Solo Factory: Bluegrass

Most bluegrass songs share similar 4-bar chord progressions for the first half, second half, or even both halves of the song. Learning a vocabulary of 4-bar phrases that work over these common 4-bar progressions is the key to learning how to create your own bluegrass solos and improvisations, and the key to learning this versatile vocabulary is Stephen Mougin’s Bluegrass edition of Solo Factory.

“When crafting a bluegrass guitar solo, it’s very important to reference the melody of the song you’re playing; however, you’ll discover that the same core melodic ideas can be found in many songs throughout the bluegrass catalog.

In this course, we’ll work in the keys of G, C and D -- the most common keys in bluegrass. In the first section, I’ll show you twelve 4-bar phrases for the first half of a solo. In the second section, I’ll show you twelve 4-bar phrases for the second half of your solo. In the final section, I’ll show you how to glue one first-half phrase to any second-half phrase to play an authentic-sounding bluegrass solo on any song that shares those chord patterns.

Using a capo with these 24 phrases, you'll be armed for success at your next bluegrass jam session -- no matter what the key!”

Stephen will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches along the way. You’ll get standard notation and tabs for all of the performance studies. Plus, you’ll be able to use TrueFire’s learning tools to sync the tab and notation to the video lesson. You can also loop or slow down the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace. All of the backing tracks are included to work with on your own as well.

Grab your guitar and let’s dig in with Stephen Mougin!