Hot Licks for Bluegrass Guitar

by Orrin Star

Book Overview

(Music Sales America). Over 350 authentic bluegrass licks are included in this book, which also discusses how to apply the licks to create your own solos and expand your musical understanding and knowledge of the fingerboard. It features special sections on bluesy licks, trail-offs, playing in closed positions up the neck, crosspicking, floating, double stops, and more. A special celebrity section featuring the licks of Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Dan...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0825602912
• ISBN13: 9780825602917
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Music Sales
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 9.0" x 11.9"

Customer Reviews

Most in depth approach to understanding bluegrass I have come across

I came across this book and realized that it is the most sophisticated approach to understanding the underlying principles of bluegrass guitar. Hopefully the reader is listening to lots of bluegrass to begin with to adopt the sound so that the lack of an accompanying CD can be seen as a minor drawback. Yes, the examples are all in the key of G and C, but what people need to realize is that 1) those are the two most common positions to play bluegrass at the neck and 2) any lick can (and should) be transcribed to the keys of A,E, and D both at the nut and in closed positions as well. I would rather have over three hundred examples of licks in one or two keys so I can just concentrate on building the Bluegrass vocabulary rather than a one thousand page book that did all of the transcribing for me. The scope of the book is not to teach how to read music or about music theory, and it definitely is most useful if you are about an intermediate so you can learn each lick in 1-2 minutes and then just practice repeating it until it becomes burned into your implicit hand memory. You'd be surprised that after about 30-40 licks learned you already start to develop a nice workable vocabulary of bluegrass phrases that can be juxtaposed to your liking. I am planning on going through this book cover to cover, and combined with Steve Kaufman's method of learning 40 bluegrass songs and learning them in the keys CAGED in open and closed positions this will probably be the best pathway to take to master bluegrass guitar. It takes a while but will be worth it. I digress, but in short this book DOES have very hot licks and ideas and I recommend it to anyone interesting in bluegrass guitar.

Pure Bluegrass Guitar...

I was lucky enough to attend a gig by Mr Starr in Cambridge, UK. I had never heard solo bluegrass guitar before and was impressed, not just by his playing but the effect of that style played solo. It was a very pure sound, quite moving. I got the book on that basis. It is bluegrass, though. Solo riffs and a million variations on the 'g run', that clicheed ending to most bluegrass tunes. If you like bluegrass and want to work on flatpicking, this is definitely for you. I have personally moved on; I play classical guitar now but his gig that night remains memorable.

good stuff

This is by far the "meatiest" of the numerous guitar instruction books I've come across. Tons of licks and material here, and tons of good discussion about putting together bluegrass solos that's quite helpful. The only real downside is that some of the licks in here really aren't all that hot. In fact, i decided to buy the companion CD from the author, to see if I was somehow playing them wrong, and it turned out i wasn't. He even goes so far on the CD to admit that some of the licks aren't that hot - pretty funny. Anyway, I had a bit of a revelation while going through the book - it made me think, "hey, this is all absurd. I can come up with some better licks than this on my own." Since then, I realize that the licks that don't sound so hot still have their value, and it's worthwhile to get a bunch of different licks under your belt if you want to really fluently play bluegrass solos. The point is, this book got me to finally recognize and act on these crucial insights, which no other book did.

Hot licks for Bluegrass Guitar

I will be working for a long time to achieve all that is in this book! Great runs and licks! A CD (or two) to cover some of the runs would be awesome but again this book is LOADED.

Hot Licks for Bluegrass Guitar

Orrin presents the best of the best here. If you were to incorporate a mere 10% of these licks into your own playing, you'll soon be sounding like a contest champ. Orrin presents not just the "flashy" sounding licks, but he also presents phrases that can be modified slightly to use in many songs. I especially like his "desert island" choices. A real winner, from cover to cover!