Bluegrass virtuoso Molly Tuttle on the differences between metal and bluegrass shredding

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Bluegrass virtuoso Molly Tuttle is known for her light-speed flatpicking. However, the acoustic great has explained that, unlike rock and metal shredding, the bluegrass counterpart is all about “friendly competition” and jam circles, and less about emotionally driven and showy solos.

“When I hear a heavy metal guitar player there is that raw emotion that can maybe sound a little angry, whereas I feel like bluegrass is more friendly competition – who can play the fastest, who can play the hottest licks or whatever,” she says in the latest edition of Total Guitar.

“It’s on acoustic instruments and it is very happy-sounding music, even if a lot of the songs have sad lyrics. It’s like folk music in that you can be a complete beginner and enter a jam circle, and as long as you know a handful of songs you’re okay. It is kind of an accessible music in that way.

“But then to get to playing on stage or being one of the prominent people in the genre you do have to work really hard because there’s that speed element, and it’s a highly technical type of music.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Tuttle talks about how developing speed felt almost like second nature: “Speed for me came more easily. I would practice with a metronome and just play faster and faster each day, try to push my speed to where sometimes I would play faster than I could really play it cleanly. After doing that, for a couple days, eventually my brain would kind of catch up with my fingers, and I would get faster.”

She did however struggle with being quick on her feet when improvising. “The thing I plateaued on was learning about the fingerboard, improvising, being able to play new ideas. Sometimes I’d get stuck playing the same things over and over again.

“I still feel like that sometimes, but now I just see it more as my style, like I have a sound that is my own. It’s okay if I play some of the same licks or play things that I gravitate towards, because that’s what I like.”

Tuttle and her band Golden Highway have just announced their upcoming project, a six-track EP, Into The Wild, set to be released on September 20 on Nonesuch Records. The EP is a follow-up to their Grammy-winning album, 2023’s City of Gold.

For more from Molly Tuttle, plus new interviews with Marcin and Tommy Emmanuel, pick up issue 387 of Total Guitar at Magazines Direct.