Rocky Top Guitar Tabs
Osborne Brothers
Rocky Top Guitar Tablature: One Song, Many Styles
Recomended level: Beginner
Rocky Top. It's a classic. Synonymous with Bluegrass, The Osborne Brothers, and Tennessee Volunteer Football. It's the reason many want to learn how to play Bluegrass music. To truly learn Rocky Top on the guitar you should start with the Melody first. Sonny Osborne himself suggests this is the first place to start when learning a new tune. If you can sing the words as you play the melody it will help you internalize the timing and song in a very natural way. It will also help with memorization. Make sure to learn the chords and notice how the changes in the melody correspond with certain chord changes. Hearing where chords change in certain parts of the melody will also help you memorize chord changes.
Any time you are learning a tune, it's good to warmup with the scale or scales that are used in that song. In this case you should warmup with the G Major Scales, and the G Major Workouts.
After getting a hang of the basic melody and chord changes try and dive into another arrangement. The Arpeggio Études well help you learn to "spell out" the individual chord notes one at a time in a melodic way. Arpeggio is a fancy word for "in the style of the Harp" and mostly we use it to refer to melodic arpeggios which is where you play chord notes one at a time. Étude is just a fancy word for study. Learning arpeggios can help you be able to create melodic lines that work with chords that are used in this chord progression or in any other song. It also is a really beautiful sound and good workout for your fret-hand fingers.
The Bluegrass arrangement uses Arpeggio, Melody and some "Blue Notes" for a sound that is a bit closer to a typical bluegrass solo. This one is still relatively simple. It's not a barrage of notes the whole time and is meant to be accessible for most late beginner and intermediate players.
Learn how to play Rocky Top on Guitar with this selection of tablatures:
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LearnHammer-On Étude
- Difficulty
- Key G
- Tempo 60 bpm
- Tuning EADGBE
Learn Rocky Top for Bluegrass guitar. This version is a "hammer-on" Étude. It's a great opportunity to practice your hammer-ons in the context of Rocky Top. You will mostly be using...
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LearnSlurs Étude
- Difficulty
- Key G
- Tempo 65 bpm
- Tuning EADGBE
Practice your slurs and learn Rocky Top for Bluegrass guitar. This étude is a study of all the different slur techniques you can do on guitar: hammer-on, pull-off, and slides. The s...
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LearnArpeggio Étude: Bass Strings
- Difficulty
- Key G
- Tempo 60 bpm
- Tuning EADGBE
Learn to "spell out" the chord tones for Rocky Top on guitar. In this arrangement you will learn to play basic arpeggios on the bass strings that follows the chord progression for t...
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LearnArpeggio Étude: Treble Strings
- Difficulty
- Key G
- Tempo 60 bpm
- Tuning EADGBE
Learn to play Rocky Top on the guitar by using arpeggios on the treble strings that match the chord progression. Arpeggios are a fundamental musical element. Here, you are using mel...
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LearnArpeggio Étude: Rhythmic Phrasing
- Difficulty
- Key G
- Tempo 60 bpm
- Tuning EADGBE
Learn to play Rocky Top on guitar by using arpeggios to navigate the chord progression. Instead of just playing a constant stream of notes using melodic arpeggios, you will also inc...
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LearnArpeggio Étude: Rhythmic Phrasing #2
- Difficulty
- Key G
- Tempo 60 bpm
- Tuning EADGBE
Learn to play Rocky Top on guitar by using arpeggios to navigate the chord progression. Instead of just playing a constant stream of notes using melodic arpeggios, you will also inc...