A New Roll & Cripple Creek

Put your slurs to use!

This learning path contains the roll pattern used for Foggy Mountain Breakdown and the melody of Cripple Creek, which is essentially a way to practice the slurs you've been learning.

7 Video Lessons

1

FreeThe Foggy Mountain Breakdown Roll

Step 1: Getting the Roll Down

Here's another roll pattern to add to your musical toolkit and this one is used at the very beginning of the popular banjo song, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown."
2

FreeThe Foggy Mountain Breakdown Roll

Step 2: Adding a Hammer-On

The Foggy Mountain Breakdown roll with the hammer-on is one of the most essential bluegrass banjo licks you'll play.
3

Foggy Mountain Breakdown

Step 3: The First Two Measures

Here we go! This is the very first part of Foggy Mountain Breakdown as played by Earl Scruggs.
4

How to Play Cripple Creek

Getting Started

Cripple Creek is one of the first songs most bluegrass banjo students learn and the reason is that other than one measure, it consists of the slurs that you learned in Lesson #5.
5

Cripple Creek: Part Two

Slide, Hammer-On, Pull-Off

The second measure of the A section to Cripple Creek takes the slurs you learned in Lesson #5 and puts them together.
6

Cripple Creek: Part Three

The B Section

The form, or order of parts in Cripple Creek is AABB. You've learned the A section, now let's move onto the easy part!
7

Cripple Creek: Part Four

Putting It All Together

Let's put the pieces together and get cookin' with Cripple Creek!

FreeThe Foggy Mountain Breakdown Roll

FreeThe Foggy Mountain Breakdown Roll