In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn a few country guitar riffs in the style of Charlie Daniels. We’ll also use the chord progressions from “Long Haired Country Boy” by Charlie Daniels to practice some country strumming patterns and chord embellishments. Overall, this is a great lesson for developing that outlaw country sound on acoustic guitar.
Important Note: Everything that we cover in this lesson will be in Drop D Tuning D-A-D-G-B-E.
In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn how to play a variation of the song “Nothing To It” written by Doc Watson in the style of Billy Strings. This song is loaded with some classic Doc Watson style guitar licks that you can use when you’re improvising guitar solos in the key of C. The guitar riffs and melody line walks in this song use some unusual note combinations which will really help push your flatpicking to the next level.
If this song is a bit out of your comfort zone, we recommend trying to learn it at a very slow pace. Focus on getting clean pick strokes, relax the grip on your guitar pick, and pick each note softly. This practice method will help you build the right technique and muscle memory — your picking speed and volume will develop over time. Overall, this is a great song for working on flatpicking technique!
In this guitar lesson, we’ll take a look at a flatpicking arrangement in the style of “Fishin’ Creek Blues” by Dan Crary. As you learn this tune, you’ll see how Dan Crary uses some unusual note combinations in his flatpicking. Try to commit some of his licks to memory and use them when you’re improvising over other songs in the key of D. Overall this is a great lesson for working on pick control and letting notes ring out to create nice overtones that will smooth out your playing.
In this guitar lesson, we’ll take a close look at a flatpicking break in the style of Kenny Smith. This is a fairly advanced guitar break that will really help you build up some strength in your fretting hand. The hardest part is the “double pull-off” that happens a couple times throughout the arrangement. Before you begin, you’ll need to tune your A string a whole step down to the note G for a tuning of EGDGBE. We also have our capo on the 4th fret. Good luck!
Be sure to out Kenny Smith and his wife Amanda Smith on their website kenny-amandasmith.com where you can learn about their upcoming live shows.
If you like the sound of my guitar in this lesson, I’m playing on a Martin D-18 with an ambertone finish and I’m using Woodtone Country Series acoustic guitar strings.
