Big Mon Guitar Tabs
Bill Monroe
Big Mon Guitar Tablature: One Song, Many Styles
Recomended level: Intermediate
"Big Mon" is the nickname of the Father of Bluegrass, and the title of an instrumental written by the man himself: Bill Monroe. Big Mon is a blast to play on any instrument. Here, you'll find several inspiring arrangements for the guitar.
Listen. Listen a lot to "ingest" the tune and learn how it's supposed to sound. Listen before practicing. Listen after a shower, and in the car...Live with it for a while. You can listen in Tunefox anytime. Make a playlist with multiple versions of this tune on whatever streaming service you may use. It's fun to hear different interpretations of the same tune, and hear what they all have in common. This is also good for developing your musical ear.
Go to the learning path for Guitar Scales & Exercises. Favorite a few of the lessons, scales, and exercises for G major and G major pentatonic. Those will serve as great warmup exercises and will help you build foundational coordination and fretboard awareness that will aid your progress in this song and others.
Big Mon is what is known as a "modal" tune. Basically, that means the song uses notes from multiple keys. For example, the Bluegrass version of the song uses mostly G major, but it also uses another "version" of G major where just one note is changed. This different scale is called a "mode". The notes of G major are G A B C D E F#. The notes of the mode used in that song are G A B C D E F. This still sounds like the key of G, it's just a different flavor. When you use a major scale and lower the 7th scale tone by a half-step, it is known as the "mixolydian" mode.
If you are an experienced player and looking for something different, then check out the No Capo version of Big Mon. Playing without the capo will open up a whole new world of sounds and possibilities!
Learn how to play Big Mon on Guitar with this selection of tablatures:
