Active Melody

Learn to play blues guitar.

Improve your speed and accuracy with this fun Bluegrass Rag. Guitar Lesson – EP590

Description

In this week’s guitar lesson, you’ll learn how to play a standalone Bluegrass Rag composition that was written to help you improve your speed and accuracy by the inclusion of several short lead runs that are played using alternate picking. It’s a lot more fun to have a song to work towards than to sit and practice boring finger exercises!

Part 1 - Free Guitar Lesson

Part 2 - For Premium Members

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Slow Walkthrough

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Video Tablature Breakdown

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Comments

  4. Robert Burlin says

    Man I love Fridays. Would you do an arrangement lesson where the song you write has an Intro a few verses a bridge a chorus an ending and a cool soul gripping hook that just cannot be forgotten after being heard? I start each lesson at 50 or 60 percent speed and rarely get up to 100 percent before the next lesson. And I practice these tunes for hours everyday over and over and over again.

  8. RIFF DIGGER says

    Always stayed away from Bluegrass due to the speed and accuracy required. Until this lesson- you made it fun and took the mystery out of it.
    Focusing on Blues Rock pentatonic and arrangements this is a refreshing pathway and achievement, working up alternate picking with the open strings. Thanks, Brian!

    • charjo says

      Hi Lars,
      Starting a given major scale on each note of the scale creates the major modes. Starting on C would be C Ionian (the C major scale), starting on D is D Dorian (a minor scale with a major 6), E phyrgian (a minor scale with a flat 2), F lydian (a major scale with a #4), G mixolydian (major scale with a flat 7), A Aeolian (the relative A minor scale) and B Locrian (a minor scale with a flat 2 and dimished 5th).
      John

  12. T-Bish says

    Playing bluegrass humbles you as a guitar player. I love when Doc tells the story during a live recording of Deep River Blues that after 10 years of practicing he was able to get the lead note in. Even for him, it took him a long time to learn something but he stuck with it. Boy, I’m glad he did. Motivation for us all.

    Playing a clean tune can take months (more like years for me). This kind of lesson gives you the right bite size nuggets to work with. Even if we don’t play the tune at your tempo, the notes sound great. Maybe that’s what some of us enjoy are the sequence and sound of the individual notes you come up with each week. Pure happiness.

  15. Harry B says

    This is right up my alley. I love bluegrass even though at my age (88) the speed is hard to keep up with.

    Brian wrote a week ago something that registered with me. He said, “There are no bum notes! A good player knows how to make a bad note good. It’s not the note you start with, it’s the one that it leads to. You can always correct it by making it resolve to a “right” note, then it’s part of the story . . . if you finish telling the story, you’ll see that they were leading somewhere.”

    It gave me a whole new perspective on mistakes. I’m going to quit worrying about “bad”notes and concentrating on the note that I need to resolve to.

  21. Patrick J. G says

    Another great, interesting and well taught lesson. I am one of those that would go up and down the fret board . No more. You are so right that making it into a little tune or song is a lot more fun. Playing and learning, can’t get any better than that. I have been a member for 2 1/2 years and still get excited to see the new weekly lesson. You do a fantastic job teaching and you look like you really enjoy doing it .

  27. RIFF DIGGER says

    Good exercise. If you took the Rag swing feel away. It would be like a Bach piece, perhaps even more complex. Lots of notes. With the Slice Tab Crawler it’s also a good sight-reading exercise with the variable tempo/speed control. Very melodic. I like it.

  30. Thornton W says

    I attend a weekend acoustic jam night where bluegrass is a major theme, so this lesson was very helpful. I’d love to learn more bluegrass riffs in “G”, as that seems to be the dominant key used. Thanks!

  33. Mark says

    Great lesson and I have been wanting to learn some Bluegrass basics to get started.

    When you went to the F scale over F, could you have also called that C Mixolydian? You landed on the F note so is that why you called it F instead of C Mixolydian? I am still digesting your modes lesson and got a lot out of both of these.

    Thank you, Mark

  35. Martin P says

    Great lesson Brian. Many thanks.

    Loving learning this one, especially the licks.

    Interestingly, when you play the licks they look difficult but when you explain them and I then play them they are not difficult.

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