Why Intermediate Flatpickers Stop Getting Better

All right, here's 7 mistakes that I see a lot of intermediate bluegrass flatpicking guitar players making. Now, this comes from working with a lot of students at a lot of different levels, and it's one of those things— these types of titles typically do well on YouTube. But here is the thing: these are things that I see people running into and mistakes that I see a lot of people making whenever they're developing themselves as a bluegrass guitar player. Now, one question that's probably going to come up is this: Aaron, how do I know if I'm an intermediate flatpicker? So it's real simple. Here's the question that I ask people. Number one, can you play 10 bluegrass solos or fiddle tunes or a combination of both cleanly and in time in between 70 and 80 beats per minute as 16th notes? So if the answer is no, I would consider you more of like a beginner flatpicker, not necessarily beginner guitar, because sometimes, you know, guys who are really advanced fingerstyle players or blues players need to start at that level. But if I ask you that question and you're like, yeah, Aaron, I can, I can do that, then I would consider you you an intermediate level flat picker. And so this is just stuff that I have seen, you know, working with students over Zoom, uh, you know, talking to people through email and on social media. Um, I've done a couple of paid master classes and challenges. Um, I've worked with a lot of one-on-one students, so I've got a lot of data on this. And these are things that I see coming up over and over and over again. Now, if you find yourself making any of these mistakes, it's okay. It's not that big of a deal. We're just playing the guitar and we're just playing music. Don't freak out if you're making any of these. And with each one of these too, I don't want to just harp on the problem. I'm going to give you the solution to help you move forward in your development in this style of guitar playing. All right, mistake number 1, trying to improvise too soon, focusing on improvisation too early in the game. Now if you want, you can check out this video right here, and I'll link to it down in the video description. I did a full video just on this subject alone here, but really when it gets down to it is this: when you're at this kind of intermediate level, you don't have enough vocabulary developed to be able to pull from that whenever you're improvising in bluegrass. You know, a lot of us who come into this style from, say, a blues or a rock background, I'll remember what it was like to, you know, learn a couple of scale patterns, maybe learn how to use those scale patterns in some different keys, and then plug into an amp and turn on a little drive and delay and learn a couple of of patterns through those scales, and boom, it sounds like music. And we all love that. And this— that's just an incredible milestone and just a cool thing to experience, um, you know, when you're learning and you're developing as a guitar player. But bluegrass is just a different beast. And anyone knows, um, who maybe has come from that style, um, if they try to apply that to bluegrass, it just doesn't work. Technique and timing have got to be really solid. You have to know how to play through chord changes. You have to really know the tunes that you're playing to be able to hit the melody in key places. And in certain instances, especially when we're talking about fiddle tunes, you have to really have a good grip of these tunes that have really busy melodies. So when you're at this level, I think your time is just much, much, much better spent developing your technique, timing, repertoire, and vocabulary. And I'll kind of share this— I shared it in the other video that I had just mentioned there, but I'll go ahead and share this framework here with you. And I call it the 3 10s. And what it is, uh, just give me 10 Great bluegrass licks or phrases, 10 solos to classic bluegrass vocal tunes, and 10 fiddle tunes with variations. Now you may be looking at that and be like, Aaron, that's a lot of work. You dang right it is, but I promise you it's going to be worth it because you're developing yourself as a player, you're developing yourself as a musician, and you're developing your vocabulary. And the more that you learn that stuff, the more that you practice it, and the more it sinks into your muscle memory, it becomes a part of your vocabulary and you will pull from that whenever you're improvising. So that's mistake number 1 that I see a lot of people making at this level— just trying to improvise too soon. Number 2, and I see this one all the time: spending most of your practice time on picking exercises. Okay, so I do see this a lot, um, you know, and I use picking exercises in my practicing. I love these little cross-picking things, all these little string skipping ideas. I love ideas like that, but make no mistake, the majority of your practice time should not be spent on picking exercises. Picking exercises are great for warming up. It's great to get the blood flowing into your hands. It's great for oiling the machinery of your technique. And in a lot of, um, in a lot of instances, the purpose of doing a picking exercise is playing something that is going to be deliberately more difficult than the music that you're tackling. Like, you know, whenever I'm doing this kind of You know, it's very rare that a certain type of music in bluegrass is going to call on me to play something that technically challenging. So if I spend a little bit of time practicing that, whenever I go in to play the music that I want to play, it makes it a little bit easier. But again, the majority of your practice time should not be spent on that. So check out this lesson right here, and again, I will link to it down in the description. Where I give you a recommended practice routine and a recommended practice structure that I think works for most players and most people learning this style. And what it is is this: you want to spend a little bit of time, um, you know, working on some warm-ups and some picking exercises to get warmed up. You want to spend the majority of your time working on repertoire, working on tunes, phrases, solos, ideas. And those things like that that are really gonna become the music that you're actually playing. And then you can end your practice routine doing what I call development. And that's either taking parts that are really difficult and playing them over and over again, or building speed. But again, I see this a lot. A lot of times people wanna spend like 80% of their practice time working on picking exercises, and that is backwards. You wanna spend 80% of your practice time developing your repertoire, developing your vocabulary, and developing the music that we actually wanna be playing. All right, number 3, uh, neglecting/misunderstanding rhythm. So there's just kind of a couple of mistakes that I see people making. So they either completely neglect it or they just kind of default to a basic boomchuck style rhythm. So that's, that's, that's probably what I see the majority of people doing when it comes to rhythm. They either just don't think about it at all Or they just default to a basic boomchuck rhythm. But another thing that I will see is a lot of times people make bluegrass rhythm way more complicated than it needs to be. Now granted, especially— we're all fans of Tony Rice, we just are. Tony had some very intricate things that he would do in his rhythm playing. You know, he would have these— he would sometimes put crosspicking into his strumming. He would do licks between chord changes. You know, he would do these really cool kind of chord substitutions, like going from a, um, D back to a G. Okay. He was just— he had a really intricate rhythm style there, and it is good to learn that stuff, but sometimes people focus on that too much. Y'all, if you will just kind of get one or two really good strumming patterns. And by that I mean like boom chuck boom a chucka boom chuck boom a chucka. That way it adds something rhythmically to the group that you're playing with, and just a couple of kind of simple bass note runs in between chord changes. A couple of really good tasteful strumming patterns and some simple bass note runs between your chord changes, that will get you the vast majority of what you need playing bluegrass rhythm guitar, especially if what you're wanting to do— most of y'all watching this channel are not trying to become professional musicians. You want to be able to jam with people, you want to be able to have a good time, and you want to be able to contribute musically. You want people to want to be playing with you. That right there will give you the vast majority of what you need. Get a couple of good strumming patterns, get some simple bass note runs to play in between the chord changes, and that's going to give you most of what you need when it comes to rhythm. So that's the other mistake that I see. People either neglect it, they kind of default to like a really kind of rudimentary boomchuck rhythm, or they go in the opposite direction and they make it more complicated than it needs to be. All right, mistake number 4, trying to develop your own style. Now that may sound like heresy whenever I say that because, um, it's kind of a— I don't know, whenever people talk about learning music, learning the guitar, becoming a great guitar player, um, a lot of times you— there's this idea that, you know, you should just be you, just play like yourself, just play like yourself. And it's not that that's not true. But again, this is geared toward people kind of at this intermediate bluegrass stage. Y'all, that whole developing your own style is about 5, 6, or maybe 7 steps ahead of where we're at right here. Y'all, make no mistake about it, all of your favorite players learned as much as they could from the great players who came before them. And I know that, again, most people watching this channel are not trying to become the next Tony Rice or Billy Strings or Brian Sutton. I understand that. But the way that you absorb the vocabulary of this music and of this style of guitar playing is by studying the greats who have come before you. That doesn't mean that you become some, you know, obviously derivative Tony Rice clone. Now, I remember when I first got into this style, and this really was the case like 20 years ago, basically everyone who played bluegrass lead guitar tried to play exactly like Tony Rice. It was a really rare thing to come across, like, a flat picker at a bluegrass festival or a jam who was not trying to play exactly like Tony Rice. So on the one hand, I see what people are saying right there. On the other hand— so that's just what I hear from a lot of people at this level. If I try to teach them, you know, a, uh, you know, a break by Tony Rice or Doc Watson or Brian Sutton or David Greer, they'll be like, Aaron, I don't want to play just like Tony Rice. I don't want to be a clone of, of, of Billy Strings. I want to play like me. And I love the sentiment behind that, and we'll get there. But again, the progression of this stuff is important. When you're at this level, it was like I was saying with the first mistake, you don't have enough of this vocabulary developed to be able to come up with your own style. That doesn't mean that you need to go out and learn every Tony Rice solo ever recorded. But it does mean that, again, whether that's from, you know, someone like me on YouTube or from a teacher or whoever it is, you are going to have to learn things. And a lot of things you're going to have to learn it by rote memorization, because that's how you develop your vocabulary and your repertoire in this style. Number 5, obsessing over hand positioning, pick grip, And pick slanting. I get this all the time, and if you've been watching my channel for any length of time, you know that I am not a fan of this stuff. And the reason I'm not a fan of this stuff is because it drives home the idea that there is a correct way to hold your pick, to angle your pick, to position your hand. Here's what I always tell people: go and watch 2 different players who we all know and love. Go watch Tony Rice. And then go watch David Greer. Now I want to ask you something after that. What do their picking hands have in common? What does it have in common? And I'll tell you the answer— nothing. Aside from the fact that they are both using a flat pick on an acoustic guitar, the way that they grip their picks and hold their hands really has nothing in common. Tony would brace a finger or two, and a lot of times his motion would be coming more from like his finger like this than it would the wrist. When you watch David play, a lot of times, you know, he's kind of got it balled up in a fist fist, and, uh, he's really loose. And sometimes he'll kind of lightly anchor it on the bridge, and a lot of times he won't. It's completely different. I'll get this from people all the time. They'll email me and they'll be like, man, man, I, I brace my pinky on the guitar and I don't think I should. I think it's slowing me down. When I watch you, your hand isn't anchored to the guitar, and I think that's why you can play so fast. Which I find absolutely hilarious. My hand is anchored to the guitar. Most of the time my hand is kind of resting on the bridge lightly. I don't press down super hard, but sometimes I do that, and I will rest a pinky down there. Trey Hensley does something very similar. Dan Carey did something very similar. Molly Tuttle does something, you know, kind of similar. But guys, I'm left-handed, but I play right-handed. I have a wonky way that I do it. I kind of angle my pick up a little bit, which a lot of people will say is wrong. I could talk about this stuff all day, but the bigger picture is this: we are all wired a little bit Thinking that you have to position your hand and grip your pick and angle your pick in the exact same way as some other player because that's the right way to do it, I really think is a fool's errand. So find what works for you and then get to work. Number 6, too much speed and not enough music. Here's what I mean by this. Sometimes I'll see people at this level and what they'll do is they'll take like 1 or 2 tunes And they will just kind of lock themselves in their room and play nothing but those 1 or 2 tunes until they get it up to like 120 or 130 beats per minute or whatever tempo that they deem sufficient to be able to play that tune at. Now, on the one hand, I respect that because it respects the process. Um, you know, the people who are doing that understand that you have to, you know, put in the reps, you have to put in the work. Um, but I, I think the bigger picture here is when you're at this level, the name of the the game is developing vocabulary and repertoire. You want to have your foundational technique and timing applied to vocabulary and repertoire. And when you're just doing 1 or 2 tunes and only focusing on the speed, you're neglecting a really important part of the music that you want to be developing. So I tell people this: I would much, much, much rather you develop like a really robust Vocabulary and repertoire. Like, like I was talking about earlier, the 3 10s have a bunch of phrases, a bunch of solos to vocal tunes, a bunch of fiddle tunes with variations. I would rather you have all of that and be able to play it 80, 85, 90 beats per minute than I would have you lock yourself up in your room for 6 months and just practice Big Mine until you get it up to 120 beats per minute. So that's the name of the game here when you're at this level— vocabulary and repertoire. That's the most important thing. And again, like I was talking about with your practice routine, you can work some speed building into your daily practice routine. And if you'll stick to that over time, you'll build speed as you're developing your vocabulary and your repertoire. All right, last one here, and this is probably the most important one, is just not following a path. Um, you know, hanging out on YouTube, much being on the old YouTube merry-go-round and on the algorithm bandwagon and just kind of letting your feed dictate what you're going to work on. I love YouTube. Heck, it's allowed us to connect. I really do. I'm a fan of YouTube as a creator, and I'm also a fan of YouTube, um, as a consumer. I watch it for a lot of different— like, there's this one guy who, um, he recreates ancient Rome using AI. And I've just gone like down this rabbit hole. I just can't get enough of it. It's, it's, it's so cool. Um, but the thing about it is, is YouTube's goal is to keep you on YouTube. It's not to help you develop as a player. So y'all, whether it's stuff that you're working through with my lessons here on this channel, whether it's one of my courses, you know, whether you decide to, you know, come and, you know, become a one-on-one student, um, or if it's somebody else that you're working with on YouTube, you know, I know a lot of people you know, signed up and doing Brian Sutton's Artist Works things, and that is great. But whatever you do, find a teacher, find a mentor, find a coach who you trust, and follow the path that they have laid out for you, because that's how you're gonna progress and that's how you're going to develop. So there you go, there's 7 mistakes that I really do see a lot of intermediate-level flat pickers make. And again, don't freak out if you're making any of these. It happens. I've made these, multiple of these, in the past. But just remember, there's a quick, easy fix for each one of these. And remember, probably the most important one is the last one. It's number 7, is not following a path. So that's all I've got for you today. I want to thank you for hanging out, and I hope this gives you some clarity, and I hope this helps you develop in this style of guitar playing and in this style of music. As always, I want to thank you for hanging out, and I'll see you next time. Bye.