Licks and Tricks

This is part two of a mini lesson series on playing lead guitar in a country and bluegrass style. In part one, you learned how to play two guitar breaks for “Cripple Creek” using the song’s traditional melody. In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn eight extremely useful flatpicking guitar licks and I’ll show you three easy ways to use these flatpicking licks to spice up your country and bluegrass guitar solos. The concepts in this lead guitar lesson will help you improvise a hard-driving bluegrass guitar break over “Cripple Creek” and these concepts can also be applied to a ton of other country and bluegrass songs.

• Overview
• Using the Licks
• Flatpicking Licks
• Backing Track

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

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
• Extra Improvising Tips
• Backing Track