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 you watch the video you'll notice these slides. When combined with tremolo it creates a very special effect. There is a lot of subtlety in how the slide is used. Sometimes we will slide up quickly to the target note in the tab from a lower note. Sometimes we'll slide slowly away from the target note on our way to the next. The tab tells us the important notes, but to get the style and subtlety we need to use our ears and eyes. Watch the video repeatedly. Pause the video after hearing a small section or lick, then try and duplicate it on your instrument. Do this a lot. Also, listen actively to Bill's playing on a recording. Notice when he slides. Is it slow? Is it fast? Using your ears like this will help you to understand and eventually emulate his style.

For suggested fingering with the fret hand, watch the video. For most of it, you should be fine using 1st, 2nd, and 3rd fingers. For the notes on the G and D string using the 7th fret, you may want to use the pinky.

In the next lesson, we'll look at the B section of the song.