To build a good bluegrass solo from scratch, Bill advocates first learning the basic melody of the song or instrumental that you want to play. In this first lesson, he shows you a basic first-position G scale that will provide the building blocks for melodies within that key. Then he dissects the melody for “Cripple Creek,” a great banjo and fiddle tune, and shows you how that sounds when all the rolls and licks are stripped away. He does the same thing in more detail with three other bluegrass standards: “Worried Man Blues,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and “Blue Ridge Cabin Home.” You’ll revisit these songs later in the course, but for this lesson, you’ll focus on ferreting out the melody and chords. In this video, Bill walks you through the G scale and shows you how the notes in the G, C, and D (I, IV, and V) chords are built from notes in that scale. Be sure to download the tablature for this lesson, which includes some G-scale exercises as well as the basic melodies and chord progressions for the three songs Bill shows you.
