Rocky Top Mandolin Tabs
Osborne Brothers
Rocky Top Mandolin 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 mandolin 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 B major scale, and/or the B major pentatonic scale. If you look in the song list, we also have those scales in 2nd position, which means you play the scale up the neck just a bit.
After getting a hang of the basic melody and chord changes try and dive into another arrangement. The Arpeggio Étude 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 Measured Tremolo & Arpeggio sounds complex and hard, but it is very basic. You will use chord tones to play tremolo which is a pulsating rhythmic effect that the mandolin is known for. Simple arpeggios are also used as punctuation to mark the end of musical sentences AKA phrases. To develop more precise control in the timing of your picking, check out the Tremolo 101 learning path.
The Bluegrass arrangement uses Measured Tremolo, 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 Mandolin with this selection of tablatures:
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LearnMelody - 2nd Position - Low Octave
- Difficulty
- Key B
- Tempo 60 bpm
- Tuning GDAE
Learn the Melody of Rocky Top on the Mandolin. This one is in key of B & played in second position on the lower pitched strings. In the standard first position, your first finger g...
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LearnMeasured Tremolo & Arpeggio
- Difficulty
- Key B
- Tempo 60 bpm
- Tuning GDAE
Learn Rocky Top on the mandolin in the key of B! This is the most common key this tune is played in, because that's where the Osborne Brothers played it. This one uses "measured tre...
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LearnArpeggio Étude
- Difficulty
- Key B
- Tempo 60 bpm
- Tuning GDAE
This Arpeggio Étude is a great work out for your fret hand and shows you a practical and musical way to apply arpeggios to a song. You will spell out the chord tones for the chord p...