“SITTIN’ ON TOP OF THE WORLD”
Billy Strings & Molly Tuttle
CAPTURED ON VIDEO at the
2019 Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, this spirited live performance of a popular old standard features two of today’s most celebrated young lions of bluegrass — Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle — jamming and taking exciting, virtuosic solos over the tune’s uptempo groove and “key of G” chord changes, with both guitars capo-ed at the 2nd fret, transposing everything up a whole step to the concert key of A.
Billy kicks off the tune in free time by initiating a series of soulful call-and-response vocal and guitar phrases, with Molly (Gtr. 2) entering in bar 7 and interjecting her own “answer” runs. Notice in these initial phrases, and also later in the performance, when the brisk tempo and “two feel” groove kick in and the two guitarists take solos “in time,” how they both masterfully craft musical melodies using notes from two parallel scales: G minor blues, also
Bb, Db, known more simply as G blues (G, C, D, Bb, F), and G major blues (G, A, B, D, E). The latter may be thought of as being the relative-major equivalent of the E minor blues, or E Bb, blues, scale (E, G, A, B, D). This works the same way as using parallel major and minor pentatonics built from the same root note — for example, G minor pentatonic and G major pentatonic — the only difference being the addition of a chromatic passing tone in each scale (Db Bb, and respectively). And so, altogether, b3 you have a lot of “blue notes,” namely the (Bb b5 (Db) b7 in the key of G major), the and (F), which really put the blue in bluegrass!
The real artistry on display here, however, is not just in the use of scales, but in the ways in which both guitarists tastefully and creatively contour their melodies with frequent changes in direction — ascending then descending, and vice versa — and break up the machinegun-like alternate picking with hammer-ons, pull-offs and legato finger slides, all of which are part of the art of flatpicking. And being able to play with such speed and fluency on acoustic guitars, with their stiff, wound G strings, is an impressive technical feat that requires a lot of practice and conditioning to do!