Hi! My advice to you is to start your son out with someone who will teach him to read music - whether it be classical style or fiddle. Being able to read music is an awesome thing- if you can read music you can play almost any style that can be written down. (Not that you'll play it stylistically correct, but at least the notes will be right :-) The improvizational skills required to play a lot of bluegrass music have foundations in music theory. You need ear training too, don't get me wrong. What you want is to be able to eventually do both. If you are totally dependant on written music it will be really hard for you to do any kind of improv. Classical players don't do improv. But trying to improvize without knowlege of music theory is like shooting fish in a bucket- you're going to hit something but you'll never know what. Most of the time that approach doesn't work well. My other piece of advice to you is to find a teacher who knows a lot about techique. I know a bunch of fiddlers who don't know beans about how to get a good sound out of their instrument. (I'm not slamming fiddlers - I started out with 2 years of classical training and have been playing Bluegrass, Celtic, Cajun, and Old Time fiddle for 10 years.) Don't be afraid to switch teachers if you need to learn something more. And by all means play lots of different styles- you'd be suprised how many of them are related. And finally - listen to all the different styles you can get your hands on, you may find something else you really like. Good luck, best wishes, I hope I see your son at a jam session someday!