there. So one more time, first phrase. Okay, a couple of like nerd tips if you really want to nerd out on this. Okay, so that first phrase right there will come in on the E of beat 4. The E, I love saying that. I don't, it sounds dumb, but it, uh, one E and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Okay, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Not the and. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Okay, it's a very subtle difference, but it— that is where he comes in on that. Now, uh, an additional nerd tip: when he gets to this part right here, you can hear him on the recording take his pick a little bit closer to the bridge and— all right, just to give it a little bit of grit, a little bit of twang there. So, okay, and then on our next phrase, we're going to do Okay, so, all right, okay, so the next little phrase on this solo here will do. Okay, one more time there will do. Okay, so now the timing gets a little tricky on that. Uh, so what I want to do here, I'm going to bring up the little metronome on my phone here, and I'm just going to play that phrase a couple of times for you pretty slow. I think this is at 60 or 65 beats per minute. That'll sound like this. All right, 1, 2, 3.
Again. One more time.
So let me go ahead and play, um, let me go and play those first two phrases along with the metronome here. It'll sound like this. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Okay, at the end of that second phrase, you can throw in, um, those extra two notes right there. It's It's, it's always kind of been hard for me to hear in the mix if he's playing those two notes or just ending it with— okay, you can do either one. You can, um, or if you want to fill up just a little bit more space, okay, either one will work. And then after that, we're going to go into Okay, and then we're going to end with a phrase that's very similar, almost identical to the, to the lick that he opened up with. And again, right there, um, at the end of that phrase, he kind of pulls his pick back to the bridge a little bit, um, just to give it a little bit more grit. Okay, so one more time, just kind of the second half of this solo here. He'll do And there we go. Okay, so one more time, let me play it, um, just along with my metronome again here. I think this is at about 65 beats per minute, and I'll go through the whole solo. All right, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.
There we go.
When we're learning solos like this, the goal is not to just become a clone of the person that we're learning from. We're doing this primarily to expand and to develop our bluegrass lead vocabulary. So just a couple of little takeaways. That first lick right there, no bluegrass player should be without that lick. That's a great lick that you can use over not only a C chord but any C shape that you're playing. Okay, so that's a great one to add to your vocabulary. You know, the second phrase, that one's great too over that little F. I also love that little What I would recommend doing with that one is, you know, practice moving that around. So that one's at an F, you know, maybe move it up 2 frets for G. Okay, you can move it down to E, you know, you could embellish on it a little bit, you could move up a little bit, you could do, um, that's a good one. Okay, there's just a lot of things that you can do with that little phrase right there. And then after that, and then it kind of comes back and ends. It's just one of these classic Tony Rice solos that I think every bluegrass player needs to know. You can use the strum machine here, play this as slow as you want to. And again, I got the tabs for you down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. So great, great, great little Tony Rice solo here. Again, I've got the original recording down in the video description, so be sure and check that out. And check out that whole album, that Skaggs and Rice, um, you know, duet recording is just amazing. Great singing, great picking. It's just really, really, really cool. Definitely check that out. Check out a couple of these other videos where I delve into some really classic Tony Rice solos as well. Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you next time.
