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Southern Roots: Creative Applications

17 Soloing and Rhythm Studies To Get Creative With

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Southern Roots: Creative Applications
Scott Sharrard

Scott Sharrard

Educator

blues, blues-rock, southern rock

Genres

About this course

In Scott Sharrard’s first edition of Southern Roots, you explored core blues and jazz influences, a wide variety of key harmonic concepts, key creative approaches for improvising, and some fundamental guitar techniques to help you gain command of American Roots music -- from blues and rock to soul, jazz, and even country. In Scott’s 30 Southern Roots Licks course, you developed a versatile vocabulary of lines and phrases to build roots-inspired solos around.

Here in Scott Sharrard’s Creative Applications edition of Southern Roots, you’ll apply all of the previous editions’ essential tools and approaches and learn how to “creatively” craft guitar compelling solos, improvisations, and engaging rhythm parts. You’ll play your way through the course, applying the full range of techniques, creative approaches, and roots vocabulary over 10 performance studies.

”I’ve been privileged to record, perform and collaborate with many legendary artists and their influence has helped shape my own creative applications on the guitar which I’m excited to share with you here.

I’ll also share some of my methods for composing original music and for arranging cover tunes for recording projects and live performances.
In this course, we’ll work through 17 rhythm and soloing performance studies that illustrate these creative applications.

We’ll play through originals tunes of mine such as Love Like Kerosene, My Only True Friend, and Saving Grace. We’ll also look at covers of some songs I arranged and recorded for the Gregg Allman band like Whipping Post, Melissa, and Statesboro Blues. “

Scott 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 get back to our roots and dig in with Scott Sharrard!

What you'll learn

  • Play the main riff of Love Like Kerosene with proper pull-off technique
  • Navigate a complete guitar solo through multiple positions (first, seventh, twelfth, and extension)
  • Apply raking technique with minor triads
  • Understand the difference between studio composition and live improvisation
  • Understand how to blend Kenny Burrell jazz approach with David Gilmour rock style
Release date: 07/20/2020 • 2h 56m runtime
intermediatelate intermediateguitarelectric guitarrhythmsoloing
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Sample lessons
Everything a Good Man Needs
Everything a Good Man Needs
Overview
Everything a Good Man Needs
Everything a Good Man Needs
Rhythm Performance
Everything a Good Man Needs
Everything a Good Man Needs
Rhythm Breakdown
Everything a Good Man Needs
Everything a Good Man Needs
Slide Solo Performance

What's included

46 lessons • 17 charts • 17 Jam Tracks

Southern Roots: Creative Applications
Hi, I'm Scott Sharrard. Welcome to this Creative Applications edition of Southern Roots!

In the first edition of Southern Roots, we explored core blues and jazz influences, a wide variety of key harmonic concepts, some creative approaches to improvising, and some fundamental guitar techniques to help you gain command of American Roots music - from blues and rock to soul, jazz, and even country.

In the 30 Southern Roots Licks course, you developed a versatile vocabulary of lines and phrases to build solos around.

In this Creative Applications edition of Southern Roots, we'll apply all of these essential tools and approaches “creatively” when improvising or composing your own rhythm parts and solos.

I've been privileged to record, perform and collaborate with many legendary artists and their influence has helped shape my own creative applications on the guitar which I'm excited to share with you here.

I'll also share some of my methods for composing original music and for arranging cover tunes for recording projects and live performances.

In this course, we'll work through 17 rhythm and soloing performance studies that illustrate these creative applications.

We'll play through originals tunes of mine, and we'll also look at covers of some songs I arranged and recorded for the Gregg Allman band like Whipping Post, Melissa, and Statesboro Blues.

All of the performances are transcribed and you'll be able to sync the tab and notation to the video using TrueFire's learning tools. You'll get all of the jam tracks and you can loop or slow down the videos so you can work with the lessons at your own pace.

Grab your guitar and let's get started!
Saving Grace
So right now we're going to talk about a song I wrote that's the title track for my last record, Saving Grace. Here we're only going to focus on the solo section of the song.

For this solo, I was lucky enough to use Duane Allman's '57 goldtop Les Paul, and I cut the record in Muscle Shoals. The guitar has a specific tone and feel about it, and I think it really informed the performance I got on the record. I'm also using a fuzz pedal for this song, which I don't do very often, as well as the bridge pickup.

This solo was done in a few takes on the fly, and funny enough, when I was touring this record I was having a difficult time improvising a solo over these chords. I couldn't find anything that sounded good to me, so this is the first solo of my own that I had to learn. It's one of the hardest things I've had to do, and I'll try my hardest for you today. If you need help getting it down, don't worry, so did I!
Saving Grace
Let's check out the rhythm guitar part for "Saving Grace" before we get into the solo.

For this track, I was lucky enough to use Duane Allman's '57 goldtop Les Paul, and I cut the record in Muscle Shoals. The guitar has a specific tone and feel about it, and I think it really informed the performance I got on the record. I'm also using a fuzz pedal for this song, which I don't do very often, as well as the bridge pickup.
Saving Grace
Let's break down the chord changes for "Saving Grace", then we'll check out the soloing part.

For this track, I was lucky enough to use Duane Allman's '57 goldtop Les Paul, and I cut the record in Muscle Shoals. The guitar has a specific tone and feel about it, and I think it really informed the performance I got on the record. I'm also using a fuzz pedal for this song, which I don't do very often, as well as the bridge pickup.
Saving Grace
Now it's time to focus in on the solo. Here I'll play through the solo section, and then we'll break it down in the next segment.

This solo was done in a few takes on the fly, and funny enough, when I was touring this record I was having a difficult time improvising a solo over these chords. I couldn't find anything that sounded good to me, so this is the first solo of my own that I had to learn. It's one of the hardest things I've had to do, and I'll try my hardest for you today. If you need help getting it down, don't worry, so did I!
Saving Grace
Let's check out my approach to the solo. Here I'll break down all the techniques and concepts I used, taking it section by section through the whole solo.

This solo was done in a few takes on the fly, and funny enough, when I was touring this record I was having a difficult time improvising a solo over these chords. I couldn't find anything that sounded good to me, so this is the first solo of my own that I had to learn. It's one of the hardest things I've had to do, and I'll try my hardest for you today. If you need help getting it down, don't worry, so did I!
Everything a Good Man Needs
This next tune I had the pleasure of writing with Gregg Allman over the course of a couple of years on the road. This is actually the first song we wrote together, a song called "Everything a Good Man Needs". It was slated for our last record Southern Blood, but unfortunately we ran out of time and weren't able to get it recorded.

So, I held on to the song, and at this point Gregg had passed away, so we linked up with Taj Mahal and showed him the demo. He loved this tune, and wanted to sing it for Gregg. At the time, he had no plans to make a solo record so he offered to sing it on my record, Saving Grace. This song was one of the singles off the record, also featuring Bernard Purdie on drums.

Having these guys on the track really transformed the song into something that became a big tribute to Gregg and me and his collaboration.

It's basically a blues in the key of G. Both Gregg and I were fans of Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and I think there's lots of his influence here too. Today I'm going to break down how I play the rhythm guitar part live, as well as how I'd tackle the solo. So, here we go!

+ 39 more lessons

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Reviews

7 results

Thomas R.

Verified buyer

08/03/25

A Class Act

Scott's playing is some of the best playing I've ever heard. . . seriously. I don't do a lot of reviews but I felt I had to comment as any courses are well worth getting. Have a listen to his recording too , his playing is as good as it gets.

tommyboy67

Verified buyer

03/23/25

Tasty playing from Scott

Great playing and instruction from Scott. You’ll definitely learn from this course.

briandelaney

Verified buyer

08/16/23

Learn by playing to songs!

Loving this course so far. I bought a guitar which inspired me to play more roots styled pieces. That genre wasn't something I was that familiar with but Truefire came to the rescue once again. This is a great course if you already have some skills and you just want to translate them to a new (old) style. Highly recommended.

Osokin

Verified buyer

11/27/21

Seriously Tasty Moves!

Scott Sharrard is a seriously tasty guitar player, and in this course he comps and solos on some of his own tunes and a few covers that he arranged and performed with the late Gregg Allman. Lots of great voicings, techniques and ideas to absorb - a really great set of lessons by a brilliant player!

MadDoug

Verified buyer

10/02/20

Concepts

After you work to get your technique, sense of timing and all the physical aspects of playing guitar going, you will need a study in concepts, this one of those courses

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