- 2 days ago
Acoustic superstar Molly Tuttle shows you how to start playing bluegrass guitar like a pro – from essential licks to core techniques. In this video she examines common beginner's mistakes, shows you how to master core right-hand techniques, picking patterns and more. Whether you're a complete newcomer or an experienced guitarist with an interest in Americana, this easy-to-follow but deeply knowledgeable masterclass in bluegrass guitar will help you play this exciting acoustic guitar style with authenticity, accuracy and flair.
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00:00You
00:29used to teach, you told me once. What was it that students came to you wanting to know? I mean,
00:37it was sort of Bluegrass 101 sort of thing. Yeah, Bluegrass 101, and I used to teach kind of all
00:42different levels. I would teach at music camps where you're teaching a whole group, and usually
00:47the camp would just assign me a level, so when I would agree to teach there, then they would say,
00:52okay, you're teaching advanced guitar, or you're teaching beginner guitar, or you're teaching,
00:56sometimes I would have special topics that I would teach about. I would do bluegrass improvising,
01:02or playing fast, or teaching a bunch of fiddle tunes on the guitar, or I would often do a
01:10cross-picking class, or a claw hammer guitar class. So it really was a big range, and I think because
01:17my dad is a music teacher, he gave me lots of tips for how to teach different levels, and
01:22you always have to kind of get there, and then feel it out. Even sometimes when it'll say advanced
01:27guitar, you get there, and you're like, oh, this isn't the level I thought it would be. Maybe they're
01:30way more advanced, or maybe there's one random 14-year-old kid who's insanely good, and then
01:38there's other people who have just started, and they're beginners who are in the advanced class. So
01:43you never really know what you're walking into in a situation like that, and even with private
01:47like one-on-one lessons you kind of have to figure out. I feel like such a big part of it is just
01:52meeting them, meeting the student where they're at. So I feel like I got okay at teaching pretty much
01:58any different level on guitar, even like the most basic stuff can be really fun to teach, like a basic
02:04strumming pattern, or like teaching someone how to do like some basic pick direction exercises that can
02:11be really eye-opening for people. What sort of thing will you show them then? I mean at that level,
02:16the sort of basic entry level? Yeah, I feel like one thing that I could kind of teach to any level
02:22was just really breaking down like a bluegrass rhythm, rhythmic strum, so like just pick, strum, pick, strum.
02:34There's so much kind of nuance because you'll see people who are going
02:36and they don't really know like the just the basic strumming pattern, and that can be even harder
02:45than these really complicated ones I would see students doing. Like people would come in and be
02:50putting so many strums into their rhythm playing like and that can just create so much like chaos
02:56almost when you get into a band situation playing with other instruments. So breaking it down to where
03:01I'm like okay you want like the bass notes sort of even with the strum, you don't want the bass
03:06notes to be way louder or the strum to be way louder so you don't hear the bass notes. So I would go
03:11like pick, strum, pick, strum, and then I'd also try to get people to just strum like basically the top
03:18three strings and make it like a really quick kind of flick of the wrist rather than like
03:25you hear some of that where it's just not super punchy but in bluegrass you want it to sound like
03:29so no matter what your tempo you're playing at your strum is like very quick
03:41and a lot of times that was really hard for people even like in the more advanced levels
03:46to just kind of simplify and get like the nuances of a bluegrass rhythm and then for like lead playing I
03:52would have beginners especially like tap your feet and your pick um you want to move your pick along
03:58with the direction your foot's tapping in so if the song is like um
04:12when my foot's tapping down on the downbeat my pick is moving down then when the foot
04:16comes up on the offbeat your pick direction goes up and that's kind of a flat picking thing where
04:22you're playing at these high speeds so you want to have like a really fluid kind of pick direction
04:28most people most flat pickers you see are kind of picking along with the rhythm of the song so
04:33you notice my pick direction is going right along with the beats i guess yeah down up down up so that
04:49would be one and two and three and four and so on the off beats my pick is going up right do you have a
04:56recommendation for um plectrum sort of thickness or anything like that i use these ones that like
05:03this is kind of an uncommon one to use but i have like a dunlop this like jazz tone 208 um it's
05:09really thick and so a lot of people don't like them but that's just kind of what i've been using since
05:13i was like 10 years old so i got used to it and then i never ended up switching a lot of people who
05:19play flat pick guitar love the blue chips and those are a little more expensive and they make all
05:25different shapes and sizes um i think they're handmade so you get really nice like bevel on the pick it's
05:30very um sort of more like a handcrafted type of pick these are more just like mass produced i guess
05:38um but yeah i don't have a specific recommendation i think if your pick is too thin it's going to sound
05:43really floppy and you really need to be able to get a lot of volume um so that's why i use the
05:50thicker pick that's not going to like bend when i'm hitting the strings really hard and when you start
05:56showing people um the sort of basic lead pattern or the accompaniment patterns because sometimes
06:01that's single notes as well yeah totally what sort of thing do you do you take them where's the
06:06gateway into right yeah i usually show people just a really simple um tune like if i'm if i'm teaching
06:14people who want to play at a bluegrass jam session i might teach them a common tune that a lot of people
06:21know so like i remember the first um thing i ever learned on the guitar was a tune called cripple
06:25creek and it goes like this so it's very simple melody i might teach a total beginner that and then
06:38some basic chords and um and yeah you can get into playing like leads or not leads but single notes when
06:44you're switching chords so i would do maybe show people a bass run like this those are the first
06:58kind of bass runs i learned to connect one chord to another just in g to c and then g to d and c back to
07:06g yeah what about the more advanced more advanced i um yeah so i feel like you just are kind of
07:14kind of coming up with variations of like basically the same stuff so instead of going
07:21i might go adding in extra notes and making it a little bit syncopated sounding or
07:37but you're basically just finding ways to lead either like up to the chord or down to the chord
07:42and um sometimes i'll i would even like print out a whole sheet of different ones and have people
07:49practice a song and try to play a different one each time that they switch chords because there's
07:53like endless variations even if you're playing the same notes to kind of miss uh mess with the rhythm or
07:59play them in a different order or like hang on one note longer before you get to the chord
08:04what about actual picking itself because you must get a lot of inquiries about
08:08yeah how did you develop your right hand and all the rest of it yeah what sort of advice
08:13do you give people on that um for me like the biggest thing was just kind of making sure my hand
08:18isn't um tensing up when i play so like i i try to keep my hand really loose and relaxed um and that
08:24helps me play fast and it helps just kind of with accuracy and um if you're tensing up anywhere like
08:31you're gonna the playing is just gonna sound stiffer and you're gonna make more mistakes um but for me
08:38my right hand i've kind of never like tried to change it drastically since i started playing and
08:44like learning kind of the fundamentals i just got into the habit of playing like this where i'm when
08:50i play lead like my fingers are usually sort of loosely tucked in and then um my wrist is basically
08:56resting on the bridge sometimes like on the bridge pins or even like the low strings if i'm playing
09:01up high um a lot of people like to gently like rest their ring finger and pinky on the guitar
09:08um when they're playing leads just to kind of anchor your hand but for me my wrist is sort of what's
09:14like making contact with the guitar and then when i play rhythm the wrist comes up and my hand's just
09:18floating so if i'm playing like strumming i'll switch to lead my hand goes down on the guitar right and
09:32have you devised some exercises for people or recommendations for things they can practice
09:37to increase their speed and also fluency of course yeah um yeah i think there's like all these pick
09:44exercises and i would have to like give credit to my dad because he kind of developed all these
09:49exercises that he showed to me and i remember um practicing them as a kid and then later on just
09:55having it as a resource to help other people that i was teaching guitar to um so like when you're
10:01playing with a pick like there's only a few kind of movements that you're gonna have to
10:07get used to so you're either staying on the same string which would be
10:10or you're switching strings up a string
10:18which would be like down on the third string and then up on the second string is what i'm doing so
10:23i would have people practice that like that um or you're switching down a string which would like
10:33let's say you start on the second string and you go down to the third string oops
10:41that's often what's hardest for people is switching between the two strings in between
10:45the strings and you see even like when i started doing it i like hit the wrong string so um usually
10:50i'll have students like play as fast as they can on one string that's kind of the easiest one and then
10:58you switch up a string and that one sometimes is a little trickier for people and then usually the
11:05hardest one to do is the um switching in between the two strings so
11:13and sometimes if people are having a hard time playing fast or they have like they're playing a
11:19song and there's a certain part that they always slow down at or make a mistake um usually it's one
11:24of those pick movements that's kind of tripping them up so um and usually it's kind of that one of
11:29playing in between the two strings because that is the most difficult for most people
11:33um so i would have students try to get all three of those moves like up to the same tempo to where
11:38one of those isn't kind of the weak link in your playing and then from there you just kind of if you
11:43want to want even more pick exercises maybe you practice um different rhythms so instead of just
11:48down up down up down um down up up down down down up kind of like an anticipated rhythm that you might
11:56play in a certain passage of a song or even um switching between three strings which is where
12:02you get into cross picking so so that you you have all of those you have like the outside pick movement
12:12and then the inside one so you go down up down so you're starting with the outside the two strings
12:19down up and then you add another down so once you get those two pick motions um pretty solid then
12:26you can start to do the cross picking
12:33and then um yeah you can kind of apply those to songs like
12:42yeah i was going to say when when you bring the left hand in um then for playing single notes i
12:50mean do you do you have any recommendation for people um to sort of get that rather than just play
12:55scales right yeah so scales i feel like um is a good place to start but sometimes you learn a bunch
13:02of scales and then you're like well i know all these scales but they don't sound quite right when i try
13:06to play them in a song so um what i like to do is kind of simplify the scale either
13:12you know play a pentatonic scale or what i like even better is just kind of
13:17play a scale that still emphasizes the notes of the chord so instead of going
13:26all of a sudden when you get to that b note over the c chord so i'm playing a c scale starting from
13:31the low c note here i get to the b note and suddenly the seventh of the chord is on the downbeat if i'm going
13:42to do that and then you have a d note that lands on the downbeat and that just doesn't sound super
13:48musical over a c chord um when you're just starting out there's definitely ways to incorporate those
13:53notes but um sometimes i just have people leave out the seventh and then it sounds like this
13:58and suddenly that sounds like you're playing over a c chord instead of just playing a random scale so
14:06um you could take that that kind of like six note scale i guess just leaving out the sevens leaving
14:12out the b notes over a c chord and that kind of sounds like you're improvising and then just finding
14:26little ways to work those runs into a song um that's a fun way to start improvising over stuff
14:33so if you are switching from like a g chord to a c chord starting on a g scale or a g kind of like
14:40arpeggiated thing so there i'm leaving out the f sharp
14:47and you can kind of tell what um chords i'm playing over because i'm emphasizing those
15:06chord tones in g that would be a g note a b note and a d note and c that's a c an e and a g and you
15:14kind of want those to land on the downbeats or you want to like hang out hang out on those notes
15:20extra to make it sound like you know what chord you're playing over i guess um how i started
15:25improvising was i learned a bunch of fiddle tunes and i just found little way little tiny ways to
15:30vary them so if um i remember one of the first tunes that i learned to play was called salt creek it goes
15:37like this and then adding in little things like sliding up to the first note
15:48and then um maybe add in like a pull-off
15:53stuff like that can make the song sound a lot more kind of exciting
15:57and it you're still basically playing the melody but you're just adding in a little tiny variation here
16:02and there excellent