The Importance of Muscle Memory, Part 2: Variations and Improvising

from: Advanced Flatpicking Guitar with Scott Nygaard

This lesson is part of the course Advanced Flatpicking Guitar with Scott Nygaard.

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Learn the essential techniques of bluegrass flatpicking guitar through classic and lesser-known songs and tunes, from bluegrass blues to old-time fiddle tunes to country swing sounds.

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Home Sweet Home

In Part 2 of the lesson on crosspicking, you'll learn the first part of Scott's arrangement of "Home Sweet Home," which mostly uses the traditional 3-3-2 roll. Since crosspicking is usually used to play song melodies, it's a good idea to learn the melody of a song before tackling a crosspicking arrangement, so Scott starts by making sure you know the melody to "Home Sweet Home" and then takes the arrangement apart phrase by phrase (or roll by roll).

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The Importance of Muscle Memory

The Importance of Muscle Memory, Part 1: Practicing and Memorization

The Importance of Muscle Memory, Part 2: Variations and Improvising

Scott talks about the importance of starting to create variations on tunes early in your musical development. He gives you suggestions for creating variations on the phrases of a melody, and the importance not only of being able to create variations on the fly, but getting them in your muscle memory as well, by memorizing your variations and creating and memorizing entire solos.

The Importance of Muscle Memory (Available to subscribers)

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