Mandolin Song Breakdown: Gold Rush

A true jam classic, Gold Rush by Bill Monroe and Bryon Berline is one of those tunes that I’ve heard played in jams wherever I go. Given it’s frequency at jams, I figured it’d be a good tune to breakdown and dive into a bit more. The tune is pretty straight forward, but there’s a lot you can dig up in Gold Rush (see the pun?). So we’ll cover the basic melody and a harmony idea for Gold Rush, but also some other things you may want to review. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments below.

Charts and Sheet Music for Gold Rush

Here’s a few variations for this breakdown

• Basic Melody
• Harmony Option
• Strum Machine

Listen to Gold Rush

As always, the first step of learning is listening. As a side note, I had a student recently ask why I include that phrase at the start of every breakdown. The answer is simple – you can’t play what you can’t hear. You may have heard the tune in jams or on the radio etc – but in order to really learn a tune or song, you need an original reference to listen to.

• Bill Monroe
• Tony Rice
• Kenny Baker
• Chris Thile

Form for Gold Rush

True to most fiddle tunes, Gold Rush is just an AA BB form. That means you’ll play the A part twice and the B part twice.

• The A Part doesn’t really have any “repeating phrases” meaning there are no two measures in the A part that are the same. For beginning mandolinist, that can be a bit challenging as there’s just more to remember.
• The B Part however can be broken up into two segments – B1 (measures 11 – 14) and B2 (measures 15 – 19). B1 and B2 share the first two measures but resolve (or end) slightly different. So, while there’s more to remember in the A part – the B part is pretty straight forward.

Chord Voicing

Chord Voicing refers to how you play a specific chord. For example, Gold Rush is a 1 4 5 tune generally played in A – making the chords A D E. All chords are made up of at least 3 notes – for the major chords we’re using, those will always be the 1 3 5 of the chord tone. If that’s confusing, check out my lesson on harmonizing scales as that dives a lot more into this topic.

Learning to play chords in multiple voicings is an important step to mastering the mandolin. Below are a few options on playing these chords. Each set of chords is in a specific position on the fretboard. Start off by only playing the chords in a specific set – but as soon as possible, you’ll want to start mixing up the chords from sets. For example, play the A chord from Set 1, then the D chord from Set 2, then the E chord from set 3 etc. These are of course just a couple of examples. If you’re looking for more chord voicing options – check out my chord voicing generator here.

Melody

Here’s a basic melody version of Gold Rush. The melody is based around the A Mixolydian Scale which is just the A Major scale with a flatted 7th note – meaning the G# normally present in the A Major scale becomes a G Natural note. While that’s technically accurate, it’s usually easier to just think of this tune being based out of an A Major Pentatonic and just throw in a G natural sometimes. As a side note, while it’s great to learn songs and tunes by ear or from someone showing you via video or in person – looking at notation can help you spot things like the scales used, “non-scale tones” that add tension, etc. This is one of the reasons I started writing out sheet music for songs and tunes I’m learning.

Harmony

Here’s a basic harmony for Gold Rush which is based off the “3rd above” idea. Essentially this means that I raised the melody line up by a 3rd to create the harmony. This is called a “parallel harmony” since the notes are basically the same – just raised a 3rd for the most part. You’ll probably notice that some notes are not raised exactly by a 3rd. This is a common theme with harmony lines – you can’t just straight raise all notes by a 3rd (or whatever interval) and expect it to sound good. Some notes will be raised by b3rd, some by a 4th, and etc. It’s also important to note that parallel harmony is just one of many different types of harmony. Other harmony types include Counter Point, Unison, Open, and Close. You don’t need to stick to one type of harmony in a tune / song – in fact using a few different types of harmony can be nice. I’ll be diving more into how to create a solid harmony in a future lesson, but the general rule for harmony lines is “whatever sounds good”.

Standing Up

This is a bit specific to the Outlander Progressive Bluegrass Social Club Jams in Seattle (and 100% optional especially for those that have some physical disabilities), but I’d love to see this take off a bit more. Generally when playing the B part, everyone will sort of stand up at measures 12 and 16. It’s a bit of a corny joke but it’s fun at the same time.

Wrap Up

Gold Rush is a fantastic tune for beginners and advanced mandolin players alike. There’s a lot of, well, gold in this tune. Experiment around a bit and let me know what you think in the comments below.

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