a group who encourage and motivate one another to stick to, and get the most out of, our practice time

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A Quick Check In

From laertes22 on 9/22/2014 6:32:58 AM

I'm back to where I can squeeze in an occasional lesson here and there, and it has left me in a weird spot.  A lot of the problems that I spent a lot of time focusing on (string accuracy, steady rhythm, etc) have slowly gotten better.   Also, my "ear" is getting better.  A lot of times, I can pick out the basic melody of a song by ear, and can often to some degree then fill in the gaps (although, musically, I don't always necessarily like my "arrangement").   Lately, my practices are less about me sitting in front of a book or the computer and more about me sitting on the couch and playing around with tunes.  How does this sound?  How does that sound?  What if I changed this?  I'd like it to sound like this, but how to I do get my fingers to play that?

I've kind of divided my practices between 1) Learning new tunes via tab/someone else's arrangement. 2) Figuring out and arranging tunes by ear. 3) Taking tunes I already know and changing or reworking them, to individualize them for me.

For the first one, I have been stuck in Saw Mill.  I have been trying to work on Saw Mill tuning songs from Dan Levenson's books, like The Cuckoo, Cluck Old Hen, and Shady Grove.  Technically, I know simple arrangements for those, but Dan's arrangements are quite different-almost like different songs, and way more complex.  I was stuck for a while on this bit in the Cuckoo where sometimes the striking finger sounds but the thumb stays silent, or the striking finger stays silent (producing a rest), but the thumb sounds.  

 For the second bit, I have been trying to arrange my own version of Blackest Crow/As Time Draws Near.  I can play it, but I'm not 100% satisfied with the way it sounds, so I am still working on it.

Last, I have spent hours and hours reworking Colored Aristocracy.I started out playing the version from Dan's book, and have been trying to rework it and make it mine.  In addition to adding slides and other ornamentation and "tweaking the melody", I am trying (and struggling) to give it a big of a swing/ragtime rhythm, since per Dan, it is a cakewalk/dance tune.

 That's about it.  I am also working on fiddle.  But my banjo playing is more advanced than my fiddle playing, so it's like I figure out stuff on banjo and then play catch up in terms on learning tunes on fiddle.

-Genford 

3 Comments
	Zischkale says: 9/22/2014 6:50:19 AM Hey, G, Sounds like a good way to divvy up time to me. I think much can be learned from arrangements, especially new ideas/techniques. The Cuckoo example is good. Sounds similar to the concept of M-skips in Ken Perlman's book (Mike Iverson just calls them "skips"). Playing those more consciously was a huge step forward for me. Kudos to you for working stuff out by ear, though, lots of musicians never get that far even if they can read good sheet music or tab. I'm working on the exact same thing. Keep at Blackest Crow--it's all about perseverance until that epiphany happens! Who does your favorite version of Aristocracy? I'm with you on fiddle. I'm still making progress but it's way harder to pick it up for a few minutes and play than my other instruments. I'm real slow to tune it, and it's just so dang loud. Still trying to designate some good time to it. I've been preoccupied with Ken Perlman's finger style guitar book lately, trying to work up some country blues. Keep up the good work! I'm tired but looking forward to enjoying good music this week.
	VioletMoon says: 9/22/2014 6:51:53 AM Sounds like we're thinking along similar lines. I record myself quite a bit and listening back I'm alway hearing places where I think, "Oh, I should have done this there," or "Oh, too much of that," or "Why didn't I think to do that?" The thing that I struggle with is how much to arrange and how much to leave up to the moment. My conclusion (for now anyway) is that I need to consciously think about variation so that the variations become embedded in my banjo vocabulary so that I don't have to consciously think. I'm taking a seven-week two-finger banjo class at the moment and basically three of us spend 80 minutes a week with creating arrangements based on fiddle tunes. One of us will toss out an idea for a phrase and someone else will offer another idea and we go back and forth about the pros and cons and then our teacher helps us choose. : ) It's a really good way to learn more about moving fiddle tunes to banjo in that style. It'd be interesting to try it for clawhammer, too. Cyndy
	Zischkale says: 9/22/2014 9:20:03 PM Cyndy--I should remember to check your blog regularly! Congrats on testing the limits of your comfort zone at that banjo contest--that's the sort of thing I need to be looking for / practicing for. Also, you've really nailed that cool slide from the 2nd fret on Uncle Wade's Old Joe Clark. Great tone. I'm jealous of the banjo opportunities in your neck of the woods, that 2-finger class sounds awesome. Be sure to post some 2-finger stuff when you've got it down. It's one of the unsung styles!
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