Unleash your Country Guitar Skills with Lars Schurse

Lars Schurse, the talented German guitar player we already featured on the blog, is back with another juicy Country guitar lick. It’s hybrid picking time fellas!

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(click on the image to download the Guitar Pro tab)

About the lick

Thanks for checking out my country guitar lesson!

In Country guitar as in any style of music learning the tone material is only one step. You have to acquire the vocabulary to sound authentically. By playing this solo you will get to know the techniques of the style and add four licks to your arsenal:

Lick 1 (bars 1 and 2) combines the E-blues scale and E-Mixolydian. The big interval-leaps are facilitated by the use of hybrid picking (combining pick and the fingers of the right hand). So be sure to pay attention to the fingering for the right hand below the tablature (m = middle finger, a = ring finger) throughout the solo.

Let’s take a look at the bendings in bar 2: Pedal steel guitar is a huge influence on Country guitar playing. Here you bend the flat seventh (D) to the root (E) of the chord and do a reverse bending from third (G#) to the second (F#).

Lick 2 (bars 3 and 4) is something I picked up from the amazing Brent Mason. It features a lot of sixths which are great for outlining chords. Please notice how open strings are used to change positions.

Lick 3 (bars 5 and 6) starts out with a pickup on the ‘and’ of 4 in bar 6:

Check out the chromatic movement on the E-string which only is interrupted by the open string. This lick again features a lot of open strings. Those are a key element to country guitar. Remember: In this style it is as important how you play the notes as the notes themselves.

Lick 4 (bars 7 and 8) combines a lot of techniques we just mentioned:

Hybrid picking, open strings and the combination of the blues scale and Mixolydian.

If you want to master country guitar it is important to know the great guitar players of this style, such as Brent Mason, Redd Volkaert, Roy Nichols, Albert Lee, Don Rich, Johnny Hiland, James Burton. Learn their licks, write them down in a lick book and make them part of your style.

Have Fun!
– Lars Schurse

Want to learn more Country guitar licks?

Check Lars Schurse’s website
Get the « Country-Gitarre » guitar book at Amazon or artist ahead website.