In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn how to play a classic country intro in the style of Merle Haggard along with some nice country fill riffs that’ll spice up your country rhythm guitar. First, we’ll work through the intro with tablature. Then, we’ll talk about the guitar scales you should learn to get this classic Merle Haggard sound in the key of E. After that, we’ll go over two rhythm progressions in the style of Merle Haggard that are loaded with classic country bass line walks and fills.
| Video Start Time | Lesson Topic |
|---|---|
| 00:00 min | Playthrough with Tablature |
| 01:42 min | Full Breakdown of the Intro |
| Video Start Time | Lesson Topic |
|---|---|
| 00:00 min | Scale Charts |
| 02:28 min | Notes Used to Play the Intro |
| Video Start Time | Lesson Topic |
|---|---|
| 00:00 min | Progression 1 Overview |
| 00:21 min | Playthrough with Tablature |
| 01:23 min | Classic Country Strumming Pattern |
| 03:57 min | Line 1 Breakdown with Country Fill |
| 06:31 min | Line 2 Breakdown with Another Country Fill |
| 09:19 min | Line 3 Breakdown with More Country Fills |
| 10:54 min | Line 4 Breakdown |
| 12:00 min | Practice Along with Me |
| Video Start Time | Lesson Topic |
|---|---|
| 00:00 min | Progression 2 Overview |
| 00:32 min | Playthrough with Tablature |
| 01:27 min | Line 1 Breakdown with Country Fill |
| 02:14 min | Line 2 Breakdown with Another Country Fill |
| 04:54 min | Line 3 Breakdown with More Country Fills |
| 06:50 min | Line 4 Breakdown |
| 08:00 min | Practice Along with Me |
Practice with Merle Haggard
Practice your classic country strumming and fills over the song “Fightin’ Side of Me” by Merle Haggard using the embedded player from Spotify. We’d highly recommend using Spotify for online radio. If you don’t have a Spotify account, click here to sign up free with your Facebook account or with an e-mail address.
New lesson! By popular demand, we’ve added some more Merle Haggard style rhythm and fills. Hope y’all like this one! More lessons on the way soon so send in your lesson requests https://countryguitaronline.com/request-a-guitar-lesson/
Once again, excellent lesson Devin!!
Your teaching and video quality is A+. Thanks for another fantastic lesson — one of my favorites yet.
Just started the intro and notice the up sequence interesting,, going to get into this!
Love it! I’ll look forward to mastering the intro this week. Interesting riff. I’m really enjoying your Merle Haggard lessons. Nothing better than that old country feel!
New website feature! We just added a sticky video feature for all the laptop/desktop users…click play and scroll down…video should stick to the top right of the screen. Hope y’all like all the site improvements we’ve been adding lately, and we have a few more features we’ll be rolling out soon that I’m excited about.
Anyways, thanks everyone for continuing to support my lessons here at CGO! Couldn’t be doing any of this without y’all tuning in.
Have a great week –
Devin
Such a great lesson. I’m always so impressed with your teaching and it is much better than face to face lessons all the way. Learning a lot!
Hi Devin. Great thanks for this fantabulous site. I just love how I get to learn all those great guitar sounds in an organized way, that my late father use to make when I was still a kid. As a teen I also grew up with the sounds of the Eagles, Alabama etc. Any chance that country-rock will be included in this site or a separate site?
Kind regards
Charles
Thanks Charles! Glad you’re enjoying the site! Some country-rock lessons would be cool. I’ll keep that in mind for the future. I’d probably want to add them to this site…maybe in the form of another course after I wrap up the courses I have going now. Would you want to learn it on electric or acoustic? I’ve been all about acoustic lately but might include some electric guitar lessons at some point if there’s interest.
Hi Devin.
That would be exciting. Count me in please!!
I really love the current acoustic lessons. It’s amazing. But electric guitar country-rock lessons would be fantastic too.
I’m budgeting to buy myself a Fender Strat/ Telly – American original later on.
Kind regards
Charles