Chords for Descending The Neck - Advanced Bluegrass Guitar Lesson

_ _ [Gm] _ _ [G] _ _ _
Hey there, it's Marcel from LessonsWithMarcel.com and I'm here to talk to you about escape routes.
How do you get back down the neck after you've successfully gotten up?
There's a couple assumptions I'm going to make in this video.
One of them is that you're familiar with your cage system or all the positions of your pentatonic
scale _ and the other is that you're familiar with a little bit of bluegrass history [E] and
some popular licks.
Now let's get to it.
Alright, now you're probably familiar with the bluegrass licks that sound a little something [B] like this. _
[D] _ _ [G] _ _ [C] There's bluesier ones.
_ [A] _ There's a famous Tony Rice lick.
[G] _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ [G] _ _ [Bb] All those licks have one thing in common and what that is is that's a little movement that
happens towards the end and that movement sounds like this.
[G] _ _ Or in the [Bb] case of the Tony Rice lick like this.
[G] _ _ [A] And what that is is your second _ [Bb] into your flat third then [G] resolving on G in this case.
Or the other way [F] is your flat third [Bm] to your major third [G] and then resolving on G.
_ Now what you can do is that slide, [A] you can move it into, _ you can move it higher up on
a lower string.
So in this case I'm going to put it on my D string and I'm going to move it up to fret
7 and I'm going to slide to fret 8 [Gm] and I'm going to play my open G string.
_ [G] _ That's the exact same thing. _ _
[A] _ [Bb] Or in the other [G] case, [F] I'm going to move it up one fret for the Tony Rice style.
[G] _ _ Now what you can do with that is you can take that small little micro lick that you have
there and you can put it in a bigger context.
For instance, let's move to position 3 of our pentatonic and let's just walk down the scale.
You should be familiar with this position.
It looks like this.
[E] _ _ _ [Em] _
_ _ [A] _ _ And what we're going to do is we're going to walk down that and when we hit _ fret 7 on
the D string, we're going to just [G] go into that slide and resolve.
It'll sound like this.
[E] _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ [A] That's really the heart and soul of these licks is just walking down a scale when you
hit that moment, [Gm] you resolve it.
_ [Db] Now how can we make this more like a bluegrass lick and less like us just walking down a pentatonic scale?
Well you can add lots of blue notes.
Let's go ahead and let's add in _ _ _ [B] this chromatic [A] tone here.
So we have 7, [D] 6, 5.
_ [G] And that would be your flat 3rd.
Let's go ahead and add in the flat 7 which would be right here.
[E] _ _ [G] So I have 8, 6, [Em] 5.
Let's add in the 4th right here.
[Ab] So [D] I would have [Gb] 7, 5, 4.
And then [G] let's do our resolve that we talked about.
Sounds like this.
_ [B] _ _ [G] _ _ _
That sounds more like a bluegrass lick.
You can add a little bit of back stepping. _
_ _ _ _ [G] _ _ You could maybe do some hammer ons and pull offs. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [A] _ The other thing is that the licks are often continued farther down the [G] neck when you get there.
[Am] _ _
_ _ _ [G] _ And I'm just doing basic bluegrass stuff down here.
_ Really position one of the pentatonic, that one right there.
I'm just falling through [Gm] it [G] to finish off the lick if you're wondering what happens down there.
Now in the case of the Tony Rice lick, he is actually in the next position up the cage
system which is your C shape right there.
If you can see that.
_ And what he's doing is he's in a way walking down a C shape. _ _ _ _
_ And that's where he gets [Gb] his slide from.
We talked about [Bb] that a second ago.
But that's 8 up to 9.
[G] And then your open G string there.
And he adds in some [C] blue notes.
And [G] if [F] _ _ [G] _ _
_ you want to watch that a couple times you can slow it down.
I'll do it one more time if you want to really get it the Tony Rice way.
[Em] _ _ [F] _ _ _
[G] _ And that's a [C] pinky bar right there.
_ [G] Now there is a couple other things you can do with this method.
And one of them is that you can use this to get to other chords.
You don't always have to go to your [E] one chord like that.
In fact if you move the whole system down a string [D] _ it gets you to your 5 chord, to [Em] your D chord.
_ _ _ [Dm] _ _ _
[G] _ _ [Em] _ _ [G] _ It's great.
_ [D] You can do the [F] same thing right [D] there. _ _
_ _ _ And get you into your [G] D chord.
The other thing that you can do with this is you don't necessarily have to go back down the neck.
You don't have to follow that note.
In fact you can use it to move up positions.
_ _ I'm going to go ahead and use the same lick that I've been using to demonstrate.
[Gb] _
_ _ [A] _ _ _ _ [Am] _ _
[Eb] _ _ [G] _ _ [A] _ [A] _ _ [B] _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ [Am] _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ You know there's a lot of open G notes in there but really I was staying up here in
this position work.
Okay so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to just give an example of how you might use
this in a bluegrass solo.
_ And this isn't a particular tune or anything.
I'm just going to use a basic bluegrass chord change to make a little break for you so you
can see what this would look like in context. _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ [G] _ [D] _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ [Gm] _ _ _ [A] _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] I'll go ahead and do another one for you.
_ [G] _ _ [C] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ _ _
[A] _ _ _ _ [G] _ [A] _ _ [D] _
_ _ _ [N] Now I hope you found this lesson useful.
If you're looking for more content you can always visit my website at lessonswithmarcel.com.
There's a lot more there about the cage system, the pentatonic system, climbing the neck,
descending the neck.
Really anything you could look for I try to do lessons on.
And of course I'll be making more videos soon