Guitar Solos – Page 10 – Country Guitar Online

Cripple Creek Traditional Guitar Breaks

April 13, 2025December 16, 2018 by Devin

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Lesson 8 – Bluegrass Guitar Solo Improvising Course

Course Outline Previous Lesson Next Lesson

Lesson ID: A0162

This is Part One of a two-part lesson series where we’ll work on lead guitar improvising in a country & bluegrass style. In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn how to play two guitar breaks for “Cripple Creek” using the song’s traditional melody.

Then, in the Part Two of this “Cripple Creek” lesson series (coming soon), I’ll show you several different ways that you can use bluegrass guitar licks and crosspicking to modify the traditional melody to make your guitar solo breaks sound more interesting. Both of the guitar lessons in this two-part series will help you add that hard-driving bluegrass sound to your bluegrass guitar breaks.

Overview

Melody 1

Video 1 – Playthrough with Tablature

Video 2 – Full Breakdown

Video Start Time	Lesson Topic
00:00 min	Breakdown – Measures 1 through 5
05:35 min	Breakdown – Measures 6 through 9
07:31 min	Recap – A Part
08:12 min	Breakdown – Measures 10 through 13
11:09 min	Breakdown – Measures 14 through 17
12:05 min	Practice the Entire Break with Me
13:46 min	Your Homework

Melody 2

Video 1 – Playthrough with Tablature

Video 2 – Full Breakdown

08:02 minBreakdown – Measures 10 through 13

Video Start Time	Lesson Topic
00:00 min	Listen to the Entire Break
00:50 min	Breakdown – Measures 1 through 5
05:30 min	Breakdown – Measures 6 through 9
10:44 min	Breakdown – Measures 14 through 17
12:44 min	Practice the Entire Break with Me
14:53 min	Backing Track Practice Tip

Backing Track

Member Content

Guitar Melody Tablature Guitar Lick Library Woodtone Strings

Brown’s Ferry Blues

April 13, 2025November 9, 2018 by Devin

Lesson ID: A0161

“Brown’s Ferry Blues” was originally written in the early 1900s by The Delmore Brothers. Over the course of their careers, the Delmores wrote more than one thousand songs, including “Brown’s Ferry Blues”, “Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar”, and “Fifteen Miles from Birmingham”. The Delmore Brothers grew up in a musical home as their mother, Mollie Delmore, wrote and sang gospel songs for their church. The Brothers blended gospel-style harmonies with the faster paced guitar parts of traditional folk music and blues to help create the still-emerging country genre.

In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn a guitar arrangement in the style of “Brown’s Ferry Blues” by The Delmore Brothers. This particular arrangement is also inspired by Doc Watson and Billy Strings. We’ll cover an intermediate guitar break, an easier guitar break for the beginner country & bluegrass pickers, and the rhythm guitar progression. After you master the guitar arrangements, practice your picking over the backing track in the key of G.

Overview

Intermediate Break

Video 1 – Intermediate Break Playthrough with Tablature

Video 2 – Intermediate Break Full Breakdown

Easy Break

Video 1 – Easy Break Playthrough with Tablature

Video 2 – Easy Break Full Breakdown

Rhythm Breakdown

Video Start Time	Lesson Topic
00:00 min	Chord Progression Overview
00:56 min	Instrumental Break Chord Progression
02:27 min	Chord Progression to Backup Vocals
05:09 min	Chords and Lyrics Example
12:23 min	Strumming Pattern 1
14:57 min	Strumming Pattern 2
17:44 min	Chord Transition Bass Line Walk 1
21:09 min	Chord Transition Bass Line Walk 2
23:36 min	Chord Transition Bass Line Walk 3
26:23 min	“Brown’s Ferry Blues” Song Structure

Backing Track

Intermediate Break TAB Easy Break TAB Rhythm Progression & Tips Bass Line Walks TAB Woodtone Strings

Using Country & Bluegrass Licks to Build a Solo

April 13, 2025October 19, 2018 by Devin

how-to-improvise-with-bluegrass-guitar-licks-a0160

Lesson 7 – Bluegrass Guitar Solo Improvising Course

Course Outline Previous Lesson Next Lesson

Lesson ID: A0160

In the previous guitar lesson in this course, I showed you five of the most common ways to build a guitar solo and we talked about several techniques that will help you improvise better guitar solos. We also discussed the first type of solo in detail — the melodic guitar solo.

In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn about the second type of guitar solo where we’ll play stock country & bluegrass licks over the top of a standard chord progression. First, I’ll teach you four stock country and bluegrass guitar licks. We’ll talk about how to use these licks to play a hard-driving guitar solo in a country and bluegrass style. Then, I’ll show you some more of my favorite lead guitar improvising techniques. As you’re studying the concepts in this lesson, be sure to also check out the Bluegrass Lick Library and Guitar Scale Charts that we have available at Country Guitar Online. After you complete this lesson, practice your country & bluegrass improvising over the backing track to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” in the key of G. Lesson tablature is available for download below the video.

Overview

Playthrough with Tablature

Guitar Solo & Improvising Tips

Backing Track

Member Content

Practice Solo Tablature Guitar Lick Library Woodtone Strings

Common Types of Country & Bluegrass Guitar Solos

April 13, 2025October 4, 2018 by Devin

will-the-circle-be-unbroken-guitar-solo-lesson-a0159

Lesson 6 – Bluegrass Guitar Solo Improvising Course

Course Outline Previous Lesson Next Lesson

Lesson ID: A0159

In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn some of the most common ways to play country and bluegrass lead guitar solos. First, I’ll show you five of the best ways to create a guitar solo and we’ll talk about different techniques you can use to improvise better lead guitar solos. Next, we’ll get some ear training practice while we learn the basic guitar melody for “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”. Finally, I’ll show you some nice ways to transform a basic guitar solo melody into a fancier country and bluegrass solo — these techniques will work for soloing over just about every country and bluegrass song. After you master the solos, practice your lead guitar improvising over our “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” backing track in the key of G. Also check out our collection of bluegrass guitar licks for some more lead guitar improvising ideas.

Overview

Types of Solos

Playthrough with Tablature

Video 1 – Basic Melody Solo Playthrough with Tablature

Try to use this video to do some ear training…play the video, look away from the screen, and see if you can pick out the melody on your guitar. Don’t worry about learning the basic melody exactly as I play it — as long as you’re close, you’ll be ready to learn more improvising tips under the “Extra Improvising Tips” lesson tab just above this video.

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Video 2 – Fancier Melody Solo Playthrough with Tablature

In this video, we’re going to make the basic solo melody sound a little fancier by adding extra melody notes and by adding a couple of tasteful bluegrass guitar licks. Under the “Extra Improvising Tips” lesson tab, we’ll discuss the fancier melody solo in more detail.

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Extra Improvising Tips

Extra Improvising Tips

In this video, we’ll talk about some different ways you can transform a basic melody into an interesting country & bluegrass guitar solo. We’ll also talk about how to use bluegrass guitar licks in a solo. After you watch this video, try using some of the bluegrass licks in our Bluegrass Lick Library to improvise guitar solos over our bluegrass backing track for “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”.

Member Content

Backing Track

Member Content

Basic Melody TAB Fancier Melody TAB Guitar Lick Library Woodtone Strings