The Ultimate Bluegrass Rhythm Guitar Lesson!-5 Ways Of Playing Rhythm Through "Nine Pound Hammer"

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with a really cool bluegrass rhythm guitar lesson that I know you're going to get a lot out of. So what I'm going to be showing you today is 5 different ways of playing through the classic bluegrass standard "Nine Pound Hammer." So each of these 5 examples that I'm going to be showing you build on top of each other, and they'll get a little bit more complex as I introduce new elements to each example— new bass note runs, new chord substitutions, new strumming patterns, and other things like that— to hopefully be able to give you a bunch of different ideas around approaching bluegrass rhythm guitar. So even though I'm only using Nine Pound Hammer as an example in this lesson, you'll be able to instantly see how these ideas are applicable across a ton of bluegrass tunes. Also, during this lesson, you'll see text that will pop up on the screen that will show you exactly what to reference in the tabs that you can get completely for free in the video description and in the top pinned comment. So anyway, that's enough out of me. Let's jump into the lesson. So I'm going to start off with what I'm calling Style 1 through 9-pound hammer, and this is just going to be a straight boomer chucker rhythm through the chord progression of Nine Pound Hammer. Okay, so that's going to go like this. We're going to do 1, 2, 3, 4.

Here we go.

Okay, so that was style 1 there, and that's just that boomer chucker rhythm. Through G, C, and D. I've already showed you how to do that in G. That's just— and I'm just kind of strumming down and up on the 6th, 5th, and 4th strings, and then down and up on the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st strings. For C, um, I'm really— for my, um, for my boomer, I'm just— I'm really just kind of hitting the 5th and 4th strings and then coming over and The, uh, chukka will be the same. It'll be the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st strings. And then for D, I'm kind of doing the same thing I was doing on C. I've got a kind of hitting the 5th and 4th for my boomer, and then down there for the chukka. I feel so stupid saying this, uh, but anyway, so, so there's that. Now With this being rhythm, the most important thing is the rhythm. It's the pulse. What's not as important is the accuracy, which is very different from the rest of the material in this course because accuracy is of paramount importance. But when we're doing rhythm, accuracy is not the most important thing. It's still important, but the most important thing is rhythm and pulse. Okay, so it's one of those things like if you're doing that boom-a-chucka on a C and you accidentally hit the the 6th string, or maybe you don't hit the 5th string, that's okay. Or if you're doing D and you kind of accidentally, you know, end up hitting the 6th string down here, that's okay. Again, you want to try to be as accurate as you can, you know, but, but the, the most important thing here is the rhythm and the pulse. Okay, so anyway, that was, that was style 1. Let me go through it one more time here. So 1 2, 3, 4.

Here we go. We'll play it again.

There we go. Okay, so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna play this along with a backing track, and the, the backing track that I'm gonna play this along with only has the bass and the mandolin chop. There's no rhythm guitar in it because I'll be playing the rhythm guitar on that. So let's hear how that sounds in context with the backing track. Okay, so now we're going to jump into what I'm calling Style 2, um, on the tabs for this. And what we're going to do, we're still doing 9-pound hammer, but in addition to that little strumming pattern, I'm going to throw in a couple of bass note runs here. So that's going to go like this. So this is Style 2 um, on the tab. So we're going to go 1, 2, 3, 4. Here we go. Okay, so yeah, we're basically just adding in a couple of bass note run. So I start off with that boom-a-chucka on G, and then we'll do— so you can really kind of do like a hammer-on right there. And then we'll go to C after that, and we'll do— so I'm doing a little alternating bass, and I'm really kind of doing like a boom-chuck, boom-a-chucka. And then we go back to G into a boom-chuck-boom-a-chucka. No, I'm sorry. So it's— sorry, it's boom-chucka. And then I do this little bass note run right here. Okay, so, and then And then we throw in the old G run at the end. Okay, so let me go all the way through style 2 again. Here's a little— go, 1, 2, 3, 4. Here we go.

Okay.

So now let me go ahead and play that in context with the backing track. And again, the backing track just has the bass and the mandolin chop, and I'll play rhythm in between that. Okay, so now let's check out Style 3 for 9-pound hammer. And what I'm gonna do is essentially the same thing, but I'm just going to add in a couple of new bass note runs to it. So Style 3, that'll go like this.

We'll do—

let me try that again. Style 3, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4. Here we go. So there we go. Um, you may be, you know, able to hear that these are very like Tony— this is like very Tony Rice style rhythm, uh, like Tony Rice style bass note runs. So I'm starting off just boom-a-chucka boom-a-chucka, and then I throw in this little— it's, it's almost more like lick than it is a bass note run. Okay, and then now we're over C, and I kind of treat it as like my boom in the, like, the boom-a-chucka rhythm I'm going into.

Okay.

So doing that little alternating bass note thing like I was doing in style 2, but then after that I'm going to go over here and we're going to strum down on a C7.

All right, so, and then C7.

And then I continue that boomer chucker rhythm. So, and then we go back to G, and then we're going to do that. So that's a great little bass note run. Tony Rice used this all the time. Going from like G to D. So I'm like boom, cha-cha, and then we go back to G, boom, and just— okay, so just a couple of new bass note runs, a lick, and then like a— not really a chord substitution, but like a chord variation. So let me try that again. This is style 3 in 9 pound hammer will go 1, 2, 3, 4. Here we go. Okay, so let me play that in context with a backing track. Okay, let's jump into style 4 for 9-pound hammer. And what I'm going to do with style 4 here is I'm going to throw in some chord substitutions along with some of the bass note runs and strumming patterns here. Um, again, this is very inspired by Tony Rice. And, uh, yeah, let me jump into it here. So this is style 4 for 9 lb hammer. We'll go 1, 2, 3, 4. We'll do Okay, so we've got, um, you know, we'll start off with like a boom, chucka, boom, chucka, and then I'm gonna go over to this little shape right here. And it's really— I'm just pulling my middle finger back over here to this kind of 3rd fret relative to the capo of the 4th string. And I'm just doing sort of the same strumming kind of booma-chucka-booma-chucka rhythm I would do on a D. Okay, so And then I'm going to go to this like a little kind of— you call it maybe a C add 9, all right, which kind of looks like our G, but— and I'm going to do, um, uh, all right. And then after that, I'm going to leave these two fingers where they're at, but I'm going to pull my pinky and ring finger over a string to give it like a C9. All right, so, um, we'll do— okay, so, um, let me go back from the beginning of style 1 here and play it up until that point.

So we'll do—

then we'll keep going and we'll do Um, okay, so I did that little bass note run. We did that in style 3, but this time instead of just strumming a D, so I'm, I'm doing like a dead hit. So dead hit up strum on D, dead hit up strum on D again, but I'm gonna put my pinky finger on this 3rd fret of the 1st string. Okay, so we'll do, and then Okay, so that was like the first time through style 4 there. So let me play that again. So we'll do, um, yeah, it's like the first time through style 4. We'll do All right, so the second time through style 4, we'll change it up just a little bit here. And what we're going to do is we're going to start with G. We'll do, um, now Okay, so we'll start off with our G just like we do, but now we're gonna do slide from the 2nd fret, and we're gonna kind of make this So I got the pointer finger, and again, when I'm talking about the frets, I'm speaking relative to the capo right here. So like 5th fret of the 5th, 5th fret of the 3rd, 6th fret of the 2nd, and then I— okay, so we'll do Okay, so that, that boomer checker rhythm going through that chord. And then we'll come down here to Cadd9, C9, and then we'll do— and so that's kind of what we did a minute ago with like the, the dead strums followed by the up strums. but we'll be up here instead of—

we'll do— and then back down to G.

All right, all right, so one more time, let me go all the way through style, um, 4 here. So we'll go 1, 2, 3, 4. Here we go. Okay, so now let me play that in context with a backing track. Okay, so I've just got one more variation on this that I would like to show you here. And so this is gonna be style 5, and I wanted to show this one because this is the kind of like the rhythm pattern that I like to use if I'm playing a song that's like really fast. When I say fast, I mean like, like 150 and above, you know, when, you know, a tune gets really fast. So, you know, Nine Pound Hammer is sometimes played at this tempo, but you can use these strumming patterns and some of these runs and you can kind of move it anywhere here. So let me just go through it here. This is style 5, and I'm gonna go ahead and play it really fast, and then I'll kind of slow it down and explain to you what I'm doing here. So we'll go 1, 2, 3, 4. I'm going to do it again, style 5.

1, 2, 3, 4. Okay.

So again, this is— this type of rhythm is intended for songs that are really fast. So here's the basic strumming pattern there. It's boom, chucka, boom, a chuck, boom, chucka, boom, a chuck, boom, chucka, boom, a chuck, boom, chucka, boom, a chuck. Okay, and the reason that I like to do that is it gives us some breathing room while filling up space. Okay, so we're not coming in and just doing— I said I'm not a I'm not a huge fan of that, but what we want to do is again fill up a little bit more space but give ourselves some breathing room because this is for really fast tempos. So, okay, all right, so going through style 5 again, we're just doing kind of boom, chucka, boom, a chuck, boom, chucka, boom, a chuck, to our little Cadd9.

Boom, chucka, boom, a chuck, boom, chucka, boom, a chuck.

So that's our little bass note run. And so our, our G run on that, all right, that way we're not having to do— or we're making a little easier because this is for fast tempos. And then the second time through that, we'll throw in some chord substitutions. All right, so one more time, I'll do style 5 up to tempo. We'll go 1, 2, 3, 4. All right, so let's hear how that sounds up to tempo with a backing track. All right, well, I really hope this lesson has given you a bunch of different ideas that you can use in your own bluegrass rhythm guitar playing. So again, hit the link down in the video description and in the top pinned comment to get the tabs for this lesson totally for free. As always, thanks for hanging out today, and I will see you next time.