Beginner
Beginner
- Explore the fundamental techniques of bluegrass guitar.
- Learn different ways to use a metronome.
- Improve the efficiency of your practice time.
I didn’t grow up listening to or playing bluegrass music, although that’s what I do for a living today. I cut my teeth playing electric guitar in garage bands doing classic rock songs by bands like the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles. I got deep into blues and played on the New York circuit as primarily an electric guitarist. Eventually, my journey through American roots music led me to bluegrass and I got the bug. It was challenging to learn bluegrass guitar coming from electric guitar. There were different techniques to develop and it was significantly more physically taxing to me than playing the blues. So here are 10 tips I hope can help you if you are interested in grabbing that acoustic guitar and pickin’ some bluegrass music.
Metronome, Metronome, Metronome!
Having a good sense of time is the first step to sounding great with all music, but especially in bluegrass or string band settings where there aren’t drums. Practicing with a metronome is the easiest way to improve your timing, and you will see results pretty quickly. Whether you are practicing scale patterns, chord changes, or just playing a song for fun at home, put that click on. There are many free and cheap metronome apps for your Smartphone these days, so there’s no excuse not to have one. Take a listen below to a short passage with a quarter-note click.
Flip the Click
Speaking of playing with a metronome, here’s a tip to making it even more fun to play with. To my ear it’s most natural to play with the click on straight quarter-notes, but try playing with the click on the and of each beat. This is where the mandolin chop (the snare drum of the bluegrass groove, so to speak) would be and it seems to feel more like playing music rather than merely practicing with a metronome. To flip the beat in your head, let it click four times, then start your count between click 4 and 5 (as you can hear in the recording below), and keep counting the four beats of the measure until you are turned in your head, then start playing.
Learn It Slow
Always learn to play a new passage slowly, and always with the metronome. It’s much better to play even excruciatingly slow but in time, rather than speeding up and slowing down to get through a line or playing too fast and missing notes. If you do it slowly and commit it to muscle memory, it will be much easier to play the passage fast later.
Rhythm Is King
In a bluegrass ensemble, guitar players have a very important job—laying down a good solid rhythm. Think about it: We might spend maybe three percent of a song playing a solo, if there is one. That means 97 percent of the time our job is to play rhythm. Therefore, that should be the ratio of lead to rhythm in your practice routine until you’ve got rhythm mastered. There’s no glory in rhythm playing from the audience, but there will be plenty from the musicians. When you can play great rhythm people want to play with you, period. It’s the opposite if you aren’t a good rhythm player—no matter how many breaks of “Blackberry Blossom” you worked up at 220 bpm. Trust me.
Learn Some Standards
Every genre of music has its standards—the songs that define the sound and style of the genre—and bluegrass is no exception. Learning and working through these tunes will not only give you a great place to start building your musical vocabulary, but you’ll also know material when you roll up to a jam session. Start by learning the chord changes, then the simplest form of the melody. From there, you can work up a solo by incorporating the melody and adding “ornaments” like some passing notes during rests in the melody or inserting a lick between phrases.
Here are a few to get you started: “Old Joe Clark,” “Fireball Mail,” “Salt Creek,” “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” “Angeline the Baker,” “Big Mon,” and “Red-Haired Boy.” Pay attention at local jam sessions, as you’ll start to notice that certain songs might be called out more. Don’t be afraid to ask one of the more experienced jammers if they could suggest any tunes as well. If you take their advice, you’ll know you have at least one other person to pick it with! Take a look at the video below to see super-picker Bryan Sutton absolutely tear through “Salt Creek.”
Bryan Sutton - Guitar Workshop - Salt Creek - Merlefest 2011
Find Your Palette
There are many tonal colors on your palette, and this is mainly controlled by your right hand. Play a scale up and down at a slow or moderate tempo. I like the chromatic scale because it doesn’t take any thought for the left hand, and the idea here is to focus on the right hand. Try moving your pick back and forth from the end of the fretboard all the way to right against the saddle. Also, try changing the angle of your pick (Photo 1) against the strings, starting with the pick perfectly parallel to the strings, then moving it slightly clockwise to increase the angle. As you can hear below, you’ll hear different tones, and these can all be used to get whatever sound you feel fits the song.
Relax
Bluegrass guitar is particularly physical, so it’s important to keep your muscles relaxed. This includes not only your hands and arms, but also your shoulders, neck, back, and mind. If you are feeling tension build up in your forearm—let’s say it’s at seven out of 10—try tensing up those muscles to 10 for a few seconds, then relaxing them. You should be able to feel the tension come down to a manageable level. Also, make sure you are breathing, which will aid in relaxing.
Efficiency
Playing smooth runs at fast tempos will sound better when you are more efficient with your motion. Try not to pull your fingers off the fretboard too much, and try not to over strum with your right hand. You can try to break bad habits by practicing very slowly, then increasing the tempo while always keeping tabs on your movements.
Practice for the Game
When you’ve mastered rhythm and start learning melodies to fiddle tunes, practice the rhythm with the melody. Once you’ve got the melody to the point that you can play it all the way through, put on your trusty metronome at a manageable tempo and play a round of the melody followed by a round of rhythm, then back to the melody and so forth. All too often I’ve seen intermediate players in jams play melodies and rhythm beautifully, but struggle transitioning between lead and rhythm. People forget to practice moving between these two roles, so when they get to the jam, they fumble with the transitions. Even if you are an absolute rhythm master, if the form is AABB, at least play one A and one B to shorten the rhythm time. It really does help to always be practicing those transitions.
Record Yourself
It’s very difficult to fully analyze your own playing while you’re in the act. For a better perspective, record yourself and listen back. You’ll be able to hear problem areas, as well as identifying things that are sounding good. It’s important to understand your playing from the listener’s point of view. You’ll be surprised how different it sometimes can be.
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Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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