How to Play Runs in Bluegrass in Fingerstyle Guitar

Transcript

I'm going to talk about some Bluegrass runs now. Now, what is a run? A run is basically some bass notes to get from one chord to the next. Instead of just some simple strumming [guitar music], and then you switch to the next chord [guitar music] you can make it a little more interesting by throwing some notes that get you to climb up to the next chord. You're going to have to almost think like a bass player here.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to climb [guitar sound] up from the G note here that I'm holding down with my second finger [guitar sound] to the A string open to the B [guitar sound] to the C [guitar sound], and I'm going to use that simple run to get from a G chord to a C chord. Kind of like I'm using stepping stone, those notes as stepping points to get to the C chord [ guitar music]. Just like that.

Now if I need to get, say, from a C to a D chord what I'll do is I'll use some chromatic notes [guitar sound]. I'll start with a C [guitar sound], I'll go down to the B, [guitar sound] back to the C, climb up to a C sharp and then I've got my [guitar sound] D string open.

So that one's a little more tricky. I'll do that again. C,B, C sharp, D, and then I can strum my chord. I'll use an example now. [guitar music]

You'll notice I did a little run to come back to the G. I used the open E string [guitar sound], F sharp [guitar sound], to G [guitar sound]. I'll do the whole thing again, just to show you. [guitar music]

Bluegrass runs.