Unlock The Secrets Of Bluegrass Flatpicking Guitar-Get Ready To Play Jaw Dropping Licks!

Hey y'all, it's Aaron coming to you today here, and what I've got for you today is what I'm calling a Bluegrass Lead Lines Masterclass. And what this video is, is a compilation of a 3-part lesson video series that I did on these extended bluegrass lead guitar ideas. I did one out of G, one out of C, and one out of D. So this will keep you from having to hunt around for the other two if you've seen one or you've seen two of them. I've got everything kind of laid out here for you today, so I'm super excited to share this with you. And hey, if you would like more of a deep dive into bluegrass flatpicking guitar, I want to invite you to check out my flagship online bluegrass guitar course called Flatpicking Mastery. You can learn more about that in the video description. I've got a link down there for the course, and And, um, this is essentially everything that I know about bluegrass flatpicking guitar laid out for you in a very clear, easy-to-follow, step-by-step online course. Inside of it, you're going to get access to over 90 videos with more than 11 hours of my very best flatpicking instructional content. And it's designed to help you develop your chops, to build speed, and ultimately become fluent in the language of bluegrass flatpicking guitar. So again, there's a link down in the video description. So let's jump into the lesson. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. Instead of me going through and showing you that whole run that I played at the beginning of the video, I want to start with a couple of smaller chunks. So here's the first one we're going to do. Okay, let me play that one again. We're going to do So if you've listened to this style at all, that first, that first little run is a very familiar sounding kind of Tony Rice passage. You know, he plays that. Billy Strings kind of has a variation on that where he does that. All right, but again, so at the beginning, now this is where our position position shift comes in, because we're going to play these 3 notes— that's the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th frets— but hit the 2nd fret with your pointer finger and then the 3rd and the 4th frets both with your middle finger. Okay, so, so far we've got— and then that puts our left hand in the position to where we can play the rest of this lick comfortably. So, and then we'll do Okay, so one more time on this first little chunk of this run. Okay, so start there. That's just— I think that's just like a little 2-bar phrase. And play it as slow as you need to there. One other thing that I wanted to mention before we go on here. Play it as slow as you need to. I don't care if you need to get this sucker down to 30 or 35 beats a minute, that's okay. But what you do want is you want these to be a continuous flow of 16th notes. You don't want unnecessary pauses in there. Like, you don't want it to sound like— you get the idea. Okay, so that's the first chunk there. Let's go into the next one, and, uh, it's gonna go like this.

We're gonna do—

all right, so that's a fun one. So let's start at the beginning here. We're gonna do Okay, so at the beginning here, we'll do— and then we want to do that slide from 5 to 7. And then now right here, this is where our position shift comes into play, because we're going to come back up and hit that 6th and 7th fret again.

But we're going to do—

hit that with your middle finger, because again, that puts our left hand in the position to play the rest of that lick. And then right here, 7th fret of the 3rd string, we're going to hit that, slide to 5, 3, 4 on the 3rd, 5th fret on the 4th. So again, we've got Okay, so that's the second chunk out of this run here. Let's do, um, let's jump into— oh, one other thing that I did want to mention here as far as the, the right hand, the picking hand. Now this, the, the picking hand gets a lot of attention in this style of guitar playing, and rightfully so, because it requires more out of your picking hand than, I mean, just about any other style. I mean, maybe certain forms of metal, and maybe like gypsy jazz requires as much out of your picking hand. But anyway, just with this, um, use alternate picking as your guide on this. There's a few places in some of these where I'm throwing like 2 upstrokes or 2 downstrokes in a row, but for the most part, I'm just using alternate picking through this. So just keep that in mind. All right, so let's jump into the third, uh, chunk of this, uh, position shifting run, and it's going to go like this. We're going to do Okay, so let's try that again here.

We'll do—

so that's where our position shift comes in with the ring finger. And then right here, we're going to slide from 10 up to 12. All right, and then pointer finger slide from 10 to 8, and then 8 to 6, and then we'll end it. So again, one more time on that third chunk here, we're going to do Okay, so before we combine all these together, let's go through these 3 again here. So here's the first one, position shift. Okay, here's the third one— I'm sorry, the second one. And here's the third one. Okay, so let's, let's connect the whole thing now. We're going to combine all three of those together, and then I'm going to add in a few notes at the end to just kind of round out the phrase. All right, so go like this.

We'll do—

all right, so at the beginning, it's just— that's That's that first little, um, passage that we played. And then we jump.

Now we're into the second one.

Now we're into the third one.

Now kind of back to the second one.

Okay, so again Okay, I may have threw a couple of extra notes in at the end right there, but, um, so again, a big thing with this one here, don't let the speed I was playing it at at the beginning of the video, yo, don't worry about getting it that fast right now. The most important thing on this is to get those little position shifts. Again, that way you can comfortably move up and down the guitar neck when you're playing bluegrass lead ideas. But really, the important thing is get all of those as a continuous stream of 16th notes. You don't want unnecessary pauses in that. So that's the kind of the big thing to remember there. But, um, all right, cool. And welcome back to the channel here, and welcome to a, uh, part 2 to a 3-part video series that I'm doing on bluegrass position shifting runs out of G, C, and D. If you haven't had the chance yet, go ahead and check out that first one that I did, because I'm going to be following basically the same structure in this video that I did in the first one, where I'm going to show you that entire extended run that I played at the beginning of this video, but I'm gonna chop it down into 3 smaller and more easily digestible parts. And then at the end, we're gonna put that whole thing together and you'll have a really nice, very authentic sounding bluegrass lead run that kind of starts with the open strings, comes all the way up to the 10th fret, and comes back down again. So, okay, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna start off, um, with this run right here. We're gonna do Okay, so I'm using quite a bit of pull-offs in that. So as you can see, there's a couple of places in there where I'm using like 2 upstrokes in a row. Again, I'm just kind of using alternate picking as my guide through this. But one more time, we'll do— and here's where our position shifts, and then we'll shift back down. And then, so again, we've got which is just kind of a classic little bluegrass sounding run out of C. Okay, so that's the first one here. So on the second one, we're just gonna kind of expand on that one just a little bit here. Let me play it for you and then we'll analyze it a bit. We're gonna do Okay, so this one starts off the same. Okay, starts off exactly the same as the other run did, but right here we're gonna bring that pinky finger— and this is important, make sure you do this with your pinky finger, because if not, it's not gonna put your hand in the position to be able to play the rest of this run. So again, we've got now pinky finger on this 5th fret, and we're gonna slide from 5 up to 8. All right, and now that works out great because now our hand is in the position to play the rest of this. Okay, so again, let's take this from the beginning. So it starts off the— in the exact same way as the first run did. And then make sure you do that with your pinky.

And then—

okay, so again, the first run will do— and then on the second one—

all right.

So the big one on that second one, make sure when you get to that 5th fret, do that slide with your pinky finger. And I have to emphasize that because a lot of times when I show this to students, they'll want to— or sometimes they'll even want to do it with their middle, you know, and then it just, it just doesn't work out that way. But, um, anyway, so that's the first 2 here. Let's jump into the 3rd run on this, and it's going to go like this. We'll do All right, so again on that one, um, so make sure when you're going from 5 to 7, do that slide with your ring finger. And then we're going to slide from 7 up to 9 and then hit that 8 8th fret on the 2nd with your middle finger.

So we've got—

and then— so let's actually take it from the beginning of this 3rd run up through that point right there. Let's do—

One more time.

Okay, we're not done here though, because now we're gonna do— so a shift from the 7th fret down to the 5th fret. We'll do a slide there, and then we'll do a slide from 5 to 3. Okay, so we've got— and then we're gonna end it with a little minor blues scale run.

We'll do—

all right, so let's run that whole one again. So we'll start off with Okay, so kind of the key position shifts in that one are— you want to make sure you do that with your ring finger, and this one with your ring finger as well. And then make sure you hit that 10th fret with your pinky, uh, because if you try to do that with your ring finger, it kind of changes the position. And then we'll do, do that, both of those with your index, and then hit that that both of those with your ring finger. And then, all right, so one more time on the third one there.

We'll do—

okay, so before we go on, let's just kind of, um, retrace our steps here. Let's go back to the beginning and let's do the first one, which is going to be— all right. And then the second one, just a little variation on that first one. And then the third one, we're going to do Okay, so now, now for the, the big finish here, we're going to combine all of those, and that's gonna go like this. We'll do All right, so let's kind of analyze that one a little bit. So at the very beginning, we're really just running— it's the, it's that second run. Up until that point, it's literally just the second run that we did, which, you know, incorporates ideas from the first one, but it's just that second. But now we're gonna kind of add in some ideas from the third one, and we're gonna do Okay, and then after that, um, I've kind of added some notes in here to round out the phrase.

We're going to do—

and if you want, you can end it with a little chromatic Okay, so let's try that again. So All right, so real quick, let's retrace all 4 of these here. So the first one, the second one, third one, And then the fourth one, which just combines, um, 1 through 3. Okay, and so I talked I talked about this in the first lesson for these position shifting runs in G. You just want to make sure when you're learning these that when you're playing these ideas that it's a continuous uninterrupted flow of 16th notes, which on the one hand is, um, is easy to remember because there's not a lot of rhythmic variation there, but on the other hand, um, it can be kind of technically difficult to execute. I just say that because I've taught these to students over the years, and sometimes they'll show up, you know, the next week for the lesson, and they've got the right notes and even the right technique, but they're putting these kind of— they're putting these pauses in there that don't need to be there.

It'll be like—

those are the right notes, but again, Practice it as slow as you need to to make sure it's just— it's an uninterrupted flow of very smooth-sounding 16th notes that give your lead lines a very authentic bluegrass feel. You know, you'll, you'll hear, you know, players like, you know, Tony Rice and Brian Sutton and Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings playing a lot of these kinds of ideas here. So, all right, cool. Well, hey friend, and welcome back to the channel. My name is Aaron Jaxon here, and welcome to, um, another lesson on playing some extended bluegrass lead runs up and down the neck. This video is kind of a part 3 to a series that I've been doing on these extended bluegrass lead runs. If you haven't checked out the other two, be sure and check those out because I show you how to do essentially what I'm going to show you in this video but in G and in C. Today I'm going to show you how to play a bunch of these extended bluegrass lead runs out of D, which is just a great key for flatpicking. I really love playing in this key. So hey, real quick, if you would like a kind of crash course as a sort of introduction to bluegrass lead flatpicking guitar, um, I've got a free 45-minute video lesson complete with downloadable and printable tabs that I would love to send you. Just hit the link in the description down below and I'm going to send that to you, and we're going to go through and talk about the essential techniques and licks and ideas and tunes and solos and all kinds of other good stuff that you'll need to lay a really solid foundation for learning this kind of guitar playing. So again, hit the link down in the description to grab that, and let's jump into the lesson. So let's jump into it here, and I'm gonna do this kind of like I did the other two here, and I'm gonna show you that whole entire extended run that I played at the beginning of the video, but I'm gonna break it down into three smaller chunks that are a lot easier to learn and to get down and to get underneath your fingers. And then at the end, we'll combine all those together into one monster run that takes you from the open strings up to the 10th fret and back down again. So let's jump in here, let's start with this first example. So we're gonna do— so one more time on that, we'll do Okay, so the— here's the key on this one.

We'll do—

so make sure when you get to that right there that your middle and ring finger— because again, that puts your left hand in the position to play the rest of that run. And then, and then we'll come back down. So one more time on that one, we'll do— okay, so that's the first example. Let's jump into the second example here, and we're going to do Okay, so this one starts off just like the other one did, but we're gonna do— so right there, and this is really important, use your middle finger to hit both of those, to hit the 3rd and 4th frets, and then we'll do— okay, so like the last half of that run, we'll do— so we want to do that slide from 5 to 7 with the ring finger, and then slide 5 to 3 and then 3 to 1. Okay, so this little second pattern here will do.

Okay.

So now let's jump into the third idea here, and this one is going to go like this. We'll do, um, all right, so that one's a lot of fun. Um, So we'll start off with this little chromatic run on the 5th, and then we're gonna take the pinky finger— this is really important— and we're gonna slide from 7 up to 10. So that's a big slide there, but you want to make sure you do that one with your pinky, because if you don't and you try to do that with your ring finger or your middle finger your, your hand's not going to be in the position that it needs to be to execute the rest of those notes.

So again, we'll do—

okay, so we'll do— and then after that, let's take that ring finger, slide it from 9 up to 11. All right, and then we'll hit the, uh, 10th fret, and then we'll do— guess I'm doing a pull-off right there. And then after that, we're going to slide from 9 to 7 on the 3rd string, play the 9th on the 4th, and then slide from 7 to 5. All right, and then we'll do— all right, so we'll again, we'll do, um, Okay, so that's the third example there. Let's, let's go through that third one one more time, the whole thing. We'll do, um, So we're going to combine all 3 of these, but before we do, let me go back through here and let's play each of these 3 ideas one at a time. So the first one, we'll do— all right, and here's the second one. And here is the third one.

Okay.

So now let's combine all 3 of those together here into one monster run that starts from the open string, comes all the way up, goes all the way back down. All right, so that's gonna go like this. We're gonna do Okay, so that's just a combination of all three of those ideas that we've already done, and then I added a few notes at the end just to kind of flesh out that idea just a little bit here. So let's start again from the beginning, and we're starting off exactly the way that we kick off really the first and second ideas. Okay, so we'll do— actually, that's note for note, um, kind of the first half of the second idea. So remember, the really important thing right there is to is to— when we get on the third, third and fourth fret of that third string, hit both of those with your middle finger. That way your hand's in the position. And then right here, slide from 5 to 7 with your ring finger, and we'll do— okay. And then now we're kind of into the third idea here, and we're going to do All right, and then I've just added a couple of notes at the very end of this just to kind of flesh out this phrase a little bit here. We're going to do Okay, so let's try the whole thing again here. And again, this is, uh, this is, um, examples 1 through 3 combined all together here. So we'll do Okay, so real quick, let's go over all 4 of these ideas here. So we've got the first one, we've got the second one. We've got the third one, and then we've got all three of those combined. All right, okay, so that's a little more up to tempo there. Again though, it's, you know, it's cool to, to, you know, shoot for being able to play these runs these licks at a fairly fast tempo, but definitely don't worry about that. First, get them down. And I've said this in previous videos here, you want to make sure that with each of these that you've got a continuous and uninterrupted flow of 16th notes, because we don't, we don't want unnecessary pauses. Um, you know, we don't want We want that to sound really nice and smooth. So keep that in mind as you're going through here and learning each one of these. And again, just take each idea one at a time and practice that until you get it, and then add the next one. And then after you got all three of those, then add that last one at the end to be able to, you know, go from the open string up to the 12th fret and back down again.