How to Play Watson Blues

Learn 'Watson Blues' with Monroe's signature mando licks and techniques.

This lesson covers 'Watson Blues,' a classic instrumental written by Bill Monroe. You'll learn the tune and explore the subtleties of his style. We'll talk about some specific techniques he used and look at a few signature Monroe licks for this tune.

1

Overview

A lesson on Watson Blues and the techniques used by Bill Monroe

If you love mandolin, tremolo, bluesy licks and Bill Monroe, then you've come to the right place. In this lesson series we'll tackle Watson Blues. We'll work through the tune in 2 sections. First ...
2

The A Section

Slip and Slide

One major component of Bill Monroe's style is the way he uses slides. Very often, he slides into and out of notes using his fretting hand. Sliding can give a nice vocal quality to your playing. If ...
3

The B Section

Flying Fingers

The first two measures of the B section have a blast of 32nd notes. These come twice as fast as most of the notes in the song(besides the tremolo). This may or may not be a challenge for you. If it...
4

Lick #1

Chromatic Variation on a Theme

There's not too much technical challenge with this lick. The main thing you need to watch out for is keeping your 3rd finger curled up enough when playing the double stop with the open E string.
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Lick #2

Rapid Fire

This lick has a nice blast of 32nd notes right before transitioning to the next tremolo. The key to playing this accurately is having both fingers down on the 4th and 2nd frets before starting it. ...
6

Lick #3

Rhythm in the Lead

This lick has such a cool rhythmic identity. It's quintessential Bill Monroe. Pay close attention to the pick direction in the tab. Especially for the fast part. Keep your middle finger down on the...
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Lick #4

How Blue Can You Get?

This is an amazing bluesy lick. Bill uses a flurry of fast notes. He lets one note ring for suspense, then finishes the measure with another flurry of notes. It leads perfectly into the next measure.
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Where to Now

Keep Adding to Your Repertoire

Now that you've made it through Watson's Blues, you might want to keep diving into more Monroe style mandolin. Here's some more Monroe tunes and Monroe Style mandolin tunes we have available on Tun...