Lesson 16 – Rhythm Fill Riffs and Lead Guitar Course
Lesson ID: A0148
In this country guitar lesson, you’ll learn how to play a variation of the 12 bar blues that has a country & bluegrass twang. In both arrangements below, we’ll use triplets to spice up our country fills and we’ll also replace strumming with crosspicking in certain measures to make our rhythm sound even more country. These country 12 bar blues progressions are in the key of G and you can use the fill riffs that we’re studying in this guitar lesson with a bunch of other country & bluegrass songs. Pay close attention to how we’re structuring each country guitar lick around the rhythm chords.
Lesson Overview
Playthrough with Tablature
Video 1 – First Round Playthrough
Video 2 – Second Round Playthrough
Full Breakdown
Video 1 – First Round Breakdown
Video 2 – Second Round Breakdown
After you’re done here
New guitar lesson! I’ve just about got this lesson all done…finishing up the full breakdown and backing track videos over the next couple of days, but we’ll go ahead and post the playthrough videos along with the tablature in the meantime. Hope y’all like this one!
Brilliant as always! Thanks Devin
Fabulous Devin!
This is awesome Devin, as usual. Love the crosspicking mixed with strumming and it’s doable with some practice. Good work!
Terrific ,enjoying this last couple hours today.. this is fun country 12 bar with a lot of half step takeaways
Best teaching I have found online! Keep it up!
I’m familiar with blues songs but not country blues songs. Can you name some country songs that would use this style of playing ?
Hey Carole – A lot of the older country songs will have a huge blues influence…probably won’t hear it as much in the pop country on the radio these days, but slightly older stuff like Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn, Johnny Cash, Randy Travis, list goes on…all the way back to the much older country songs. These riffs also work in bluegrass. It’s all the same scales and concepts used in a slightly different context. There’s another lesson I did a while back on the site teaching a solo over “I’m From the Country” by Tracy Byrd. That one’s similar… Read more »
Great lesson, Thanks a lot.
Thanks Devin. I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying the lessons. Keep up the great work.
more 12 bar stuff please
I second the motion.
Sounds good, I’ll try to work some more into the bluegrass improvising course
I can’t wait to start this lesson Devin awesome
Sound.
Great lesson as always.
All six of these turn around licks sound great thanks Devin for the lessons.
I’ve noticed that a lot of these licks your using are what I’m trying to learn in other lessons.
I was wondering if you were going to have more cross picking lessons?
I like that kind of music, bluesy sound!
key of G. whats the tuning – EADGBE?
cheers
Tony
Hey Tony – Yep it’s standard tuning EADGBE. You can assume that most lessons are standard tuning unless we’re in Drop D or just using a capo
Great lesson Devin ! Thanks a lot
Amazing arregements and really fun to play…thanks Devin!
Hello Devin
Yesterday I asked you in an e-mail regarding a lesson you removed from your site. This lesson is one of your proposals I should give a try. And what can I say: You really helped me. That’s exactly what I want to learn. So beautiful melodies with strumming and flatpicking. And excellent explanations. Thanks a lot.
Thanks Birgit, great to hear! I appreciate the comment : )
Great lesson Devin….one question. You obviously put a lot of work into annotating down and up picking. There are time where my natural inclination is to do the picking slightly different than the annotation. How important is following you pick direction annotations exactly as shown?
Thanks!
I think it’s fine to pick it differently if another way feels more comfortable. To build up speed, I think it’s usually good to use a strict alternate picking pattern down up down up over every eighth note count…and that’s how I have it tabbed out in most of the lesson tablature, but there are some really fast and accurate pickers that use interesting pick direction on certain licks..Tony Rice is a good example of that. His pick stroke direction is strange sometimes but he made it work well. If you have a question about a certain part of a… Read more »
Thanks Devin. I noticed my natural inclination for pick direction deviated from your annotations mostly on measure 19 and 20. I’m slowing down and using your approach exactly…..heck, learning a new approach tends to give me benefits in the rest of my playing. I’ve already noticed that playing this song has made me a better picker on some songs I learned months ago. Thanks again !
Awesome. But the Tablature is “Beaumont Rag”. Could you please correct link? Thank you!
Hi Devin,
Nice little lesson, but the link still brings up the tab for Beaumont Rag.
Hi Dave, Thanks for letting me know! I just corrected the link so hopefully it’s going to the 12 bar blues tab for this lesson. Appreciate it!
Thank you very much Devin,
I am very much enjoying your content and I am gaining a lot of confidence in my playing ability. Your teaching methods and the way you implement the technology has helped me tremendously. I’m an old dog that’s been bumbling and fumbling with poor timing and incompetent phrasing for years, but I’m finally enjoying the struggle. I never would have thunk the break through would come through playing country and bluegrass.
Thank you again!
Kindest regards,
Dave