Foggy Mountain Breakdown banjo tabs

More about Foggy Mountain Breakdown

"Foggy Mountain Breakdown" is an instrumental bluegrass tune − that is, a "breakdown" − composed by Earl Scruggs and first recorded by the bluegrass artists Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys on December 11, 1949. It's a bluegrass repertoire standard. It has a recording in 1949 that shows Scruggs playing the banjo with five strings. In the 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde, especially in the car chase scenes, it is used as background music and has been used in many other films and television programs. Both the 1949 edition of Mercury records and a newly recorded version of Columbia are classified in one spot of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #55.

Scruggs won a Grammy award in 2002 for a set in 2001 featuring Steve Martin on the second banjo, Albert Lee, Vince Gill, and Randy Scruggs on guitars, Marty Stuart on mandolin, Jerry Douglas on dobro, Leon Russell on keyboard, Gary Scruggs on harmonica, and Paul Shaffer on piano, amongst others. In 2004, it was one of 50 tapes picked to be transferred to the National Recording Register by the Library of Congress that year. Because of its ubiquity and reputation as a popular tuning at bluegrass jams and festivals, guitar and mandolin players usually practice solo breaks to this track that closely mirror the original version of the banjo. The song is linked to the "Bluegrass Breakdown" by Bill Monroe, which was supported by Scruggs in reading. This included the same double hammer-on opening, but "Bluegrass Breakdown" goes to an F-major chord while Foggy Mountain Breakdown goes to the absolute extreme of the G-major chord, an E-minor chord.

Learn 4 different versions of Foggy Mountain Breakdown, which are all shown on this page. We recommend that you get started with the Scruggs style version, where you’ll learn basic roll pattern and left hand articulations like slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs. Next, move on to the Melodic arrangement to learn how to play the melody for Foggy Mountain Breakdown using scales and up the next positions. Lastly, you can check out the Backup arrangement, which shows you how to play behind others while they are soloing.

In every Tunefox tablature arrangement you'll find measures where you can switch out licks to see different options to use for your improvisation. This feature is called the Lick Switcher. How do you find the Lick Switcher? Look for text that says "Original Measure" over different measures in the Foggy Mountain Breakdown tab you are learning and click on that text. It'll open up the Lick Switcher where you can select a substitute measure for that spot in the song. You'll find that there are different styles of licks like Scruggs, Melodic, Bluesy, and more. Want to see a completely different version of this song? Click on "Shuffle Licks" on the bottom of tool panel to randomly shuffle the licks in the song.

Be sure to check out all of the great learning tools that Tunefox has to offer such as "Hide Notes", "Memory Train", and "Speed Up". These tools can be found in the "Tools" menu at the bottom right of your screen. Want to learn some of Foggy Mountain Breakdown by ear? Use "Hide Notes" to hide some or all of the notes in the tablature. Once you’re finished learning with the tab use the "Memory Train" tool to commit the song to memory. Then practice with "Speed Up" to improve your technique and speed in no time.

Use the Tunefox backing tracks to practice the solo you’re working on or improvising over the chord changes for Foggy Mountain Breakdown. The backing tracks are recorded samples of real instruments to help simulate practicing with an actual band. You can adjust the volume of the instrument, band, and metronome to your liking.

When you’ve finished creating your arrangement of Foggy Mountain Breakdown, export your song arrangement to PDF file. This feature is for members of Tunefox, only.