Bluegrass Books Online

Bluegrass Books Online

May 07 Lesson

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Private Lessons

Well, we’ve finally had a chance to get a new lesson up and running. Since it’s been almost 6 months since a new lesson was done, I figured I’d really give you guys/girls something to sink your teeth into. This time around we’re going to do “Big Sandy River”.

Since one of the most emailed questions I get is, “how do I improvise around a melody, once I understand the tune?” To help answer that question, what we’ve done is a version 1 and a version 2 of Big Sandy River. Version 1 is a straight forward, “here’s the melody” sort of arrangement. For version 2, I’m trying something I’ve never seen done before. There maybe a very good reason I’ve never seen it done, but we’re going to try it anyway. Version 2 is a fancier arrangement. The difference is I’ve color coded certain licks and phrases, to give you an idea of what licks can be swapped out with other licks. The blue licks on page one, will swap out with any of the other blue licks on page one, etc. The goal of course, is to get you to begin to see how licks and phrases can be used to create your own version and still have it sound like the tune, more or less.

I’ve taught these versions for about 3 weeks now, and everyone seems to get and like the whole “color” thing. A good friend of mine whose opinion I trust, really liked the idea of colored licks and said, “You’ve created Garanimals for bluegrass.” I’m hoping you get it as well.

This one has a lot of files and a lot of info. I’ve followed the same format that we have used for our previous lessons. You have a slow melody track, a slow rhythm track, and the faster jam track, for both versions 1 and 2. We also shot videos of me playing both versions slowly, along with a lesson video to walk you through this. Of course, all of this is for both guitar and mandolin.

This is a cool tune and was a lot of fun to put together. I hope you enjoy it and are able to get a good grip on improvising "your" arrangement. As always, if something doesn’t work or you just have a question, drop me a line at Rick@bluegrassbooksonline.com and I’ll be happy to help where I can.

Rick

Big Sandy River

Guitar Version 1

Big Sandy River Guitar Version 1 pdf music/tab

Big Sandy River Slow Guitar Version 1 mp3 slow melody

Big Sandy River Slow Rhythm mp3 slow rhythm

Big Sandy River Jam Version 1 mp3 fast jam 3 times thru

Big Sandy River Guitar Version 1 wmv slow video

Guitar Version 2

Big Sandy River Guitar Version 2 pdf -music/tab

Big Sandy River Slow Guitar Version 2 mp3- slow melody

Big Sandy River Slow Rhythm mp3- slow rhythm