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Top 10 Easy Bluegrass Guitar Songs For Beginners (2025)

Learn 10 easy bluegrass guitar songs perfect for beginners. With chords, video lessons, and practice tips, you'll be jamming in no time. Start building your rhythm chops and explore the classics of bluegrass guitar!

Jesse Paliotto

• 4 min read

Updated for 2025
Looking to break into bluegrass guitar? You’re in the right place.

Whether you're just picking up an acoustic for the first time or transitioning from folk or rock, these beginner-friendly bluegrass songs will help you build essential rhythm chops while keeping things fun and musical.

Why Start with These Songs?

Bluegrass can seem intimidating—especially when you hear blazing solos by Doc Watson or Tony Rice. But most bluegrass guitar parts are simple, supportive, and strum-based. These songs are chosen specifically for:

  • Simplicity of chords
  • Guitar-friendly keys (G, C, D, A, E)
  • Popularity at bluegrass jams
  • Beginner-friendly tempos

Each entry includes a video lesson, chord link, and listening recommendation, so you can learn faster and stay inspired.

How To Learn

When you're learning these songs at first, just learn the basic chords and a simple strumming pattern. If you listen to recordings (suggestions are included below), you can usually hear the acoustic guitar player doing a simple strumming pattern in the background - that's what you want.

Disregard the melody line, the fiddle riffs, and the banjo arpeggiated rolls. Those things are amazing, and make the song sound full and complex. But in order to get started, focus on learning the chords and basic rhythm.

  • Start by learning the basic chords and a simple strumming pattern.
  • Focus on rhythm guitar—ignore fancy banjo rolls and solos for now.
  • Use the embedded videos and links below to listen, watch, and play along.

How Did We Choose The Songs?

Choosing the top bluegrass tunes is both very simple and very difficult. Because bluegrass has been around for a while and has a healthy 'jam session' culture, there's an established repertoire of songs-you-need-to-know. This provides a simple starting point. The difficult part is that there are different opinions of exactly what that repertoire is. And, of course, if you trim it down to ten songs...which ones can you afford to omit?

In order to make the list, we looked at several things:

We plugged all of these into an Excel spreadsheet (yes, a bit nerdy...) and ranked songs by frequency, ease of use, and popularity. So, based on that, here's....

🎸 The Top 10 Easy Bluegrass Guitar Songs for Beginners

1. Blackberry Blossom

Blackberry Blossom is a very common bluegrass tune with a fast melody and cut time feel.

When you listen to the song, remember, don't get intimidated by the melody!! You're going to tackle the boom-chick guitar in the background. The chords are easy - G, C, D, Em, A7 - and the pattern is fairly short. The primary challenge here is in moving between chord shapes smoothly and quickly.

2. Old Joe Clark

A medium-tempo fiddle tune. Often taught as one of the first songs for a bluegrass musician. While the fiddle work is busy, the guitar accompaniment is straight ahead.

3. Wildwood Flower

This is a classic flatpicking guitar song. It was popularized by the Carter family, and that's the recording included here. This song is great because the melody is fairly simple and the tempo relaxed, so it's an easy one to get started with.

4. Soldier's Joy

True to it's title, "Soldier's Joy" is a happy number. It moves at a decent pace (especially in the recording embedded below), so the primary challenge is to keep moving between chord shapes.

5. Cripple Creek

Here's another common fiddle tune taught to beginning bluegrass musicians. The fiddle parts are fast but, remember, just pay attention to the acoustic guitar "boom-chick" pattern in the background - that's what you're after!

  • Chords: G, D, C
  • Challenge: Recognizing bluegrass rhythm
  • **🎼 View Chords

6. John Henry

This song is a story of a man who was driving steel for the railroad and died trying to keep up with the new steam drill.

This song has been covered by all sorts of folks, including (and embedded here) by Bruce Springsteen!

7. Nine Pound Hammer

A great beginner song with very simple changes. The tempo can vary by performer quite a bit, but here's a version by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with some fun harmonica accompaniment as well.

8. Salt Creek

An old and popular fiddle tune and a standard at bluegrass jam sessions. Check out Tony Rice's version embedded here.

9. I Saw The Light

This song is more of a Gospel song with a strong lyrical message. But the tune has been taken up by the bluegrass repertoire as a favorite. And it's a great one for beginners.

  • Chords: G, C, D
  • Challenge: Gospel swing feel
  • **🎼 View Chords

10. Man of Constant Sorrow

This is an old song, in fact, but was popularized in contemporary culture by the move O Brother Where Art Thou. This tune is interesting because the tonality is a bit more "flat 7th" and less straight-ahead major sounding, and because the guitar gets to strum a bit more than the usual boom-chick pattern.

✅ Tips for Learning Bluegrass Guitar

  • Join a local jam group or online bluegrass forum for accountability.
  • Use a metronome or slow-downer app to master the rhythm.
  • Practice G-run transitions—these are essential in bluegrass.

Got more suggestions? Put 'em in the comments below!

Further Reading