Bluegrass Potatoes – What Are They? (and How to Play Them)

Written by Corbin Buff in Education,Free Licks & Lessons

bluegrass potatoes guitar lesson

Here’s a quick little bluegrass concept or trick i wanted to share with you: these are called potatoes. I actually didn’t know that until some fiddle friends shared that term with me, but basically bluegrass potatoes are a way to start off traditional bluegrass songs, irish songs, fiddle tunes, reels, or other acoustic songs.

They all kind of start with these droning notes that you play before the actual song starts off to kind of get people prepared for it:

So those are potatoes and there’s a couple of different ways to play them on the guitar, as you can see in the video above. So that’s really it, I just wanted to share that with you so that you can use potatoes to spice up the beginning of your bluegrass song. Hope you enjoyed it!

Need more help learning bluegrass guitar?

Check out the following posts and guides to learn more about bluegrass guitar:

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Corbin Buff

Corbin has played guitar for over a decade, and started writing about it on Acoustic World in an effort to help others. He lives and writes in western Montana.

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