In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn three easy fill riffs that you can use to spice up your country & bluegrass rhythm guitar. Each fill riff is one measure long and you can use them in almost any chord progression in the key of G to replace one measure of strumming. These riffs sound especially great over slower country & bluegrass songs.
Here’s a classic country chicken pickin’ lick in the key of A. That first bend with your middle finger is pretty tricky — make sure you bend with your middle finger without bending the 1st and 2nd strings with your pointer/ring fingers. After you learn the chicken pickin’ lick, practice it with the backing track at the end of this video.
| Video Start Time | Lesson Topic |
|---|---|
| 00:00 min | Listen to the guitar lick |
| 00:14 min | Lick played twice at slow tempo with TAB |
| 00:55 min | Backing track practice |
In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn a “muddy” country guitar riff. To play this riff, you’ll need to tune your guitar to drop D tuning (DADGBE), and check out the pick direction symbols in the TAB as you’re learning the riff.
The guitar in this video is a PRS SE P20 acoustic with a tobacco sunburst finish. Definitely worth checking out this guitar if you’re looking for a nice parlor acoustic. I love the tone and it’s super lightweight and fun to play.
If you like the tone of the strings on this guitar, they’re the new Woodtone nickel-infused acoustic guitar strings!
Hope y’all enjoy the lesson! 🤘🤠🤘
| Video Start Time | Lesson Topic |
|---|---|
| 00:00 min | Listen to the Drop D Riff |
| 00:23 min | Playthrough with Tablature |
| 01:31 min | Full Breakdown of the Riff |
Western swing music began in the dance halls of small towns throughout the lower Great Plains in the late 1920s and early 1930s, growing from house parties and ranch dances where fiddlers and guitarists played for dancers. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Western Swing became very popular as a subgenre of American country music. Over the years, Western swing has been a huge influence on honky-tonk, rockabilly, and country rock. It also popularized the following in country music: use of electrically amplified instruments, use of drums to reinforce a strong backbeat, expanded instrumentation, a “honky tonk beat”, and jazz/blues style solos.
In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn how to play a slow western swing guitar solo in the key of D. We’ll work through the guitar solo with tablature one line at a time. After you learn the solo, practice along with the Western swing backing track in the key of D. Guitar tablature is available below the lesson video. Hope y’all like this one!
