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Licks and Tricks

Best Bluegrass Flatpicking Techniques

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the best bluegrass flatpicking techniques
Lesson ID: A0057

It’s amazing how fast flatpickers Tony Rice, Bryan Sutton, David Grisham, and Dan Tyminski can pick on the guitar. If you’re anything like me, you’re always trying to pick faster and with more precision to keep up with these legends. In this lesson, we’ll go over some must-know bluegrass flatpicking techniques that will really help you increase your speed and improve your accuracy! If you like this lesson, you might also like our Bluegrass Lick Library.

Video Start Time Lesson Topic
00:00 min Lesson Overview
00:33 min Pick Direction for Building Speed
02:24 min Your Choice of Guitar Pick
03:19 min Two Important Pick Angles
05:31 min Relax Your Wrist but Play with a Heavy Hand

2nd Position G Minor Pentatonic Licks

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2nd position minor pentatonic scale country lick
Lesson ID: A0056

We’ve already covered several licks within the 1st position of the G Minor pentatonic scale. In the lesson videos below, we’ll be moving up the guitar neck to learn some licks built around the 2nd position of the G Minor pentatonic scale. The solo in the beginning of this video is an example of how you can combine each of these minor pentatonic scale licks to create one long guitar solo.

Guitar Lick 1

Guitar Lick 2

Guitar Lick 3

Guitar Lick TablatureWoodtone Strings

Bryan Sutton Style Sweep Picking

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bryan sutton style sweep picking
Lesson ID: A0053

Bryan Sutton is definitely one of the best flatpickers alive today. He plays with a uniquely smooth tone even when he’s picking super fast, and one of the ways he does this is with sweep picking. In this lesson we’ll go over an awesome bluegrass sweep picking lick that Bryan Sutton uses regularly in his flatpicking.

Lesson Video

Guitar Tablature

Bryan Sutton Sweep Picking_Tab 1

1st Position G Minor Pentatonic Licks

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1st position minor pentatonic licks how to play lead guitar using pentatonic scales
Lesson ID: A0052

In these guitar lesson videos, you’ll learn some country and bluegrass guitar licks built around the 1st position of the G minor pentatonic scale. Each week, we’ll post new country guitar licks built around various positions of the pentatonic scales and the blues scales. The goal in all of these lessons is for you to keep adding to your bag of licks so you can create the foundation you need to play country and bluegrass lead guitar all the way up and down the fretboard.

Guitar Lick 1

Guitar Lick 2

Guitar Lick 3

Guitar Lick TablatureWoodtone Strings