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Hot Bluegrass Flatpicking Licks That Travel the Neck

hot bluegrass flatpicking licks that travel the neck guitar lesson
Lesson ID: A0100

In this guitar lesson, I’ll teach you four of my favorite bluegrass flatpicking licks that travel the guitar neck. I use these licks all the time in my bluegrass guitar solo breaks and also as rhythm guitar fill riffs. All four licks are in the key of G and they’re built with a combination of the blues scales and the major pentatonic scales. Our tablature download includes comments that’ll tell you the scale positions each lick travels through up and down the neck. As you’re learning these licks, try to visualize the scales in each position. If you like this lesson, you might also like our Bluegrass Lick Library.

Lick 1

Video Start Time Lesson Topic
00:00 min Lesson Overview
01:34 min Important Guitar Scale Positions
04:16 min Lick 1 Breakdown – Measures 1 & 2
06:58 min Lick 1 Breakdown – Measures 3 & 4
10:30 min Practice Along with Me

How to Practice

Flatpicking Method

Lick 2

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Lick 3

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Lick 4

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Bluegrass Guitar Lick for a Song Intro or Solo Break

bluegrass intro guitar lick
Lesson ID: A0099

In this guitar lesson, I’ll teach y’all a nice bluegrass guitar lick you can use during the intro of a bluegrass song or a solo break. Check out this YouTube video (guitar lick starts at 15 seconds) to watch Rhonda Vincent’s guitar player play a bluegrass intro lick similar to the one we’re covering in this lesson. Also watch this YouTube video on the “Lick Sample” tab of this lesson post below.

This lick sounds fast and tricky, but I’d encourage all levels to learn this one because it’s not too bad if you slow it down to a reasonable pace. Relax your right hand grip and focus on gettin’ those clean pick strokes.

Guitar Lesson

Video Start Time Lesson Topic
00:00 min Lesson Overview
01:20 min Measures 1 & 2
04:12 min Measures 3 & 4
07:43 min Measures 5 & 6
10:29 min Measures 7 & 8
12:51 min Measure 9
14:07 min Practice Along with Me

Lick Sample

See how this style of lick can be used in a bluegrass song (lick starts around 15 seconds).

How to Mix Country Crosspicking with Your Strumming

country and bluegrass crosspicking patterns guitar lesson
Lesson ID: A0098

In this guitar lesson, we’ll show you some country and bluegrass crosspicking patterns that’ll help you improve your pick control. After we learn the patterns and discuss proper technique, we’ll go over how you can mix these patterns with your country strumming to spice up your rhythm guitar playing.

Video Start Time Lesson Topic
00:00 min Crosspicking Overview
01:25 min Crosspicking Pattern 1
03:31 min Pick Direction
04:21 min Crosspicking Pattern 2
05:17 min Proper Technique
06:47 min Changing Chords
08:07 min How to Mix Crosspicking with Country Strumming
15:38 min Shifting to Different Strings
16:48 min Intermediate Crosspicking/Strumming Rhythm

Country Bluegrass Chord Embellishments with Triplets

country bluegrass chord embellishments with triplets
Lesson 9 – Rhythm Fill Riffs and Lead Guitar Course
Lesson ID: A0097

Till now in this series, we’ve learned the 5th position scales in the key of G that are used to create country and bluegrass style fills. We combined all these scales into one “hybrid” scale and applied it to different chord progressions. Most of the riffs we studied were played with eighth notes and sixteenth notes.

In this lesson, we’re going to add a bit more rhythm variety to our country and bluegrass fills with triplets. I’ll give a brief overview of triplets in the first video below. If you’d like to read more about triplets, you can head over to our triplets music theory page. In the second video of this post, I’ll teach you six nice triplet style chord embellishments that you can play over the G, C, and D chords. In the third video, we’ll run through a chord progression example you can use for practice.

Overview

Video Start Time Lesson Topic
00:00 min Lesson Overview
03:14 min What’s a triplet?
06:09 min Using Triplets with Country and Bluegrass

Chord Embellishments

Video Start Time Lesson Topic
00:00 min Overview
00:28 min Sixteenth Note Country & Bluegrass Rhythm
01:51 min Syncopated Rhythm Breakdown
05:29 min G Chord Embellishments with Triplets
10:39 min C Chord Embellishments with Triplets
15:45 min D Chord Embellishments with Triplets
18:40 min Practice with a Chord Progression

Practice Along

Video Start Time Lesson Topic
00:00 min Progression – Rhythm Only
00:58 min Progression with the Chord Embellishments
04:00 min Practice Along with Me

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