Unleash Your Guitar Potential: Create Killer Bluegrass, Rock and Country Leads

Hey y'all, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today, and I want to welcome you to a lesson that I'm really excited about sharing with you today. I've been wanting to do this one for a while because, um, so far most of the videos that I've done on this channel have been geared toward bluegrass, like flatpicking, and I've also done some country chicken picking lessons here. So I wanted to branch out just a little bit today, and, um, what I wanted to do was just kind of show you a couple of examples in bluegrass, in rock, and in country. And I wanted to show you how different players in those styles use the pentatonic scale to come up with some really, really powerful lead lines. So specifically, I'm going to be showing you some, um, bluegrass examples inspired mostly by Tony Rice. I'm going to be showing you some rock examples that are inspired mostly by Eric Johnson, and then some country chicken picking examples that are mostly inspired by one of my favorite players, Johnny Highland. And I just wanted to share this with you because, you know, I've been doing this for a really long time and I've studied a lot of different players. As you can see, I enjoy playing a lot of different styles And I just wanted to give you kind of just some diverse ideas, but also show you how a lot of them are using the, the pentatonic scale kind of as their baseline for the different lead ideas that they're coming up with. So one thing that I want to do— my guess is that most of y'all watching this are probably already familiar with your pentatonic scale patterns, but just in case you're not, or if you need a little refresher, I'm going to go through real quick and I'm just going to show you the 5 pentatonic scale patterns in A, and then I'm going to show you just a couple of other things that I'll be referencing later in the video. So let's start. A minor pentatonic scale pattern 1 right here. Okay, um, A minor pentatonic scale Pattern 2, starting on the 8th fret. A minor pentatonic scale pattern 3, starting on the 10th fret. A minor pentatonic scale pattern 4, starting on the 12th fret. A minor pentatonic scale pattern 5, starting on the 15th fret. And then we can also do pattern 1 again, but this time starting from the 17th fret. Now sometimes I'll talk about doing A major pentatonic scales, and that's just— I just take the, um, this root note down 3 frets, 1, 2, 3. And then I play pattern 1, that first pattern from down there, which if you play that by itself sounds like an F-sharp minor pentatonic. But if you play that, you know, and then you've got an A major, and then I connect the other patterns to that in the same way. One other thing, I'll reference the blues scale. With the blues scale, I'm just adding one note to the pentatonic. So I would do instead of I would do— so the extra note is right there, right there. And then sometimes I'll talk about doing a major blues scale, which will just be— okay, so anyway, just a little bit of a refresher there. And then one other thing I wanted to say, I Obviously, it's, it's, it's— if I tried to, you know, nail down the way every single player in bluegrass, rock, and country uses the pentatonic scale, you know, we'd be here for a lifetime. That's why I wanted to just narrow it down to some of my influences and just give you a couple of different ideas, show you how these different players use and apply the pentatonic scale. And hopefully that'll help you get your creative juices flowing. And no matter what style that you play play there. Hopefully you can take some of these examples and you can kind of incorporate them into your own playing and mostly just have some fun with this stuff. As always, hit the link down below. I've got all the examples here tabbed out. I'll send those to you totally for free. So let's jump into the bluegrass portion of this lesson. Alright, y'all, well, hello and welcome to the— welcome to the bluegrass portion of this lesson here. So as I was saying earlier, I'm gonna keep all of these ideas in A just for the sake of consistency. But when we're doing bluegrass, a lot of times we're using a capo. So I've got a capo here on the 2nd fret, but when I'm talking about scale patterns that I'm using and frets that I'm playing, I'm not gonna speak relative to the capo. I'm just going to talk about where it actually is on the guitar neck here. So I've got just a couple of licks that I want to show you, and, and then I want to kind of break them down and show you how they're applying the pentatonic scale to this. So kind of the first passage that I want to show you here is— this is a really classic Tony Rice idea. He used this all the time, and it'll go like this.

It'll—

we'll do All right, so if we come up here, this first— so that's out of that third pentatonic scale pattern, but we're just kind of hanging out on the first and second strings. We're sliding into the 12th fret, and then we're going to position shift down And that's out of that second pentatonic pattern. And then we're gonna kinda come down here to our first pentatonic pattern.

Okay? All right?

That's a classic Tony Rice idea. He used that all the time. Like if you hear him do Nine Pound Hammer, he uses a version of that like— something along those lines. But he used that all the time. And again, that's just up in the pentatonic pattern 3, pattern 2, pattern 1. And then if you could extend that lick just a little bit. Okay.

All right.

And then at the end there, that's kind of our classic little bluegrass G run. But if I didn't have the capo on right here, that, that's, that's like a major pentatonic or major blues scale. If I did that in B up here, it'd be— but down here Okay, so that's one really kind of classic Tony Rice passage. Another one is just this right here. Again, classic Tony Rice. And all I'm doing is hanging out in that first pentatonic pattern, but we're doing And then ending again. That's just, um, that's essentially a run out of our like A major blues scale. Okay, so we've got All right, so I want to give you one more here that you can use as a really great little bluegrass position shifting run that moves through the pentatonic patterns, and it's going to go like this.

We'll do—

all right, so I'm starting down here in our first pattern. And then with my ring finger—

all right, so, and then with the ring finger, I'll slide.

And now I'm up into that second pentatonic pattern.

And then right here, I'm going to slide with my ring finger.

And then I'm into our third pentatonic pattern from there. Okay, so one more time, 3 very Tony Rice-inspired bluegrass licks that are all straight out of our— or mostly from our A minor pentatonic scale pattern.

So the first one All right, second one, and then the third one.

Okay, so that's just a couple of examples of how, you know, probably the most influential bluegrass guitar player, Tony Rice, would, um, um, use the, the pentatonic scales and the pentatonic patterns to come up with some really, really cool kind of long, extended, flowing lead lines that worked really well in the context of bluegrass music. But also in, you know, he did a lot of, you know, progressive acoustic music and a lot of jazz too, and it worked really well in all of those. So All right, so that, that wraps it up for the bluegrass portion of this lesson. All right, so let's jump over to the rock part of this lesson. All right, so welcome to the, uh, to the, to the rock portion of this lesson here, and, uh, you know, kind of like I was saying earlier, um, rock is a huge umbrella genre. So I'm just going to narrow it down to one of my biggest influences, who is Eric Johnson. And I want to give you just a couple of kind of licks in the style, um, of Eric Johnson to kind of show you how he takes a really cool approach to using the pentatonic scales to come up with some really classic leads. So, um, again, staying in A here And, um, I'm going to start with this idea right here, and we're going to do— okay, I'll play it again. So this idea, this is actually something that he shows in, um, in the old um, Hot Licks video. I think it's called Total Electric Guitar that I think came out in the early '90s. Um, and it's one of the licks that he shows you in there, but I like it because it really kind of sums up a lot of what his kind of rock lead style, um, is all about. Because we're starting up here really in this like second pentatonic scale pattern, like the Although we're kind of jumping up a little bit into the third one, and we're doing—

all right, so we're doing— and then—

and after that, we're going to position shift down to the first pattern and do Okay, so let's try that again here, and we'll do— okay, so it gives you that kind of cascading, shifting between patterns, um, ideas that Eric Johnson uses a lot, but also Um, it, um, it gives you that, um, that kind of like melodic groups of 5 that he uses, um, which is, um, so like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Okay, which— so it really kind of gives you, gives you a lot of what his style is all about, or at least his kind of like his kind of rock lead style. There's so many cool aspects about his playing there, but that's one aspect, and that's one thing that he uses a lot. So let's try that idea one more time here, and we'll do Okay, and I know some people like to apply economy picking to that. You're more than welcome to experiment with that. I like to just use straight alternate picking through that, and it kind of just gives you the same feel, you know. Okay, so there's one idea. Now I want us to take the same idea, and we're going to kind of move move it up the guitar neck here and shift through a couple of the different pentatonic scale patterns. So let me play the idea here, and we're gonna do— okay, so we're starting off kind of with the same idea that we did earlier. But now this time, instead of going down, we're going to go up, and we're going to do— so that's important right there. You want to slide from 9 to 12 on that 3rd string.

We'll do—

and then that puts us in our 3rd pentatonic pattern.

We'll do—

and then Okay, so one more time, let me play it up until that point. We'll do, um, and now we'll keep going and we're gonna do— okay, so that's really, it's shifting from our second pentatonic pattern to our third, to our fourth, by going—

okay.

And so by using those little melodic groups of 5 and shifting in between those, um, those the, the different pentatonic scale patterns. Um, it kind of puts you into that like Eric Johnson sounding camp pretty quick there. So one more time, the second idea here. Okay, now I've got one more here where we're gonna do a little descending run. I'm gonna come way up here on the neck and we're gonna do—

whoops. All right, so I'm do it again here.

Okay, and all we're doing there, even though I'm way up here on the— way up here on the neck. This is like— this is like David Gilmour territory. Okay, um, what I'm doing here with this first idea is I'm starting in the first pattern. That's all out of pattern 1, even though it's an octave up.

Okay, so we're doing—

but then from there I'm shifting down to pattern 5, and then from there I'm shifting down to pattern 4. Okay, so one more time there. Okay, so again, same kind of idea— melodic groups of 5 shifting between those pentatonic patterns, and it really kind of puts you in that kind of Eric Johnson sounding camp there. So a little sloppy there, but that's That's the general idea. So again, 3, um, rock ideas in the style of Eric Johnson using our A minor pentatonic scales. First idea, we'll do, um, all right. And then the second idea, we'll do, um, And then our last idea. Okay, so again, again, I just, I wanted to show this stuff to you back to back. That way you can kind of see how we're, we're using a lot of the same notes, we're using a lot of the same patterns, but you can look at the way that like a bluegrass player like Tony Rice uses it, and then a rock player like Eric Johnson, the way he uses those, and just kind of juxtaposing those. I hope this will start to get your creative juices flowing here, but we're not done. Let's go into the country chicken picking portion of this lesson. All right, well, hello and welcome to the country chicken picking portion of this lesson here. And, um, what I'm going to be showing you here essentially is I'm going to be showing you a solo by the great Johnny Hyland. And if you're watching this and you don't know who Johnny Hyland is, please get on YouTube and just watch Aaron Jaxon, that guy. Type that into the search. He is one of the baddest dudes to ever play this style. I mean, he's mostly known as a country player, but he's also an amazing rock player. He's a great bluegrass player. He's just an amazing guitar player, and he's one of my favorite country players. So I'm gonna be showing you one of the solos that he plays to an old Elvis tune called That's All Right Mama. I think when Johnny originally had moved to Nashville a long time ago, he kind of landed the gig playing in, you know, the famous Don Kelly Band, which basically like all of the greats of this style, or most of them, have at one point in time played, um, in the Don Kelly Band at Robert's Western Wear, um, in Nashville. I think Brent Mason was in that, Red Volkert was in that. I think Guthrie Trapp played in the Don Kelly Band. But anyway, this is a recording that they did, and I've got it linked down below. And like I said, it's an old Elvis tune here, but Johnny just plays some amazing, um, kind of chicken picking ideas in there. So I want to go through and show this to you here. So let me start with the first phrase that he plays in this, and it's going to go like this. We're going to do Okay, so it's, it's weird playing that slow, um, but that, that's the idea. Okay, and that kind of— that idea right there kind of sums up, um, the way that, that a lot of great players use pentatonics or blues scales in, um, in chicken picking. Because what we're doing on that— on this first passage here, the Okay, that would be like our A major pentatonic or blues scale, like.

All right, so we're doing—

and then after that, we'll do a position shift. And that's kind of sliding up into that second pattern out of our A major pentatonic. And then from there, he kind of switches over to like minor pentatonic. Which is a fun little lick to play where he's like deliberately targeting the, like, the flat 5 of the blues scale. Okay, so when you combine those two ideas together, we start down here with the major Okay, okay. And then one other thing on the technique here, because, you know, this is chicken picking, which means we're using a picking finger. Technique here, and that's very important in the style. But I'm— when I'm doing this first run, so we'll do pick, finger, pick, finger, pick, finger, pick, finger, pick, Pick, finger. So I'm using a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs there, but also too with the articulation when I'm picking that, it's almost kind of like I'm, I'm alternating the pick and the finger instead of just like— which, that's fine, but it doesn't quite have the pop that this would. And then when I get up here, so I'm using my middle finger on that second string.

That's just something to—

that's just something to consider when you're playing this, is you definitely want to be using your pick and your finger to give it that kind of classic chicken picking popping sound. But anyway, um, so after, after we do that, then we're going to go into D and we're going to do So again, over D. And again, that's kind of out of our D major blues scale. Okay, and then after that, the chord progression is going to go to an E, and we're going to do— so, and then he's going to jump back in, and we're going to go back into some minor pentatonic stuff. He's going to do, um, Okay, so there's that. So it's, it's really that kind of combining your major and minor pentatonics and blues scales that kind of give your lead lines a really authentic country and even bluegrass sound. And if you would like, um, to check out another video where I do a really deep dive on how to mix major and minor pentatonics and blues scales for country leads, check out this video real quick. So one more time on the Johnny Highland thing. The main idea that I want you to get from this is this, to see how we're mixing the majors and the minors. And then you can move that around anywhere. I did that in A. I mean, if you wanted to do it in, you know, B If you want to do it in E, um, so that's the big idea right there, is you're kind of mixing majors and minors, throwing in a couple of like, you know, flat 5s and chromatic ideas to give your lead lines, um, a really authentic, um, kind of country sound there. So, all right, all right. Well, I want to thank you again for hanging out today, and I know this lesson is a little bit different from the other lessons that I usually do on this YouTube channel, but I've been wanting to make this one for a while because, like I was saying, I enjoy playing a lot of different styles. I enjoy studying players in different genres. And after doing that for a long time, I've just been able to pick up on, um, you know, how a diverse group of guitar players use and apply something like the pentatonic scale. So mostly, you know, I hope you get some really great licks out of this that you can use, but I hope it gets your creative juices flowing and it gives you some ideas that you can incorporate into your own playing. So again, thanks so much for hanging out today, and I will see you next time.