Tony Rice's Most Insane Solo?- Learn His Epic Break To "How Mountain Girls Can Love"

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you, and I want to welcome you to a lesson today on one of Tony Rice's most insane bluegrass solos. This is his solo to How Mountain Girls Can Love from the Tony Rice Plays and Sings Bluegrass album. This solo is an absolute beast. It's one of Tony Rice's most challenging solos to try and play, um, but it's full of great licks and phrases that are great for building and developing your bluegrass lead guitar vocabulary and repertoire here. So as is the case with all of my lessons, guys, down in the video description you can hit the link to get the tabs for this, and I've also got it linked, uh, the tabs in the top pinned comment. All right, let's jump in here. Okay, so, um, he, he does a solo over the verse to this song, and, um, if you're not familiar with this song, um, I think this comes from the Stanley Brothers repertoire, or Ralph Stanley, from the Stanley side of the traditional bluegrass repertoire. And it's just the, um, he solos over the—

so it's just G and D there.

Um, And that's what he's going to solo over here. So let's start with kind of the first phrase here.

He's going to do—

okay, so a really classic sounding Tony Rice phrase. One thing that I did want to zone in on is is the timing of where he starts this, because that's important. Because if you don't get that down, um, it, it's easy for this— the, the whole thing will kind of be thrown off here. So he comes in at the end of the chorus, the 'how mountain girls can love,' like on the word 'love,' we'll start our— we'll start our bar. So, 'how mountain girls can—' 1, 2, 3, and that little hammer-on right there is going to happen on the 'and' of 3. 1 and 2 and 3 ands. All right, and then he kind of holds that for a little bit. I'll count that again, but I'm going to subdivide into 16th notes. So like 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and. All right, uh, 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and. Okay, so and of 3 for this first hammer-on, and then we're gonna, we're gonna hold that note through the E of beat 1. 1 E and a 3 E and a— see, 1 E and a 2 E and a 3 E and a 4 E and a 1 E and a. And then he goes into his kind of 16th notes right there. When you hear me counting that out, that 1 E and a 2 E and a 3 E and a 4 E and a, if you're hearing me do that and you'd be like, dude, what the hell are you talking about? Check out this video right here because I go into much more detail on, um, on 16th notes, how to count those and how to use alternate picking along with your 16th notes. So check that one out, um, if, if that's like totally confusing you. But anyway, I wanted to start there because the timing of where this solo comes in is really important. Now, so now that we've covered that, I want to just get this first phrase again. So we're going to do Okay, so combination of pick notes and hammer-ons. All right, just classic Tony Rice. And then now that the chord progression goes to D, he's gonna, he's gonna come up here and do— okay. So these are like our little sixths, and he's just gonna— and that just kind of goes from here to right here, and he's just doing alternate picking and then sliding down, and then he's going to end that with a little— okay. So again, all right, so some cool stuff there. And these little 6ths, um, I actually like those more when I'm playing— I've got my Telecaster back there— when I'm doing chicken picking, because they're, they're a little easier to play when you can use your pick and finger, like, you know, uh, Don Rich kind of That kind of thing is really cool. It's a little more challenging when you're using it just with a flat pick and you're having to, you know, um, but those ideas are really cool. And also too, if you want to check out some of the more country chicken picking stuff that I share on this channel where I go really deep into these little 6ths and how to use them, check this video out right here. So all right, that kind of gets us through like the first half of this solo. So one more time, uh, how mountain girls can. 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a, 1-e-and-a.

Okay.

That's kind of the first half of this solo here. Again, um, okay, so some kind of slippery sounding phrases, especially, but just some really cool, really classic Tony Rice stuff there. So that's kind of the first half of this solo. Let's jump into the second half, which is going to go like this. We're going to do— all right, so really cool stuff here. Let's, let's kind of go to this first phrase of the second half of this solo, we're gonna do— okay, so again, this is like classic Tony Rice kind of pentatonic with some of the open strings and pull-offs. Really cool stuff here. Okay, um, there's one place on this, um, there's a couple of different ways you could play that. You could, or you could I know that's a, that's a very subtle difference there. In the first phrase, I'm playing that G note on the 5th fret of the 4th string, and in the second one, I'm doing the 3rd string open to play the G note. For me, especially where this, this tune is, is pretty fast, I like to do the open 3rd string. That way I'm not having to do like any cross picking between those 2 strings. Ultimately, you can kind of figure out what works for you. I think on the tabs I've got it written out like, like with the, with the fretted note. You can kind of experiment around there, but anyway, that's kind of like the first phrase of the second half of this solo. Okay, and then we're going to go into the part of this solo that, um, that makes this, uh, that makes this solo particularly challenging. We'll just say that. And that's going to be this here.

We're going to do—

all right, so we're going to start off with this, and that's just— so we're picking the first 2 notes and then doing a pull-off, 6th fret of the 6th string with an upstroke, and then 1st string open. And then we're going to come up here and we're going to do—

and then—

and so when you're learning this phrase, that's kind of a— that's a good little first chunk to try and get underneath your fingertips. Okay, and then we're gonna do— okay, and then it's gonna get a little more challenging, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna do Okay, so what I'm— what, what he does right here, and he does a version of this lick in a lot of different places, but like this one is like the— it's like the, like the elite level version of this lick. Pinky laid across the 10th fret, um, of the 4th, 3rd, and 6th. I mean, it's like you're doing a bar chord with your pinky, which kind of hurts. Um, and so We're picking up on the 4th string right here, down on the 3rd, back to an up on the 4th string. Yeah. Ow. Ouch. All right, so, all right, so here, let me do this before I go on. Let me just add that part to the rest of this lick that we've already covered. So we're gonna do Whoops, let's try it again here.

Okay, all right, one more time.

And then we're going to do—

so I'll do that phrase again just real slow.

And then, well, here, let's, let's, let's add that. All right, so we'll do And then to end it with, we'll do— and that's just— and so what I'm doing there, slide from 8 to 9 on the 4th string. Let's play the 3rd string open, 2nd fret of the 4th, and then Okay, um, that last phrase, sometimes it gets a little lost in the mix on this tune, so I think that's what he's doing, or he's doing something close to that. But again, sometimes those notes get a little lost in the mix, so that's kind of as best as my ear can decipher it. All right, so let me go through this whole beast of a phrase here, and we're gonna do All right, so you'll hear him do, you know, he does that a lot in a lot of different places, but this lick is like, is one of, it's like one of the more advanced versions. It's like really hard. Okay. Because it's like you've got like this pinky little bar chord thing along with cross picking. So that's what makes that phrase really challenging there. But one more time, just like the last phrase of this solo. Okay, all right, it's a beast. Um, you know, not only with the picking hand, but it's also really challenging with, um, with your left hand. Um, so one more time, let me do just like the second half of this solo here. So we'll do Wah! Let's try it again. All right, so there we go. Again, I've got tabs for you with this because I know there's a lot of notes in here and sometimes some of these phrases kind of whiz past you. Um, but yeah, you can check out the tabs on that. I'll do the whole solo here nice and slow. Just remember the timing at the beginning of this solo. You want that first hammer-on, that first lick if you will, to come in on the and of beat 3. 1 and 2 and 3 and. All right, and then hold that through the E of beat 1. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and. Okay, so Second half. Okay, so there you have it, a challenging solo for Short. So just one more time here, let's hear how that sounds up to tempo and with a backing track. Okay, so yeah, this is, this is one of Tony Rice's more challenging bluegrass solos. I know he played a lot of other stuff, um, like in the context of progressive acoustic music and jazz and with the David Grisman Quintet. But when it comes to his like straight bluegrass solos, I think this is one of his more challenging ones. Um, not that playing Tony Rice solos is easy in the first place, but this one is like particularly challenging. But one of the things that I like to tell my students is that You know, learning solos like this is worthwhile even if you're not anywhere close to the speed that he plays it at. I try to articulate that to my students, like, don't let the speed of this stuff intimidate you, because getting these licks, getting these phrases down at any tempo is gonna build your, like, bluegrass lead vocabulary and repertoire. And that's hands down one of the most important things that that you can do whenever you're learning this style of guitar playing. And what's really cool too is with a tool like the Strum Machine app, you can literally practice these tunes at any tempo that you want. If you want to practice this stuff at 30 beats per minute, you can do that. So, so again, don't let the speed of this stuff, um, intimidate you, um, and, and kind of push you away from, you know, really digging into a great solo with a bunch of great phrases like this one has. So, um, anyway, um, remember to get the tabs, uh, down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. As always, thank you so much for hanging out, and I will see you next time.