[Lcjones]

**
There's a few of us on the boards here that have or still play bluegrass guitar. It's a great genre to learn strumming, flat picking as well as finger picking.

There are quite a few new bluegrass tunes out there these days but when you get into the old standards, such as Man of Constant Sorrow, there are a multitude of ways to play them. My best advice is to jump right into to it. Watch and listen. You'll catch on pretty quick.

Usually a bluegrass rhythm guitarist uses bass run along with a strumming pattern. Use your pick to place emphasis on a bass note and continue to follow through with a strum. In many cases you will see an alternating pattern such as ...

G Chord (emphasis on the RED note. The vertical line and arrow indicate the follow through strum)

--------3-^-----------------------------
--------o-|-----------------------------
--------o-|-----------------------------
--------o-|-----------------------------
----2-----|-----------------------------
--------3------------------------------


---------3--^-------------------------------
---------o--|-------------------------------
---------o--|-------------------------------
---------O---------------------------------
------2------------------------------------
---------3---------------------------------

I've included a small snippet of a bluegrass run. Nothing special. Just a simple blue grass progression. I'm capo'd on the 2nd fret and the chords are G,C,D and A. Practice this a few times and you'll start to get the feel of it. It's pretty much standard in the world of BG rhythm guitar.

Hope this helps.

**
LC