Check out this fun and easy country/bluegrass style lick with Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman, aka Uncle D. Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with the step by step video instruction and you will be rockin’ this sweet lick tonight!
Introduction
How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I want to show you how to play this fun little, like a little, like you know I’ve heard it like in country music and Bluegrass, even like blues and stuff; pretty cool, pretty fun to play and it’s a great country/bluegrass lick that will help you to get down the hybrid picking technique.
So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.
So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this country/bluegrass lick.
Country/Bluegrass Lick
All right, so the way that I’ve got this country/bluegrass lick in the transcription is that it’s just a 12 bar, not a 12 bar rather, but a one four five chord progression in A, so it’s the same shape that we’re going to be doing, we’re just going to be moving it around. So the first one here we’re doing it’s based around an A. So what I’m doing here is I’m just going to take my first finger and I’m just going to barre it at the fifth fret across the first three strings. Then we’re going to pick the note on the G string and do a hammer-on with your second finger to the sixth fret and I’m using the guitar pick to do that. And then we’re going to follow that with this note here on the B string on the fifth fret, but what we’re going to do is we’re going to hybrid pick this. So I’m holding the guitar pick with just my thumb and my first finger and then that leaves my second and third fingers free here; so I use my second finger to pluck the B string. So again on the G string fifth fret first finger we’re gonna pick that with the pick as a down stroke and then do a hammer-on to the sixth fret also on the G string with my second finger and then we’re gonna pluck the B string where I’m barring here at the fifth fret with my second finger. So this is a as a triplet feel so it’s like one two three… All right, so I tried doing this before I would just start off with just starting on the G string; pick, hammer, pluck the B string, one, two, three and just work on that one, two, three, one, two, three… All right so that’s like half of this country/bluegrass lick, so what we’re going to do is the first time… we do it just like how we did and then the second time we start off the same way, we pick the fifth fret of the G string, do a hammer to the sixth and now we’re going to pluck the high E string also at the fifth fret; because again our first finger is baring here. Now when I do that I use my third finger; so my second finger is taking care of the B string and my third finger is taking care of the high E string and then we’re using the pick on the G string. So one, two, three, one, two, three and then it just repeats… All right, so with this an easy way to be able to use this, because like I said it’s movable, you can move it wherever you want. Right here we’re playing A. So what it is we’ve got right here we’ve got our C sharp, so this is our major third and then here we’ve got our E and then our A. So this is just like we’re playing just the top and it’s like an inverted triad, but that first note we picked there is actually the minor third, the flat third. So we’re picking that hammering into the major and then going so it’s like going flat three, three, five, flat three, three, one… So that’s what makes it just sound really cool right over the top of the chord. So I can totally hear this being played over like a… have a rhythm like that kind of kind of a Bluegrass thing… All right so if you think of it like that as triplets and it’s going to be like one yell-ow, two yell-ow, so that’s half of a measure, so you do that’s a whole measure right there… We’re gonna follow this in a one four five; so if our one chord is four A and then our four chord is D. So what we need to do is move up a fourth and a really simple way to do this if you know what the chord is, wherever that note is on the high E string, so in this case we want a D, so the tenth fret of the high E is D. So I’m going to move up and barre at the tenth fret. I’m just going to move that shape up and now we’re going to be picking ten, hammering to 11 and then 10th fret here for the B and the high E string, same picking technique obviously… All right then for the five chord it’s E, because it’s a whole step up, so easy enough, we can just move this up as an E, but remember here’s your root notes for this so it just makes it easy to be able to navigate it around. If you do not know where the notes are on your high E string you should. I’m a big believer in if you know where all the notes are on your E string and your A string then you can find all your roots for barre chords, scales, arpeggios, everything and then eventually you just start memorizing where they are everywhere; but make it a point to really work on knowing where the notes are on your low E string because you know, same notes on your high E string and then the A string as well… So with this you could just use that like as something in a solo to kind of highlight a chord and then you know do some other licks with it… there’s all kinds of stuff you can do with this. I think that sounds really good and it’s a really good country/bluegrass lick for developing this technique…
So now let’s focus on the right hand for this country/bluegrass lick a little bit here. We don’t want it where you’re pulling away like that, you want it to be all really self-contained right here, just really close… So I’m using my palm, I’m kind of resting on these lower strings so that way they’re just muted and they’re not just going to start, you know making noise and stuff, it keeps it all much tighter…
Conclusion
All right, so there you have it, a pretty cool country/bluegrass lick, not too terribly difficult, hybrid picking a little lick kind of… call it an exercise too I guess, but it does really sound good outlining the chord. So if you like this country/bluegrass lick lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this country/bluegrass lick or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
