Orange Blossom Special – Lesson 1
This is the first lesson in a series on the Orange Blossom Special. It’s a challenging tune that integrates a few advanced techniques: polyrhythmic string crossing, advanced fingering, and double stops.
I’ve had a lot of requests for this but have held off. It always seemed a bit show-offy. But I recently started fiddling with it and realized that if it was broken down enough, even a beginner could start with the basic pattern.
In this lesson I’ll introduce the whole tune and then walk through each of the five lessons we’ll do:
- [OBS: 1] Overview and the basic rhythmic pattern
- [OBS: 2] Adding advanced fingering to the basic pattern
- [OBS: 3] Learning and practicing the chords
- [OBS: 4] Putting together the A part
- [OBS: 5] Learning the B part
In this lesson, we’ll learn the basic rhythmic pattern in a simple way. It’s tricky, but I think if you are an advanced beginner you can do it. Let me know how it goes in a comment…
Learning chunks
Preparation
Here are some lessons you can take to prepare for this:
OBS 1.1
D0-0-A0-D0-0-A0
OBS 1.2
OBS 1.3
OBS 1.4
OBS 1.5
OBS 1.6
OBS 1.7
OBS 1.8
OBS 1.9
Sheet music
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great practice lessons. learning great techniques
Thank you Jason, the fingering and rhythm exercises helped a lot. It gave me some good tools for cleaning up another tune I’ve been working on that has some string crossing rhythms that have been fuzzy at times. Sonny’s Mazurka, fun tune with a chance to try the crossing going up and down the scale. Thanks for all your great lessons.
Bernie
Well this is one to work on – follows on very nicely from my question in the last office hours 🙂 …. Looking forward to this
There’s a great description of the tune and its history on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Blossom_Special_(song). Love the quote, “For a long time no fiddle player would be hired for a bluegrass band unless he could play it.” Challenge accepted! 🙂
So much fun to practice this knowing what will be coming next!
Great song, great lesson ——I’ll be busy for awhile on this 👍😁😁
How fun this will be. By the way as soon as you said rhythm of the train it came much easier. Yes! Thank you