Description
In this week’s guitar lesson, you’ll learn how to play a solo Bluegrass composition with several classic Norman Blake style licks. This one is great for working on speed and accuracy of your left and right hands.
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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very cool. picking up something new every time I watch. acoustic or electric.
I would love to learn how to play this
Awesome Brian. Yep, this one is going to take some practice for sure. I need all the practice I can get to help with speed and this is a good one!
Thanks Brian!
This a great lesson! I can’t wait to work on this. Thank you. Also, just curious, what model Martin you are using on this lesson?
‘It’s a 1946 Martin 0-18’ (Brian’s words not mine – from the Youtube vid)
Been into flatpicking a long time. This is going straight to my favorites.
I just joined and will enjoy some flatpicking. Your teaching is so clear, concise and helpful. Looking forward to learning a lot from you.
Brian aka Billy Strings! Nice Bluegrass lesson that will be fun to work on.
That’s quite a workout! I’d love to learn it. Thanks Brian
Nice lesson and great exercises for picking and learning licks. Should be a lot of fun. Thanks
I love the double stop licks… with the right muting I can get them to sound like funk stabs.
Wow, this is a special lesson, Brian. Hooked already. You had me at the intro and Norman.
It was a few years back you introduced me to Doc Watson. His voice reminded you of your grandfather. That stuck with me. I’d create a music library centered around Doc, Norman, Tony, Billy and many other bluegrass players. There are many other genres I enjoy listening to, but this one I’m particularly thankful to you for sparking a deeper interest in Doc, Norman and Tony. Those are the musical memories that stick with you. Thanks.
Brian, Really like this for a change.Keep them coming. Dave
Yes sir, another Blue Grass composition. These are by far my favorite type of lessons. The different licks that come out in these pieces are what makes me a better guitar player overall. I wear my strings out playing this type of stuff.
I enjoy the Bluegrass tunes and the runs that get you from one chord to the next. good stuff
I have to admit, I am not really a Bluegrass fan, but I watched the lesson out of interest. I must say, some of the licks are fantastic, and it really looks like fun to play. Do you like Irish and Celtic music Brian?
I for one love Irish and Celtic!
Great song, great lesson. Thanks Brian
Great lesson, lots of meat on the bone, love it!
Winner, winner, flatpickin’ dinner!
Intimidating at first, but there are tons of great ideas in here. Thanks to lessons like these I have been able to enhance my open string chords so that they are fun to play and enjoyable to hear. Too many lessons like this would be too much but you bring in the bluegrass just enough to make it useful and enjoyable.
I really enjoy these lessons and am looking forward to when I can play again. I fell playing soccer in June and smashed my fretting hand ending up with mallet finger. I’m trying to rehab the hand now and get some flexibility back after spending the summer with a finger splinted. Thanks Brian for providing such motivation.
a huge lesson Brian. full of ideas to use in any style of playng. higher than my technical level but not unreachable…and that encourages me to go on.
your teaching is great. keep it going
I find it a really interesting lesson and I’ve been practicing all afternoon.
However, I’m having trouble with the left-right hand coordination. It sounds like a big jumble of music: I can’t manage to play the rhythm together with the notes properly.
When I play fingerpicking it works much better, but then I get tangled up at, for example, bar 9. I have to play all the low notes with my thumb, which doesn’t really work well.
Could you give me a few tips on how to play this properly ? I’m an older beginner 😀
Great lesson Brian. More like this anytime you want would be great too.
I appreciate the challenge Brian. Thanks!
I’m a blues guy but I think if you can play bluegrass you can play anything. As I’m getting better I need lessons like this to get better. Love it Brian.
I have also been wanting to learn this kind of thing. The rhythm is easy enough (down, down, up) until the change comes from the G and my picking hand goes out of whack. The picking hand doesn’t change, right?
Very cool, I’m trying to survive joining a local bluegrass jam I just joined, but I am struggling with how fast it is and trying to work out when the chord is going to change, so far I’ve passed on when it’s my turn to solo but will hopefully work up to my own little run, and this certainly helps build confidence.
Good heavens!
What a lesson, certainly a months work here not just a week 🙈
Man Brian you really tore up. It was great. I grew on bluegrass and was born and raised in Chattanooga, TN where Norman lives. I learned to play bluegrass in my teens by listening to Norman, Doc and Tony. I would record from the LP to a tape dec I had that would slow it down to 50 % speed to be able to get the fast runs. Now at 71 I don’t have the speed but I’m gonna give this great lesson a go and see if I can pull it off. I’ve been playing mostly electric blues that you’ve taught me but this is really inspiring and can’t wait to get to work on it. My Eastman copy of a D-18 needs a setup first as it’s new. Thanks so much for this great lesson!
Bonjour Brian,
Leçon très intéressante. Maintenant je commence à comprendre qu’on peut connecter les différentes formes d’accords avec des notes communes, des notes de passages et les gammes en restant conjoint et dans la même tessiture.
Brian, you have excelled yourself yet again and thanks for the musician recommendation. This bloke Norman Blake is fantastic! Oddly, despite the fact that I’ve rarely listened to bluegrass music, when I looked him up on Spotify, selected the artist and played all the songs that came up I found I recognised more than half of them – and not just the tunes but the exact renditions! I can’t think where I’ve heard them before but they’re in my musical brain somewhere and yet his name was entirely unfamiliar. Great lesson and great recommendation – thanks
Thanks for decoding the bluegrass. I agree that even if one doesn’t particularly like bluegrass (including me, kind of), it has those elements of jazz, blues and country that are useful.
Great lesson Brian. I do not listen to Bluegrass but really enjoy noodling the licks involved.
What I really appreciate about all your lessons is that there is always so much to learn and practice and you explain the why, as well as the how.
This will take me a long time to get decent at and I will get right to it as soon as I complete EP531 – another fun and challenging lesson!
Brian, thanks for this great lesson. I’ve been a fan of Norman Blake since the mid 1970’s. Norman and his wife Nancy used to make appearances at the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival in Winfield, Kansas. I just want to thank you for mentioning Norman and hope some of you pickers out there will check out his albums.
Thanks Brian, super stuff. Really delighted to get my fingers into this one. Add it to the set of eight other pieces of yours I play daily. So gratifying to see and hear the fingers becoming more alacritous and the nuance and subtlety of sound advancing with the physical ability. Will be running this hard for a couple of weeks and see if I can have it fast in the heart and mind by then.
Oh, I’m not a fan of Blue Grass.
Cool number, but it’s been a while since there was an electric guitar rock number with backing track — might there be one on the horizon?
Brian, I found the speed exercise at the end of the lesson very interesting, I’ve been using that same technique for years except I would end it with a major Barr chord and say it out loud. I also incorporated a simple three chord tune just to make it a little more interesting. Great lesson I’ve always been a Norman Blake fan.
Alrighty then, just the lesson I need!
This less has some meat in it yah love it
Brian…. I appreciate all of your lessons…. however……this one is my favorite. These licks are great.! I am a “bluegrasser” but like the blues . I love the explanations you give in your lessons. They are so helpful in actually learning the guitar fretboard, major, minors and pentatonic scales….. and not just memorizing …..which I was stuck on for the longest time. Thank you so much.!!!
Great lesson Brian!
A couple of lessons ago, you taught the double stops from the ‘E’ shape. Applying that to this lesson at approximately the 20 minute mark, it looks like the Norman double stop lick is going from an F, to a C, and then back to G. Very cool!
Man this is my favorite in a long time! Already to the end of the first video. Just have to get it clean and faster!
The looping software doesn’t work.
I love this ist a great way to improve your ear to the notes and its great fun
Thanks for a brilliant lesson Brian
Blues licks a plenty. This is a great one. Thank you Brian!
Active Melody is the best and these lessons have really helped me . The issue I am running into now is trying to go back to old lessons I have done for refreshers . There are so many lessons its hard to find the ones I have already done sometimes 😂. I have started doing a screen shot when I start a lesson now for future reference . Spent an hour looking for one the other day and never ending up finding it lol.
I know what you mean, because these compositions don’t have a formal unique song name, we are left with the EPXXX code only. You can mark lessons as favorites or do your own breakdown analysis in any note taking app like Evernote or Onenote or anything similar. I still can’t find one that has certain licks that I remember, but cannot find which lesson I learned if from. I may look for it today again since my fingers need a break.
I started organizing my favorites by year the lesson came out but in my personal notes, it is easy to see the dates I worked on the lesson as well. You can do that directly in the favorites by making up your own collections by year or just do it all in your notes app.
Don’t be too quick to jump around from lesson to lesson. Take a lesson you connect with and dig in so you get the rhythm down below your personal working tempo. Always practice new licks or ideas slower than you can play them currently and you will eventually be able to play them up to speed or at least close to it.
I have been coming back to this lesson ever since it first came out because I love the sound of the composition and I have already gained quite a few skills already so it wasn’t that difficult for me now, it would be if I was brand new. This lesson or any lesson that might seem difficult at first is always conquered by practicing in time slowly over and over with good technique. I usually do it one or 2 bars at a time.
Great lesson! Taking it slowly, but learning much. Reminds me of the style of a guitarist from yesteryear by the name of Steve Goodman. You may be too young to remember him. Thank you for these lessons!!
What a fantastic bluegrass lesson. I have put this challenge lesson off for while. I am glad I got back to it again. As always, I learn so much from you. Thank you so much. You make guitar playing so exciting and enjoyable.
It’s a really great piece. So many fantastic riffs to work with.
This has been a great lesson for me Brian. I really like the way the lesson is broken down. It’s allowed me to learn each “section” and build on it. Most importantly I’m adding many of these licks to my Friday jam that I run here in Green Valley, AZ. We play different genres but a lot of bluegrass because we have a bunch of mandolins and dobro players. This lesson has helped give me more confidence and helps me improvise more comfortably. It’s not an easy lesson. I’ve been working on it for weeks. But it’s well worth it!
Thank you!