Common Bluegrass Chords

Hi, welcome to the series on bluegrass. just like all the other genre series, we're gonna start real

basic, real simple. and we're going to start today with just going over some real common

bluegrass chords. so, if you're in this series you already kind of know what bluegrass sounds

like. and we're gonna get into first the bluegrass rhythms and the basics alternating bass lines

walking bass within the chords and eventually we're gonna work our way up to the flat picking

style and playing melody with the chords and such. ao, and also improvising down the road but

we're going to start basic. like we always do here . so in this lesson specifically we're going to

talk about common bluegrass chords a lot of them you'll already know. some of them might be a

little bit different. and also to note as a prerequisite i highly recommend that you've at least

gone through the beginner volumes and you have a basic knowledge of chords and scales

and such so the first five volumes are we consider the beginner course. ok, so.. common

bluegrass chords we're gonna start first there are a few keys that are common in bluegrass it's

really common to play in a key of G and the key of C because there are a lot of open chords

and they use a lot of open chords with open strings. so that is something you might want to

note. So we're going to start with chords the C major chord is going to be a common chord and

we should all be familiar with that one. and then a different version of this if you pull up the

PDF that I've provided that has all these chords on it the second one there C slash G. so if you

take your C chord you're going to move your third finger up to the third fret on the low E string

and put your pinkie on the root note of the C the third fret of the A string. The reason, and that's

a C slash G. It's a C major chord with a G note on the bottom or on the bass. the reason we

might play this type of chord is because of the alternating basslines that you would hear in

bluegrass a lot. stuff like that. so you could also if you didnt want to do that you could move your

third finger up and down like that but you really wanna get comfortable playing this chord. So we

have C, we have C over G, and you can just kind of practice moving these just going back and

forth there's no particular exercise here in this lesson. we're just going over the basic chords.

then we have a G major which we all know. Now you'll see there the fourth chord in the chord

chart PDF shows the same G major chord but different fingering so we're gonna finger it

sometimes like this so third finger, second finger, pinkie down here. the reason that is is

because it's common you could use then your first finger to play a C back here so you could get

something like and play this chord like that. So get used to playing a G like this as well. It's also

good for when we start playing melodies youre staying in the same position andnot having to

shift a lot. or to be able to go back to a G7 chord easily by just lifting your pinkie and putting your

first finger on the first fret of the high E string. So that's another thing that you might see. and

then we have another G major chord and you see me play this one a lot. and its basically if you

take your regular G major chord and you move your third finge rup to the third fret of the B string

and your pinkie nowstays on the third fret of the high E string it doesnt really change the chord

much you're just adding another D note to the chord which is the fifth so you're just doubling up

the D so you're not adding a different note to the chord you're just adding another note doubling

up the D Ok so thats that, and then we have some F chords which would be used more when

we're playing in the key of C so you have your basic F chord like this we're barring the first fret

E and B strong gotta really arch the second finger for the second fret of the G string and then

your third fret goes ont he third fret of the D string thats an F chord ir comes from your F barre

chord but you're not playing all the notes just playing the E, B Gand D strings and much like the

C over G we have an F over Cwhich is the same type of thing soif you take this chord you move

your third finger up and put your pinkie on the third fret of the D string now we have the fifth of F

which is C on the bottom where our third finger is and that will allow us to play that alternating

bassline. So thats another fingering you definitely want to get familiar with. The F over C. and

then we have our D major chord which we all know and then the last one there is the trickiest

one probably and thats a D with an F sharp on the bottom which you gotta role your thumb over

and hit it with your thumb and this allows you to be able to do its the third on the bottom not the

fifth but you;ll see that a lot to add some bass to this chord some bass texture. so you kind of

you use your thumb you can mute the A string we dont need that so if your thumb is bumping

the A string thats fine Kind of a tricky chord to get used to with your thumb. you could barre it

but that would really only work if you were using a hybrid picking where you're using a pick and

your fingers because its hard to skip over that A string when you're barring it. it doesnt really

sound and you have to skip over the D string so that really isnt going to work you can do

something like this but then you're not getting the third here on the E string so i think really the

best way is with your thumb to get all the notes in the chord . OK so just kind of practice those

chords practice moving from one to the other and just get familiar with those and in the next

lesson we're gonna start with the basic common bluegrass rhythym.