Crosspicking Wildwood Flower

This week, our classes at the Folk School started back up. I'm taking 2 classes on Monday nights, Advanced Mandolin and Bluegrass Ensemble, both instructed by Dave Mueller. He's a great instructor and player. His regular bluegrass gig is The Grass Pack.

This week in the mando class, Dave introduced us to crosspicking. We used a version of Wildwood Flower from the Mandolin Cafe. As I understand it, crosspicking was developed by Jesse McReynolds to sound like the 3-finger banjo roll. I think it allows you to play something unaccompanied that sounds nice and full. In many cases, and in this song particularly, the melody is played on the lower notes, which ring out, while the additional two notes are put on top. The picking pattern generally is either d u u d u u d u (reverse roll) or d d u d d u d u (forward roll). There's also some interesting departures from these two used to create the correct rhythm of the melody.

Without further delay, here's my crosspicked version of Wildwood Flower.