Over the last several blog posts, we’ve been looking at the most common guitar techniques. We covered the basics of:

Alternate Picking

Hammer-ons and Pull-offs

Sweep Picking

String Skipping

Stretching

Today we will apply alternate picking, flat picking, sweep picking and string skipping guitar techniques to a fun bluegrass piece from the 1800’s called “Jack Lamson’s Hornpipe”.

This piece offers quite a lot for guitar players.  As I mentioned, the song is fun to play and works well at all tempos.

The song uses primarily alternate picking.  There are also some arpeggio passages were sweep picking works great.  For example, the second half of measure 1 is a great spot for sweep picking.

In measure 15 you will find a string skipping passage.

This arrangement for Jack Lamson’s Hornpipe is in F major.  The scale form that is used throughout is:

Here is the PDF sheet music with tab for Jack Lamson’s Hornpipe for you to print off and get started on.

Have fun!