We made it to the last solo from Wagon Wheel! I hope you have been enjoying this little series, and hopefully by now you are a Wagon Wheel pro!
Disclaimer: This solo ventures into the intermediate/advanced territory as far as levels of string playing goes, so if you consider yourself a beginner, this one might not be for you. We do have some shifting and more fourth finger usage in this one. Just a friendly precaution.
So right off the bat with this one, we have a JUMP from the D string to the E string. And yes, I would recommend going straight to open E instead of using your fourth finger, since we have to be on the E string for the next measure anyway. Might as well take the plunge!
Measures 6-7 are probably the most rhythmically challenging measures of the entire break, so I would recommend busting out the metronome for especially those two measures, just so you're able to get the counting down. You'll notice we have an eighth note followed by a quarter note in measure 6, just like we saw in the second solo.*
Then, we have a bit of a chromatic walk up to third position. This should be a nice, comfy shift to third position, considering we are essentially playing a scale (not skipping any fingers). My recommendation, as I demonstrate in my video tutorial, would be to play the G# on a second finger, and shift on a first finger to the A in third position. That way, you can use a 1-2-3 finger pattern as you climb up to the high C#.
So when do we come back down? The best place to shift back to first position is going to be on the very last note of measure 11. Although this eighth note doesn't give us a ton of time to shift and get set up for our next note in first position, since it is an open E, we have the option to shift and play our open E at the same time. Pretty nifty, eh?
After this series of shifts, we basically have a nice descent down to the G string, where we play a very similar lick to what we've played in the first two solos, complete with our beloved triplets.
*If you'd like a breakdown of this rhythmic figure, I go into detail in my post on the second solo - check it out!
