In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn two full-length guitar solos over a common bluegrass chord progression. The first guitar solo is a basic solo with a nice melody that will push your pick control to the next level. The second guitar solo is slightly more advanced and loaded with some awesome bluegrass licks. Throughout the lesson, we’ll also talk about how guitar scales are used to create each of these solos. After you master the solos, practice them over the instrumental break in the song “Where I Come From” by the Grascals.
Practice with The Grascals
Try to play these two bluegrass solos over the song “Where I Come From” by The Grascals using the embedded player from Spotify. A nice instrumental break starts around 1:17 in this song. We’d highly recommend using Spotify for online radio. If you don’t have a Spotify account, click here to sign up free with your Facebook account or with an e-mail address. Also, check out The Grascals on iTunes. They’ve got a ton of other great songs to choose from.
Let me know if y’all like this style of lesson. I’ve been getting a lot of requests to do more lessons on how to play bluegrass guitar solos…figured the best way is to cover a bunch of full-length solos and talk more about how the scales are used. I’ll be around on the live chat this week if y’all have questions about this stuff. Have a great week. – Devin
Hey Devin this is my first comment here so first of all thanks for this course and you’re doing a great job as a teacher ! I really hope the improvising course goes on because my personal goal (and i guess for a lot of other people) is to learn to play (own) solos and be able to play on bluegrass jams. some of the improvising is also covered in the rhythm fill course. i think a really good lesson is the “cripple creek” and also other song lessons, where you give a bunch of licks that we can use… Read more »
Hey Leo – Thanks for the comment! It’s great to talk with another bluegrass fan from across the world in Germany. I’ve never traveled there but it’s on my list of places to visit one of these days. Also really glad you’re enjoying the lessons! Bluegrass improvising is my favorite to teach so this course will definitely continue for many more lessons. I’ll write down your request about bringing in melody notes and switching between scales…I can work some more of that into the future lessons and let me know if you have any other ideas in the meantime. Have… Read more »
I’m new to bluegrass and am part of a senior slo bluegrass jam group. I don’t know how to improvise so I can take a break. I rely on what I learn here. Can you talk about that? I ask those that are experienced and the answer is ” you just figure out how to pick out the melody”. Can you give me more specifics? I play my first break at a performance of I’ll Fly Away, based on what I learned from you!
Hey Nancy – Awesome! That’s cool you were able to use the I’ll Fly Away break in your performance. And actually, what you’re talking about here is what we’ll cover next in this bluegrass improvising course. Now that we’ve covered some licks, we’re going to talk about picking out a song’s melody, and then after that, we’ll talk about ways to combine the song melody with the licks so you can improvise some nice sounding solos at bluegrass jams. Keep an eye out for the next couple of lessons in this course. They’ll be posted sometime over the next month… Read more »
This is great Devin, I’d love to see more lessons like this. Looking forward to more in this course.
Hi Devin, This is just what I was looking for in trying to improvise over bluegrass solo breaks. Thanks and keep this type of lesson coming. Its good to have a teacher that helps with this type of lesson Thanks Ron
Thanks Ron! Awesome, good to hear. I’ll plan on recording more like this if it’s working. Probably going to travel up the neck a bit and check out some different keys pretty soon. Let me know if you come across any songs you’d want to use for solo practice. I could throw something together. – Devin
Hi Devin, Any of the traditional bluegrass songs would do. I know there are other guitar players that have the same problem of soloing over the melody of a song when it comes your turn in a bluegrass jam. Keep up the lessons they are wonderful. Ron
This is a really awesome series! Do more please!!
Thanks! I’ll be posting more to this course soon…wrapping up a Hank Williams style classic country lesson this week and then probably finishing out some more of this bluegrass improvising course after that. I’ll keep you posted…
Hey Devin…I wanted to let you know how much I am enjoying being a member of Country Guitar Online….These lessons are so much fun to work through and the improvement in my playing has been tremendous….I’ve been folk picking and strumming, and even playing some classical styles and rock riffs for some 30+ years….and your lessons have opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me….I would love to hear about who taught you all of these things….again thanks a million….i am loving this stuff!
Super super super!!!
Hello devin,
I would very much like to combine the accompaniment and the solos as one piece and then be able to perform them.