This Keeps Most Flatpickers Stuck-But It's An Easy Fix (pt.2 of 3)

Today I'm going to be showing you one of the most important bluegrass lead guitar skills. Failing to get this down is going to leave a huge hole in your playing, and it's going to make learning this style a lot more difficult. But if you will master this, I promise you that it's going to pay huge dividends, and it's going to make learning this style a lot easier. All right, stick around. Hello there, it is Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with a part 2 of a 3-part series that I'm doing around foundational bluegrass lead guitar technique. I had to do this series because I just see this over and over and over and over again as a guitar teacher. People jump in and they want to learn this style, and they immediately start thinking about concepts like building speed and improvisation, and then they start learning fiddle tunes and and like Doc Watson and Tony Rice and Billy Strings and Brian Sutton and Molly Tuttle solos, but they haven't got this foundational technique down. Now, not only do you need to get it down, but you have to master this stuff. And if you'll master this stuff, it's going to make learning all of that other stuff so much easier. As is always the case with my lessons, you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. So in today's lesson, what we're gonna talk about is using alternate picking in combination with hammer-ons and pull-offs. Now, this throws a lot of flat pickers off because when we're doing this, we seem to violate the fundamental rule of alternate picking, which most people think is just picking down and up all the time. It's not. Alternate picking is actually more about having your downstrokes fall on certain beats and your upstrokes fall on certain beats. Now, I would recommend, if you haven't had the chance yet, watch the first video in this series around alternate picking. I do a deep dive on that. I give you some really simple exercises to drive the point home. Now, I'm not going to reiterate that very much in today's lesson, but I do recommend checking that video out. You can check that out right here, and I will also have that linked down in the video description. So, okay, let's go ahead and jump into today's lesson. Okay, so we're going to jump into this today here. Now, I'm not going to reiterate too much of what I said in the first video in this series, but in the first video we established alternate picking as 16th notes. And what we're gonna do when we're doing that is we're gonna play 4 notes per beat.

1, e and, 2, e and, 3, e and, 4, e and.

We're gonna pick down and up through that, but our downstrokes are gonna fall on beat 1, up on e, down on and, up on a.

1, e and, 2, e and, 3, e and, and a, or e and a.

Again, if you need a deeper dive on this, check out the first video that I did in this 3-part series here. I'll link to it down in the video description. And also check out this little graphic right here. You know, screenshot this. I'll put it in the email that has the tabs for this lesson as well. You know, take this, screenshot it, I don't care. Print it out, blow it up, frame it, but look at this and burn this into your brain. Because this is alternate picking, okay? This is what we're going to use when we're playing this style. So what I want to show you today are a couple of exercises, and I want to go ahead and start with this one right here.

We're going to do— let me play that again.

Okay, so this is what I call the bluegrass scale. Now, if you've been watching this channel for any length of time, or if you've ever taken any of my online courses or anything like that, you know that I don't approach bluegrass from a scales-based frame. Not that I don't think you should learn scales, I absolutely do, but when it comes to bluegrass, you want to think more in terms of a vocabulary and a repertoire-based approach. Approach to learning this stuff. But if somebody, you know, was like, Aaron, is there a bluegrass scale? This is the scale I'd show it— that I would show to people. And all it is, it's a major blues scale in G that uses open strings. Okay, so anyway, but what we're going to do here, we're going to apply our alternate picking and 16th notes through this scale. Okay, and that's going to go like this.

We're going to do 1, E and 2, E and 3, e and a 4, e and a 1, e and a 2, e and a 3.

If you want a good ear training exercise or a good vocal exercise, sing your pick strokes through that. If you're a super nerd like me.

1, e and a 2, e and a 3, e and a 4, e and a 1-E-And-A-2-E-And-A-3.

That is too much fun. All right, so there's that. But again, um, you know, I want to bring your attention to the pick strokes. And like I was saying, and like I covered in the first video in this series, our down strokes are falling on our downbeat and and, and our up strokes are falling on E and uh, because that's how we count 16th notes. 1-E-And-A. So one more time, I'll do it real slow here.

1-E-And-A. 2, 3, 4, 1, 2.

Okay, so real quick, now that I've played our little bluegrass scale using all picked notes and using alternate picking as 16th notes, What I want to do is just play it along with a little train beat backing track. This is not fast, this is at about 80 beats per minute, but I wanted to do that just to give it a little bit of rhythmic context.

Okay, so that'll sound like this.

So that's how those pick strokes are falling, and they're falling exactly where they need to be. Downstrokes on downbeats and ands, upstrokes on E and up. Okay, but now what we want to do is we're going to play that, but this time I'm going to— instead of just using straight picked notes, I'm going to use a combination of hammer-ons and pull-offs. And that's going to go like this. Okay, so let me play that one more time here for you. Okay, so let me do that, and I want to count it out here.

1, E, and 2, E, and, uh, 3, e and a, 4, e and a, 1, e and a, 2, e and a, 3.

And what I hope that you're seeing is that those pick strokes fell in the exact same place. All I did was when I was using hammer-ons or pull-offs, I would just leave the pick stroke out. That's it, that's it. The pick strokes are falling in the exact same place.

1, 3, and 2, 3, and 4, and 1, 2, 3.

They're falling in the exact same place that they did in the previous example where we used all pick notes. But what throws people for a loop is when you start doing those, that results in you doing sometimes 2 downstrokes in a row or 2 upstrokes in a row, like right here. 1, e, and, uh, 2. We did 2 downstrokes, okay? But that's not breaking the alternate picking rule. That is the alternate picking rule: down, up, down, hammer, down. 'Cause that's an, uh, right there. So normally we would have hit that with an upstroke, but we did a hammer-on right there. And then now our next note falls on 2. I think 1 and 2, which is a downbeat, which is what we want to hit that with a downstroke. Are you seeing how this works? It's such a simple idea. It's really simple. It really is. But the execution of it is kind of challenging, and it takes it a while for this to become a habit. But anyway, let me, let me go through the rest of it. 1, 2, and, uh, 3. All right, so right there on that little hammer-on, um, uh, 3, so that hammer-on comes in on a downbeat. We normally would have hit that with a downstroke, but we did it with a hammer-on, and so now that next note is an upstroke. So we did like 2 upstrokes in a row. Okay, but again, that's not breaking the alternate picking rule. That is the alternate picking rule. Okay, so we'll do 1, 2, and, uh, 3, and, uh, 4. All right, so now we're going to come back down. We're going to do 4, E, and, uh, so 4, E, we did a pull-off on E, 4, E, and, uh, so like 2 downstrokes in a row. Because on that E we would have done an upstroke, but we did a pull-off right there.

So 4, E, and 1, E, and 2, E, and 3.

Okay, I hope you can see what we're doing right there. The pick strokes are falling exactly where they need to fall, just when we do hammer-ons or pull-offs, we end up leaving those pick strokes out, which results in doing 2 down strokes in a row or 2 up strokes in a row. And a lot of people think that's breaking the alternate picking rule, but it's not, because the more important idea in alternate picking is having your down strokes fall on downbeat and and, and your up strokes falling on e and a. So one more time, all the way through this. Using hammer-ons and pull-offs. So we'll do 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, so like I did with the other example with all picked notes here, let's hear that example played at about 80 beats per minute along with the train beat backing track to give it a little rhythmic context. Okay, so I want to give you one more exercise here. This one's really simple, but it's, it's gonna drive the same point home. So all we're gonna do is this, we're gonna do Okay, so we're just doing open 1, 2, and 3 on all the strings, and then coming back down, we're picking these as 16th notes and doing straight alternate picking through it.

We're going 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2, 3, and 4.

Okay, so that's just straight alternate picking there, and you know, our pick strokes are falling where they need to. Now what we're gonna do is I'm gonna do the same thing, but when we go from the 2nd fret to the 3rd fret on each of these strings, I'm going to do a hammer-on instead of picking. That's gonna go like this.

3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2 and a—

okay, and again, that results in— we end up doing 2 downstrokes in a row as we switch strings. Okay, but that's exactly what we need to be doing. Now when we come back down, we'll do—

the way that's gonna work is we'll do 1, 2, 3, and, uh.

So we're doing 3, e, and, and we're pulling off on and and then coming over here on, uh.

3, e, and, uh.

All right, so again, that results in 3, e, and, uh.

3, e, and, uh.

We end up doing 2 upstrokes in a row.

3 and, uh, 4 and, uh, 1 and, uh, 2 and, uh, okay.

Again, on the descending part, we end up doing 2 upstrokes in a row, but again, that's not breaking our alternate picking rule. That is the alternate picking rule. Okay, so, uh, one more time going through this little exercise using hammer-ons and pull-offs.

We'll do 1 and, uh, 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4.

Okay, so again, pick strokes are falling right where they need to. So as I did with the other example here, let me play those along with a train beat backing track. This is not very fast, this is at about 80 beats per minute, and I'll play it with all picked notes and I'll play it with a combination of hammer-ons and pull-offs to give it a little rhythmic context here. So what I've shown you today is so, so, so important. It throws so many people off. I'll see people that jump in and they're wanting to learn Billy Strings and Tony Rice solos or fiddle tunes, and their, their technique is stuck. And then they come to me, they're like, man, Aaron, I've been binge-watching videos on pick slanting and hand positioning, and I think that's my problem is I'm not holding my pick right, all of that kind of stuff. Um, but really what it is is they don't have their pick strokes really dialed in to where they're falling where they need to fall rhythmically to really be able to play these ideas the way that they want to be able to play them. But here's the thing, if you'll just practice the hell out of the exercises that I have shown you today, just really practice this stuff Get it down, get it to that level of muscle memory, get it to where it becomes a habit. I promise you that's going to make an amazing foundation in your playing, and it's going to make learning the rest of this style so much easier. I see so many students of this style skip over this stuff, and it causes problems as they're trying to improve. But get this stuff down, understand it, and then just practice the snot out of these exercises here, and I promise you It's gonna pay you big dividends. All right, check out some of these other videos for some foundational bluegrass lead guitar techniques and ideas. As always, thanks for hanging out, and I will see you next time.