MysTiK PiKn - Posted - 03/18/2015:  18:09:52

I play guitar and mandolin.  I'm interested in learning bluegrass picking mainly.  Seems to me this is about scales, for one thing.  But also it seems that bluegrass has a very unique flavour, and there seem to be unusual scales unique to bluegrass - and I'm especially targeting  those superstar performances, where everyone kinda drops their mouths open, and then in embarrassment and disgust, kinda turn away from the stage, and contemplate cutting their fingers off just to end the misery.

I just want some link or some book that will lead to learning hard core omg wow bluegrass scales, solos, in those one-off scales.

Those scales? Like playing in G - the chords are all major - there is a B-note in the key of G.  And yet the solos follow a scale that utilizes a B-flat.  And it comes across as that wonderful hardcore bluegrass sound - which is almost like blues; but no, it is definitely NOT blues.  And any cheap substitution of blues scales is just all wrong; even tho bluegrass evolved from blues/gospel.  This is something different.  And there must be more tips n tricks out there somewhere.... THAT's what I am looking for.

I don't much care if I ever get to be a superstar, or if I can't play at superspeed.  I just want to be able to play it and hear THAT SOUND at will.  If I have the tricks, I have something I can work hard to learn.  And then turn me loose, gimme a nod, in a jam session.  Yee Hah.  Or, I can just sit, n pik, and listen to little old me, playin that sound, n pik. That would SO light up my life.

Any help with this little dilemma is SERIOUSLY appreciated.  People never talk about this stuff.  Maybe I have to move to Kentucky to learn this? 

I dunno.  I've seen Bill Monroe live, and Tony Rice, And Vassar Clements, and David Grisman, and Doc Watson - and I am honored that I did.  I have "had my ears burned" - and I just wanna play that stuff.  I can get close to the right sound; but I don't really have it.  It's been a long struggle trying to find it.

Any good links, books, etc? Any reference material?  If you can play this stuff, how did you learn?  I consider bluegrass to be an artform.

Any help.  Thanks much.  Or am I all alone on this quest? Or is this a well-kept secret, or what?  ;) ;)  Maybe I'm not looking in the right places.

Still pik'n.

Gray

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