Exploring Foggy Mountain Breakdown- Part I

Foggy Mountain Breakdown.  It's the most popular tune from the father of bluegrass banjo (Earl Scruggs).  I love playing Foggy Mountain as much as the next guy and thought I would try a series of posts exploring variations.  The original is pretty much untouchable so I'm not suggesting anything I have come up with is an improvement, simply tapping into the old imagination to mix things up a little.

The first variation is fairly similar in melody to the up the neck choke break Scruggs takes only played an octave lover with hammers in place of chokes.  There is a little pedal steel inspired bending over the E minor chord and then a honky tonk piano inspired lick over the D chord.

Here is a video of it played slow...



And here is the tab (click to enlarge)...

I figure at the end of this series I'll record a video of all of the variations back to back at a decent tempo.

NEXT :  EXPLORING FOGGY MOUNTAIN PART II - SINGLE STRING BREAK