Top 5 Bluegrass Rhythm Licks (You NEED to Learn!)

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon. Aaron Jaxon coming to you today, and I want to help you spice up your bluegrass rhythm guitar playing. So what I'm going to be showing you today are just a series of bass note runs and licks that you can play anytime you're switching from a G shape to a C shape. This happens all of the freaking time in bluegrass music. It's probably the most common chord change. But before I jump in and show you these bass note runs and licks, let's get a default strumming pattern set here. Okay, so the default strumming pattern that I would recommend using for honestly most bluegrass music is this.

Okay, so think of it like this: boom, chucka, boom, a chucka, boom, chucka, boom, a chucka.

Feels ridiculous saying it out loud, but, uh, you know, when I'm saying boom, I'm, I'm targeting like the bottom 3 strings, and the chuck the chukka is when I'm hitting the kind of the third through the first string. So. You speed that up a little bit. So that's what I recommend. If you want a little bit more of a deep dive into bluegrass strumming patterns or ones that I recommend, you can check out this video and I'll link to that and a few others down in the video description there. What I see most people doing is they make this G right here, the— with that second string left open, and they just— and they play just a real basic boom chuck strumming pattern.

They go—

I do not recommend that at all, um, unless you are deliberately going for a very first-generation bluegrass type of sound. I'm talking original Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, old-school Stanley Brothers, Flat and Scruggs, if you are deliberately going for that sound, sure, default to that G and that strumming pattern. But if you're not and you're wanting a more— I guess you could call it a contemporary sound, really kind of the way that like Clarence White and Tony Rice played rhythm— I would recommend doing this G, and that is, you know, middle finger, third fret of the sixth string, and then leave everything else open. And then your ring finger, third fret of the second, pinky finger, third fret of the third string. That's really how Clarence White and Tony Rice really kind of played that G. And it gives it this kind of, you know, G that almost has like a little more attitude to it, so to speak. But then make sure you're, you're deadening the fifth string. Okay, so that G, and then, um, so anyway, that's the default strumming pattern that recommends. Let's go to this first idea here.

And it's going to go like this. We're going to do.

Okay, so pretty simple here.

We're going to do boom, chucka, boom, chucka boom, chucka, boom, chucka boom, chucka boom.

Okay, again, If I sped that up a little bit, I'll do it again. Great little tasteful way to add in a couple of little bass note runs when you're going from G to C. Okay, I love that one. Let's do another one here, and we're just going to do a little bit of a variation on that first idea, and we're going to do So boom, chucka boom, chucka boom. And that's just going open 5th, 1st fret of the 5th, 2nd fret of the 5th, 3rd fret of the 5th. Love that little idea. And you can, you can switch and do like the, you know, kind of the traditional C if you if you want. And if you're doing the traditional C, I like to do the alternating bass note run.

Boom, chucka, boom, chucka, boom, chucka, boom, chucka. Okay? Okay, but again, boom, chucka, boom, chucka, boom, or—

So there we go. 2 very simple yet tasteful ideas to get you from a G shape to a C shape, which happens all of the time in bluegrass music. But hey, real quick, I want to ask you a question. Are you making the kind of progress and the kind of improvement that you want to be making on the guitar, or does it feel like you're stuck playing the same ideas that you've been playing for decades? I've had the privilege of working with thousands of students over the years, and here's what I see all of the time. The students who stay stuck playing the exact same ideas and licks and scales and tunes that they've been playing for decades with the same level of chops and technique are distracted. They're being pulled around in a bunch of different directions. They're not focused. They don't have a focused practice routine that's getting them to where they want to go. But the students who I see who make radical transformation in their playing— I'm talking they make more progress in one year than they have in the past 10, that kind of improvement— they have two things. They have a consistent, focused practice routine, and they have a path to follow. Once they have those two things, they just stick to it for a year. That's it. That's it. I see this over and over and over and over again. And when students do that, they end up making more progress in one year on the guitar than they have in the past 10. And that's why I'm hosting my first ever online guitar coaching event called the Flatpicking Path Challenge. It is designed to give you that. We're going to give you a path to follow, we're going to give you a focused practice routine that you can stick to, and I'm going to show you how to make it a habit. And if you can make it a habit, you'll stick to it for a whole year and you'll end up making more progress on the guitar in 1 year than you have in the past 5, 10, or even 20 years. Hit the link below down in the video description to learn more and to join up. You can even grab a VIP ticket and come an hour early before the main sessions each day and get one-on-one group coaching with me. You can ask me any of your questions. You can even bring your guitar with you and we can do like a live mini lesson and workshop on the call. It's going to be so much fun. I'm so excited to be doing this. And when you leave from this challenge, you're going to have a path to follow. You're going to have a practice routine. You're gonna know how to make it a habit, and you're gonna have rock-solid confidence knowing that if you will stick to that, you will make more progress in 1 year on the guitar than you have the past 5, 10, or even 20. Hit the link down in the video description to learn more and join the Flatpicking Path Challenge. So there's 2 ideas to get you from a G shape to a C shape. Let's do another one here, and we're really gonna kind of go into like Tony Rice territory here and really kind of throw in like a lick to get us from G to C here. So with this one, we're gonna do boom, chugga, boom, chugga. Okay, let's do that again.

Boom, chucka, boom, chucka.

Okay, so I'll slow that one down here.

We'll do boom, chucka, boom, chucka.

Okay, so that one definitely takes some practice. And you don't want to overuse that one because it can be too much if you use it every single time you switch from G to C. But, you know, using that sparingly is a really cool thing, and it'll kind of make people's heads turn if you're in a jam session. Okay, a little slower here. Okay, we'll keep going here. And now I want to show you a couple of ideas that are chord substitution ideas. So this first idea is really simple.

All we're going to do—

okay, so again, back over here, I'm on my Clarence White, Tony Rice G.

Um, boom, chucka, boom, a chucka.

Leave everything where it is, just pull that middle finger back to the, um, third of the 4th string, and we'll do— and then come over here again, our Clarence White, Tony Rice C, definitely our Tony Rice C. And kind of like we were doing with the G a minute ago, leave the 4th string dead. You don't want that, even though on the G we're leaving the 5th string dead. But the string adjacent to your— to the string your middle finger's fretting— simple as that is, that creates some really subtle yet tasteful tension in your rhythm playing.

I'll do it again.

Okay, so that's a great little idea. You can use that all the time. We do that one one more time, nice and slow.

We'll do boom, chucka, boom, chucka, boom, chucka, boom, chucka, boom.

Okay, so I've got one more here. Again, kind of doing a little chord substitution idea, but we're gonna make it just a little bit trickier here. So this one's gonna go like this. I'll play it again here. Okay, let's talk about just the two chords here. So again, right over here, back to our Clarence White and Tony Rice G, and then I'm going to come up here to— which is essentially, it's like a D minor 9 sus2 kind of thing. So we could play like a D minor 7 right here, but what we're going to do is leave the fourth string dead, um, and we'll do so So we've got that open E, which is kind of— so yeah, it's like a D minor 9. So that's the chord, and then we'll come over here to our Tony Rice C after that. So what we want to do here, boom, chucka boom, a chuck. So we end up— so we'll slide into this Rhythmically, you want to come in on boom, chucka, boom, a chucka. All right, so where you would normally strum the, the chucka, the, uh, of the chucka— God, this feels ridiculous saying this— um, instead of hitting a strum, hit this note and slide up to the— okay. You could throw a few extra strums in there if you wanted to, like, and then go into C. Or you could— I actually kind of like that better because it gives it a little space to breathe. And then we're going to come back over here to our, like, kind of traditional C. Okay, so one more time, this last idea here. Okay, so there we go. So there are 5 tasteful little ideas to get you from G to C whenever you're playing bluegrass rhythm. And again, I'm not going to go through and, you know, plug all of these into, you know, you know, 5 or 10 different tunes here. Um, you know, the, the application of this stuff should be obvious if you know any bluegrass tunes. This is infinitely usable. Okay, so one more time, I want to go through all 5 ideas one more time. I'm going to do it nice and slow, and then we'll play it, um, along with the backing track a little more up to tempo. So let's start with idea 1 here. We'll go 1, 2, 3, 4.

Idea 2. Idea 3. Idea 4. Idea 5. And then we can end.

All right, let me play this along with a backing track and up to tempo, and that'll sound like this. So I hope these ideas will start to give you something to kind of spice up your bluegrass rhythm guitar with. And, uh, you know, remember, you know, start with just idea 1 or idea 2 and use that sparingly. I know a lot of the other ideas in this lesson get pretty fancy. We bring in some Tony Rice influence here, but start with just the first couple of ideas, and if you get those down, feel free to add the other ones in there. So remember, if you're wanting more of a deep dive into some bluegrass strumming patterns, I've got those linked down in the video description. Again, I really hope this lesson will give you some great ideas to start to spice up your bluegrass rhythm guitar playing. As always, I want to thank you for hanging out, and I'll see you next time.