Bluegrass lead playing...

I started going to my local bluegrass jam. I am one of 3 guitar players there. But there are 4 banjo's and 3 mandolins in the group.

Ive noticed that the banjo & mando players seem to know the lead parts for an almost endless amount of songs. And even if it is a song they dont know, they quickly figure it out in time to play along to the song. They can play FAST too, the roll tastic banjo playing in particularly impressive.

Now I have noticed the two other guitarists never take leads, one a woman, sings while playing very tight embellished rhythm guitar and the other guy, although he seems to be experienced with a very expensive instrument, he plays straight chords.

And then there is me, furiously trying to learn blue grass leads from a DVD for a few months. I can play Old Joe Clark, Blackberry Blossom and Whiskey Before Breakfast as what would be a fairly fast tempo electric guitar solo. But in bluegrass terms, EXTREMELY SLOWLY. And never ever without mistakes, it boggles my mind how you can play both fast without mistakes, especially under the pressure of group playing. It feels like it will be years till I can play them consistently enough to play lead in the group.

Now this has me wondering, is there some kind of magic with Banjos and Mandolins that makes them easier for playing leads? The banjo especially sounds super impressive with all the rolls. If they are just has hard as guitar, it would mean that I have some truly impressive players in the group.

i took to banjo much easier than guitar and therefore (a vast minority opinion) believe it is easier to play than guitar.

that being said, it doesn't mean there aren't some "truly impressive" players in the jam. at well established bluegrass jams there usually is, the style of music (and the challenge of it) attracting such people in numbers, perhaps, above average for most music.

but, DON'T BE DISCOURAGED !! the folks you're jamming with love having you there trying to learn what they know, as long as you don't get in the "big dog's" way when they really want to run. just stay loose, leave room, and HAVE FUN !! that is what it is all about in bluegrass !

I picked up the banjo when i was 14 or so, and started the guitar a year earlier or so. I didnt have much trouble strumming guitar along to songs and bluegrass stuff. But i always struggled....even now with lead flatpicking stuff on guitar. Its one flatpick to pluck the flury of notes one at a time, and a fast left hand vrs 3 combined fingers to pluck the notes and a more relaxed left hand ( banjo). So im alot better lead player on the banjo because i find it easier to do a banjo 3 finger roll than use a flatpick at 100mph. This isnt the case for everybody by no means, but it was for ME. A banjo is easier to chord and takes little effort and pressure to note. But its using the 3 finger picks in scruggs style that people struggle with. I caught on to it quick and felt natural to me. Sadly, ive practicly not touched my banjo in ages and focused on guitar flatpicking. I struggle with the flury of eight notes all over the neck and using one flatpick to ring them out. Sometimes i wonder if i shouldnt just go back to whats more natural to me, the banjo rolls. But the final solution to our problem is pretty simple.....practice practice practice!!!!

There's an old saying in Bluegrass. I can play 3 chords and know where to put a capo. Most jams I go to 90% of the guitar players only play rythm with a few licks thrown in. Lester Flatt wasn't a lead guy.

Truth is folks like Clarence White and Doc Watson were almost 'blasphemous' to inject lead acoustic guitar into bluegrass- but listening to these two guys was a great foundation for me to flatpick bluegrass style

edit: though I will never have 1/1000th of their talent, just listening to their music (for many years) some stuff in terms of tone and phrasing, maybe, rubs off :wink:

I play bluegrass guitar and mandolin. I'm avg speed at best on both. I realized a long time ago that you don't need an all-the-notes-you-can-get-in-a-bag-for-a-buck approach. My mind just can't think that fast. Watch Cody Kilby one day. He's like a flippin robot- he's so fast, methodical and accurate.
I use a more sparse approach- a few faster licks, but a more-is-less mentality works better for me. Oh, and trilling on the mandolin helps fill the gaps where there should be flamin fingers!

I have noticed that in many cases, and this isn't always true, but the guys who can burn on those bluegrass leads at jams have varying degrees of gray hair. Meaning they have been playing a long time, and have likely put in countless hours of practice.

I've seen some younger guys be able to kill it as well, but practice is the common factor.

I think there should be a new talent is the kind of this forum is not easy to be successful with it

"how do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

"Practice"

There is no substitute for playing. Learn your scales, practice double picking.

Play along with records every chance you get.

I can fake my way through Bluegrass tunes pretty well, but the guys who master it are like gods. Good news is, they all started somewhere.

P.

I think bluegrass is really hard to play well on any instrument. I play guitar, steel and a bit of electric mandolin on live gigs mostly country and rockabilly stuff and acoustic guitar/mandolin/dobro on acoustic/folky gigs but don't feel even close to being ready to play bluegrass even though I love it and listen to it a lot.

Part of the problem is that all the players seem to be so great so it's hard to aim for something within my grasp. For example, when I started playing country I could copy Luther Perkins or Billy Byrd's stuff with Ernest Tubb - both brilliant and inspiring players but their style was in reach. There aren't many Bill Monroe, Clarence White or Jerry Douglas licks I can steal to get me started in Bluegrass and I can't find an equivalent to Luther :)

I tried banjo but although I could get "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" fairly quickly (the first bit before he starts soloing all over the neck) I also hit a brick wall pretty quickly and couldn't get beyond it. I keep wanting to go back to it but there is so much more to learn on all the other instruments I dabble with.

I took up mandolin ten years ago, and it led me to overhaul my guitar technique completely. I am now a MUCH stronger picker, but still along way from being at Norman Blake's level.

Where banjos use rolls to sound like they're going 100MPH, mandolins take a different appoach to create the same illusion. Oftentime mandolin players hang on the same note for several pickstrokes - picking fast sixteenth-notes, but only moving the scale with eight-notes. ;)

This sketching of the melody is the essence of Bill Monroe style (along with his characteristic down-stroke drive and other elements that you might study your whole life).

Another thing you hit on is the ability to improvise along to a song you have not heard before. This is a key part of Bluegrass playing! On guitar it often means playing the melody on the lowest strings, in a Carter-scratch style, using chord tones and walking lines ... boring to many, but for me it opened enormous doors once I could hear a melody and toss it back in the circle.

Bill Monroe insisted on hearing the melody in the breaks (solos). He wanted to walk into the middle of a solo and recognize the tune.

Have fun!

- Coop

Keep learning those fiddle tunes, practice slowly and accurately, and try to absorb at least the basic bluegrass repertoire. When it comes to leads, don't be afraid to keep it simple and melodic, even on a fast tune. If it's a very very fast tune, well, you needed a beverage, didn't you? I've used Band in a Box, which lets you increase tempo by one metronome click at a time (standalone metronomes go two to eight clicks at a time). Hundreds of BG tunes have been Band in a Boxed by Jack Tuttle, who has a nice website: http://www.jacktuttle.com/

No financial interest.

I've never learned much from instructional books, tapes, CDs, & DVDs.

I play along with recorded music. The was so much to learn from Doc Watson on the Dirt Band's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" stuff from the 70s.

The Bluegrass Album Band has 7 or so albums that are great to play along with.

Anything by Tony Rice and Norman Blake is play-along-with-worthy.

Of course if you can hook your wagon to a local player that is jam-crazy much can be gained. I played once a week for about 10 years with a guy that was always just a bit better than me. That might be the best way of all.

And then there is me, furiously trying to learn blue grass leads from a DVD for a few months. I can play Old Joe Clark, Blackberry Blossom and Whiskey Before Breakfast as what would be a fairly fast tempo electric guitar solo. But in bluegrass terms, EXTREMELY SLOWLY. And never ever without mistakes, it boggles my mind how you can play both fast without mistakes, especially under the pressure of group playing. It feels like it will be years till I can play them consistently enough to play lead in the group.

Now this has me wondering, is there some kind of magic with Banjos and Mandolins that makes them easier for playing leads? The banjo especially sounds super impressive with all the rolls. If they are just has hard as guitar, it would mean that I have some truly impressive players in the group.

Well, it will take some time. This reads like a cliche, but music is all about the journey, because the destination keeps changing. In other words, have fun! Celebrate the little victories and find some moments of happiness as they occur, all the while making mental notes of weaknesses and shortcomings, and take those back to the woodshed and work 'em.

As has been said, building the repertoire should be a primary agenda. I don't consider myself to be a "real" lifer bluegrass musician, but because I teach guitar, banjo, and mandolin, there's lots of interest in the style among students. Between those instruments, we do around 25 tunes from the standard bluegrass catalog, as well as related "kissin' cousins" from realms such as Celtic, Americana, and western swing. To get a deeper understanding, I often have them transpose tunes to other keys and analyze "the numbers" within the keys.

One thing that's helpful, regardless of genre pursued, is to be acutely aware of recurring similarities within such. For instance, and certainly there are plenty of exceptions, a big chunk of the bluegrass (and Celtic) catalog features the song form of eight bar A section that repeats, followed by an eight bar B section that repeats. You can of course memorize the changes/forms - but if you can also hum the melody while you comp chords, improvistion is likely to be more informed when it's 'your turn', and you're going to have a stronger connection to the tune and better be able to feel the changes when they come around. The ability to instantly "let the fingers do the walking" - as guided by the ear, regardless of where you're at on the fingerboard, is the cumulative product of time, experience, woodshedding, cross referencing, and trial & error, no way around it.

Genre notwithstanding (again!), it's my personal opinion that all musicians should spend considerable time (how 'bout countless thousands of hours!) drilling scales, arpeggios, melodic sequences, and the like; transcribing, learning licks and lines, and developing the ear are separate but related disciplines. But you gotta do 'em 'til you're blue in the face, to the point where they're like breathing or tying your shoelaces - ingrained, you no longer have to think about them. One thing that can make this more fun (I do this a lot with students) is to play the technical stuff in time with recordings of tunes, which places our work more in context. If you drill this stuff, make sure to also "turn off the brain" and just let the ears carry the fingers where they will over the same tunes.

That said, you probably want to cherry pick some stuff to focus on that's style-related, while still chipping away (perhaps to a lesser extent) at the vast comprehensive harmonic vocabulary. Same as with recurring song form, there's a slew of I-IV-V(7) vehicles within the realm! Major and major pentatonic scales, mixolydian scales - you're going to be living here a lot. Playing "chord for chord" with target tones and such (more on that later) is a useful and worthwhile pursuit that should definitely be part of the woodshedding agenda - but in 'the heat of the moment' (performance), "go for what you know" is definitely the order of the day! Or as my longtime fellow working musician buddy says, "Grab a big ol' handful of G!"

Minor chord passages of course show up within tunes; "Shady Grove" for one, and the A section of "Wayfaring Stranger" is basically a minor blues with a different type of groove... so some work with dorian and other minor sounds should be included. The B section of "Blackberry Blossom" contains measures of the vi minor chord, which is of course the relative minor of the parent key (Em as vi chord if we're talking key of G). There's more to outlining a minor chord than simply thinking relative minor, but on the other hand, you're not going to toss out any stinker notes if you're thinking 'G'. That said, certain harmonic vehicles (such as superimposing mixolydian and "blue notes" over the G major) might not always be the best call over the E minor, but on the flip, it can make an interesting ear tweaker now and then. As always, trial & error as governed by taste cultivated through experience.

Same tune (Blackberry) also contains a secondary dominant within the B section - III7 as opposed to iii minor (B7 in key of G) - find some B mixolydian stuff within the same area(s) of the neck as your comfort zone on all the happy G stuff. You can also outline the chord with known 6th and 3rd interval lines and cliches. Either way, you want to break up the "scalar" stuff with other devices. You know what, if that B7 rolls around and the first thing that pops into your head is a Chuck Berry lick, play a Chuck riff. A big part of all this is throwing stuff up against the wall to see what sticks. Working with melodic sequences (varieties of ascending and descending "groups of four" is a useful and popular fave) is a great way to shake things up and get your fingers moving differently. By the way, sequences aren't just a technical drill, they regularly show up in the melodies of tunes all the time. The opening measures of Blackberry Blossom are sequence-based. Great players often pepper lines with chromatic passing tones, and you can have some fun with that as well - but I'd recommend making sure the diatonic stuff is ingrained first.

As you know, lots of tunes roll by at breakneck tempos. It's nice to have a few devices on hand that allow you to create some movement without breaking your brain. Not the least of which is shamelessly exploiting the living daylights out of open strings where they'll work. For instance, try sliding around with chord/scale tones on the D or B strings while droning the open G string, or bouncing back and forth with it as a pedal tone. Along the same lines, emulating banjo rolls is a great device. Threads as to such periodically show up at the Tab, Tips, Theory and Technique sub-forum.

A book that I use with mando students is Teach Yourself to Play Bluegrass Mandolin (out of print, unfortunately). Each tune contains the original melody, as well as an embellished "lead", which helps them find their sea legs as to taking rides. Maybe there's a book like that for bluegrass guitar as well?

One of the many agendas thrown my way when I attended GIT in the 80's was Howard Roberts' Super Chops concept. The deal here is to play over chord progressions of course, but relentlessly with steady streams of eighth or sixteenth notes. No phrasing, no pauses, no "playing like a horn player" - just way too many notes! The course was based on the progressions of well known jazz standards, but it can be adapted to work with anything. Record some sets of changes and give it a whirl. Maybe start with the aforementioned "grab a big ol' handful of G!" approach. But also take some I-IV-V vehicles, and force yourself to play the corresponding major pentatonic scales within ONLY one part of the fingerboard at a time (each of the CAGED chord/scale shapes) and don't connect patterns up the neck, play across the neck (you can mix it up later). Play exclusively with straight eigths, swing eigths, and triplets, and you can mix that up later as well. Try landing squarely on the downbeat for each new chord with the nearest available target tone (can't go wrong with the almighty 3rd interval). If you get good at that, start peppering with the aforementioned chromatic passing tones. Whatever you do, just keep playing with no pauses! As with the scalar drills, follow up by playing more "conversationally" with phrasing and such over same tunes/progressions.

One common mistake that I see quite often is that players only play within the new style that they're interested in at the time. Certainly that needs to happen, but music is music, and in my opinion, improvisation is best realized by coming at it from a variety of angles. I'm not saying work out with Frank Zappa or King Crimson records before the big bluegrass jam - but don't overlook related stuff. I regularly cover "Friend of the Devil" by the Grateful Dead, and I often get into bluegrass mindset when my lead ride rolls around. Students are often intimidated by brisk tempos of bluegrass tunes, and understandably so. Lately, I've been having them work out with the Poison Love record by Buddy Miller. I also use Music From Big Pink by The Band ("Long Black Veil" and "The Weight"), and I use Train a Comin' by Steve Earl a lot as well. These tunes have similar changes but at more comfortable tempos. We can bump tempos up after a while.

Another mistake that I see is when folks get way too hung up on being authentic to the style at hand. To me, the best players have reverence to authenticity, but they do their own thing with it as well. I sometimes hear chicken pickin' Tele players that sound like the bulk of their agenda is working with Brent Mason or Albert Lee videos. Don't get me wrong, those guys are phenomenal and that's gonna promote impressive technique by default. But it ain't gonna build a style. Same deal with the "mathematical" approach of shredheads in the 80's. Instructional DVD's are wonderful, but do your own thing too, and don't get bent out shape worrying too much about authenticity.

Early in my career (?!), I happily and constantly learned new licks and lines, and couldn't wait to superimpose them wherever and whenever I could on the bandstand. After a point I realized that this could sound trite and forced - the musical equivalent of a brand new pair of white sneakers. Instead, I started making sure that stuff had been "lived in" for a while in the woodshed before tossing them out live, or at least at "shows". However, jams are informal and relaxed, and not a bad call for educational approaches. I'm not saying toss taste out the window, but try some stuff. You're gonna throw out some clams, but so what. Same as with bluegrass, I'm not a jazz lifer. But I did play jazz standards for many years. Got started with "casuals" at society gigs. These often contained a "dinner set" and I'd try stuff as I was reading charts out of the Real Book. Nobody was really listening anyway, they were eating and socializing. Perfect opportunity for some trial & error education. But when hired for quartet work at restaurants and such where jazz was the featured program, it was back to "go for what you know", with the superimposed concepts and lines back to being relegated to the woodshed.

I'm not a big hot dog with showboat licks on banjo, largely because I've logged in less time with that instrument. Mandolin is interesting; I've gigged it for 5-6 years pretty regularly now. Can't zip around on it the same as on an instrument I've been playing for over 40 years (guitar), but the tuning in 5ths does seem to allow for some facility, particularly with mando-friendly keys such as D and A. Still learning, always will be I guess.

I'm running out of time and need to get to the teaching studio. I'll have to let the spell check thing go, hopefully it's not too bad. Y'all have a great weekend.

wow, this thread has really taken off since I last checked. Its going to take me a while to digest all this information. Thankyou.

Thanks Tim - awesome post. I was into bluegrass about 20 years ago and found it to be like running on the track team. It required lots of practice to stay in shape. The big problem back then were these kids who came to our bluegrass club open mics with their dad playing bass. In their teens they blew everyone away. Yup, Nickel Creek... Tough act to follow back then.
My music theory is: if it sounds good, it is good. How about the sax/horn section solo on David Brombergs' version of Wall Flower? That ain't bluegrass but it works for me!

^^^ David Bromberg (just a huge influence on the kind of aoustic guitar playing I would do later in my life, once I had become a better guitarist) can do whatever he wants, and I will love it!

He (along with say Jerry Garcia, Dylan etc.) is just a great template for making any kind of music you want- mix genres up a bit, not to be so purist...