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If you’re holding down the lead guitar role in a country-western band, you’ll need command of a wide variety of classic and modern country soloing techniques, across the full spectrum of country and honky tonk grooves and feels. Matthew Lee’s Lead Edition of Honky Tonk Guitar will deliver all of the fretboard goods you’ll need to perform at the highest level.
Complete course with step-by-step lessons and practice examples.
Course filmed with 6 cameras for the perfect angles.
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You’ll start your honky-tonk learning journey start by working on single-note lines and chromatic approaches over a train beat. Next, a focus on double-stops over a Country Shuffle feel. Matthew presents more soloing performance studies diving deep into open string lines, straight minor grooves, chicken pickin' chops for an Outlaw Country feel, modern country rock approaches with repetitive licks, and finally, pedal steel licks over an Americana groove. Matthew has also included a segment on Gear & FX to help you dial in a killer honky-tonk sound. It’s all here in Matthew Lee’s Lead Edition of Honky Tonk Guitar! Matthew will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches along the way. You’ll get standard notation and tabs for all of the performance studies.
Hey, I'm Matthew Lee. Welcome to Lead Edition of Honky Tonk Guitar!<br><br>If you're holding down the lead guitar role in a country-western band, you'll need command of a wide variety of classic and modern country soloing techniques across the full spectrum of honky tonk grooves and feels.<br><br>I play a minimum of 200 gigs a year supporting recording artists and established bands performing everywhere from Nashville honky tonks to venues and concert halls in virtually every state.<br><br>In this course, we'll focus on soloing techniques for the most commonly encountered country-western feels including country shuffles, train beats, outlaw grooves, country rock, straight minor feels, and Americana.<br><br>All of the performances are transcribed and you'll be able to sync the tab and notation to the video using TrueFire's learning tools. You can also loop or slow down the videos so you can work with the lessons at your own pace. All of the backing tracks are included to work with on your own.Ready to get started?<br><br>Grab your guitar, and let's go!
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Before we get started, let's define what a "trainbeat" is. Typically, you'd have a "boom-chick-boom-chick" kind of feel. The drums are simple, and the bassist is basically playing a 1-5 pattern.<br><br>It's a fun feel to solo over, and it gives us lots of different options to use. A great approach is to keep things simple, using just single note lines.
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Here's a simple and effective way of using single note lines over a basic progression in the key of A. The main focus is to connect the lines with easy articulations like slides and hammer ons/pull offs. We'll repeat the solo twice, and I included an alternate ending lick.
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In the next tune, we're covering a shuffle groove. This is a common feel across country and blues, so if you're just checking out country guitar for the first time, here's a great place to start.
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In this solo over a shuffle we focus on more advanced concepts like double stops, chicken picking, and bending techniques. This is a very commonly used progression in classic country shuffles and your main focus on this solo is to connect the various techniques to create a melodic using a mixed bag of country techniques. Watch out for phrasing and fingerings to achieve best results.
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Variety is essential to playing the guitar, so let's focus now on changing our tone up a bit. We're going to adopt a "cowboy movie" sound, and with it we're going to try out some open string lines and minor ideas to really let it shine.
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This solo has a more minor tonality so the note choices will be a bit different. I start you off with a pick up and develop melodic lines blending many of the country techniques you may find yourself using over a straight feel. Plenty of playing against the grain style á la Danny Gattton in this one.
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This next groove is an outlaw groove, which is basically a four on the floor feel, made famous by Waylon Jennings. Let's talk a bit about what we can do over this kind of track and how to approach it.
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A typical outlaw feel in the style of Waylon Jennings is a four on the floor groove. In this solo we explore pedal steel bends and use the entire neck to play over this very commonly used progression over this feel. Repetitive licks and lots of bending with chicken picking is shown in this solo and should add lots of licks to your outlaw vocabulary with ideas shown in this solo.
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This next tune is taken from modern country, where we're adding in some edginess, taking more notes from rock guitar in what we'll play.
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This solo has two distinct sections and is designed for guitar players interested in writing their own material for instrumental use. It's got a more modern rocked out vibe and use of various rhythmic elements in the first section. The second part is more about how to approach a solo idea within the framework of this mock "instrumental", Note that the tonalities change from major in the first section to minor in the solo. Rhythm is a key component to playing country and we discuss all techniques used in this ABA form .
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Our final style of country guitar is Americana, looking at how to play along with a singer-songwriter, outlining the melody and bringing it onto the instrument.
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Here's a way to approach an Americana type song. We use non-diatonic chords in the progression to get out of the key a bit and the licks reflect playing over unique chords that can really add melodic and colorful lines to your playing. All country techniques are used and discussed in this tune. It's also in the sometimes not so guitar friendly key of F.
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Before we wrap up, I'll take you through my rig and talk about what gear I use to get my sound.
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I hope you've enjoyed this course, it's been really fun creating it. Hopefully you've taken a lot away from it, and I appreciate you picking it up. Until next time!
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