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“SITTIN’ ON TOP OF THE WORLD”

Billy Strings & Molly Tuttle

CAPTURED ON VIDEO at the 2019 Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, this spirited live performance of a popular old standard features two of today’s most celebrated young lions of bluegrass — Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle — jamming and taking exciting, virtuosic solos over the tune’s uptempo groove and “key of G” chord changes, with both guitars capo-ed at the 2nd fret, transposing everything up a whole step to the concert key of A.

Billy kicks off the tune in free time by initiating a series of soulful call-and-response vocal and guitar phrases, with Molly (Gtr. 2) entering in bar 7 and interjecting her own “answer” runs. Notice in these initial phrases, and also later in the performance, when the brisk tempo and “two feel” groove kick in and the two guitarists take solos “in time,” how they both masterfully craft musical melodies using notes from two parallel scales: G minor blues, also known more simply as G blues (G, Bb, C, Db, D, F), and G major blues (G, A, Bb, B, D, E). The latter may be thought of as being the relativemajor equivalent of the E minor blues, or E blues, scale (E, G, A, Bb, B, D). This works the same way as using parallel major and minor pentatonics built from the same root note — for example, G minor pentatonic and G major pentatonic — the only difference being the addition of a chromatic passing tone in each scale (Db and Bb, respectively). And so, altogether, you have a lot of “blue notes,” namely the b3 (Bb in the key of G major), the b5 (Db) and b7 (F), which really put the blue in bluegrass!