The Murphy Method Blog

Beginners in Jam Sessions

Last time we talked about jam sessions, we discussed how sessions might be organized and how to pick out tunes that would work well in that particular session. That’s a view from the top down, you might say. Now let’s think about the session from the bottom up—what’s YOUR particular role in the playing? What do you do to make the session (and your part in it) as successful as possible?

What you do will depend partly on your experience level. Some beginners are shy at first, but even for a rank beginner, few groups will mind if you hang around on the edge of the circle, playing the tune which the “inner circle” is passing around. In fact, many groups will welcome that, at least if you play quietly and in time with the group. And even if you’re on the edge of the session, occasionally you may be invited to lead off a tune for everyone to play, so keep one or two of your best tunes in mind. Even if the jam has already played that tune, sympathetic musicians will be willing to play it again.

As you develop your skills, you’ll be able to participate more in the group. It’s important just to spend time playing in sessions, so that you’ll gradually feel more and more comfortable with everyone, and will be able to do well when you take breaks on the songs. Experience really counts. THIS IS IMPORTANT, and many beginners overlook it. It’s one thing to have tunes worked up at home, where you’re in quiet, familiar surroundings and can play, sitting down, at your own speed. It’s another thing completely to be in your first few jams, in strange (to you) surroundings, in a fairly loud group of people who are playing a tune possibly much faster than you have practiced it, and often standing up at that.

We hear comments from students (and I read this on Banjo Hangout all the time) that someone could play a tune fine at home, but when he or she got into their first jam, “I just fell apart.” That’s natural, and it happens to everybody. It’s just because the jam is so different from your at-home practice situation. But jamming is something you can be ready for. For one thing, practice standing up! That’s a REALLY big help, not only because your right and left arm and hand positions change, but also because your instrument sounds different to you (it’s a lot farther from your ears) and it takes some getting used to. But once you’re used to it, it’s not a big deal.

When you begin taking breaks in the jam, sometimes you may have the chance to start the tune out yourself, and in that case you can play it at your regular practice speed. But often, the jam-session’s speed may be a challenge, and this is one place where the Murphy Method approach really helps. You probably aren’t going to play tunes in a jam at first without making some mistakes, but that’s not the point. The point is to KEEP THE TUNE IN YOUR HEAD, so that even if you do make a mistake, you can keep right on playing.

At home, if you mess up a lick, you can stop playing the tune and try that lick again if you want, but it’s not a good idea. When you practice, KEEP THE TUNE GOING in your head and if you make a mistake, keep going. At home, you can always pull out the difficult licks and work specifically on them over and over, but then when you put the whole tune back together, play it straight through and stay in time, even if you make a mistake. That’s how you need to play in jams, so that you and the jam session won’t lose each other’s rhythm and the tune will sound good. Everybody makes mistakes, but in a jam you have to stay in time with the group, so don’t stop. Just KEEP PLAYING!

This week we got our Flatpicking Lead Guitar video on DVD (finally) and you can order it from the website. I know a lot of times people hold off on ordering a video, waiting for us to get it on to DVD. Well, you can stop waiting (for this one, anyway!). This is the perfect introduction to lead playing. If you’ve been strumming away on your old guitar for years but have never quite known how to make that leap to picking leads, this is for you. Here is a sample of how it is taught. This comes from the first lesson, “Old Joe Clark”:

Today I have a reflection on lesson attendance. When a student signs up to take lessons from me, I make them pay for a month at a time. Four weeks. The time you pay for is yours, whether you are here or not. No cancellations, no rescheduling. (I learned this from my mother.) You don’t have to make any commitment beyond a month, but you do have to pay for that time. This may seem unreasonable or inflexible, but I do it for one reason: if students don’t have the time paid for in advance, they won’t come.

Time and time again I have broken my own rule and agreed to let students schedule lessons on a one-at-a-time basis (I charge more for this, of course). Time and time again these students hardly ever come, and therefore, hardly learn anything. They say “life gets in the way.” I say, if you want to learn to play the banjo, you won’t let life get in the way. If you don’t come to your lessons, you won’t learn. Even if you do not take your banjo out of its case between one lesson and the next (you know who you are…) the half-hour that you are at your lesson will benefit you more than not coming to your lesson at all. You’ll be getting exactly half an hour of practice a week.

If you want to learn to play, however, you’ll make the time to practice. There’s no trick to it, no magic. The more you practice, the better you’ll get. Deep down, you know this. And the first step is coming to your lesson!

We just spent four days playing music for fun with family and friends in Hiawassee, Georgia. (That’s way up next to the North Carolina line, and the country is beautiful.) During the long weekend, along with gazing at the scenery, I took part in a lot of jam sessions, and I thought about how there are lots of kinds of jams.

Now, many folks who become interested in bluegrass music may think that getting together with friends and picking is the best part of the music, and from my point of view, they are right. l like picking by myself, teaching, and performing too, but somehow it’s hard to beat getting together with people and making music together. But since there’s a lot of variation in people’s experience levels and personalities, there are lots of different jam situations.

Sometimes you’re picking with people you’ve known for a long time. With advanced players in a situation like that, even with several people in the jam, you might not need a leader, or any organization at all. If everyone there is familiar with the others and their favorite songs, then the music can happen naturally. You might say it’s automatically organized. One person can “call a tune” to start things off, or just start playing a melody everybody knows, and then one tune will lead to another and everybody’s favorite songs can be played and enjoyed by everyone.

But that’s really rare. It can ONLY happen when the players are well acquainted and wanting to hear each other’s music, and nobody’s trying to dominate the jam. Most of the time things are different from that, and you need a good ‘people person’ to be gently in charge of the jam, or at least some system to determine who gets to call the next tune. Often it’s good policy to go around the picking circle, letting each person call a tune when it’s their turn. This has a lot of fairness about it, and everyone gets to participate. It can, however, lead to some of the pickers having to wait out tunes they don’t know, so this is where my next subject comes in. (more…)

Okay, here we go! First of all, as I mentioned earlier, bluegrass is all about improvising. By its nature, bluegrass is an improvisational music. That’s part of its charm. In spite of the fact that banjo players like to “play it like Earl,” the beauty of bluegrass is that you really don’t have to play it like Earl. Or anybody else. You can play it like you! How boring would it be if everybody played all of Earl’s songs exactly like Earl all the time? Where’s the creativity? (Although don’t get me wrong! Learning Earl in the beginning is essential!)

And frankly, almost everyone wants to play with other people. There are few true closet players. So eventually this means one thing: improvising. Improvising is the skill that allows you to play along on songs you don’t know. It would be a mighty boring and one-sided jam session if it only included songs one person knew. And bluegrass would be a mightily tough row to hoe if you had to memorize the breaks for hundreds of songs! That’s where improv comes in. It’s sort of like a short cut to the whole bluegrass repertoire.

What exactly is improvising? In a nutshell, improvising is making up stuff out of your own head that fits the chord progression. So, how do you get there? First of all, there’s the learning by ear part. [NOTE: RANT AGAINST TABLATURE COMING UP.] The worst thing about tablature is that is does not lead to improvising. I have had plenty of non-believers come up to me and say, “I don’t have any problem reading tablature. I can read tab fine and play the banjo (or mandolin or fiddle or guitar). I can play twenty or thirty songs from tab. I even have them memorized, I don’t have to look at the tab anymore.”

Well, doubting Thomasina that I am, I almost never believe anyone who says this. Too often when I have heard a “tab eater” play, the renditions are choppy—starting and stopping—and out of time. No one could accompany them on a guitar.

But suppose someone could actually play a decent arrangement from tab. I confess, I’ve seen some of this too. But can that person trade off breaks with someone else who is playing the same song? Vamp (chord) while the other is playing the lead? Come back in appropriately when it’s time? Sadly, the answer is usually no.

And to ratchet it up just one more notch. Suppose a person could do all of the above. Trade breaks, vamp, and come back in. Could that player take a break on a song s/he didn’t know? A three-chord singing song? Probably not. No matter how well you play from tab, you are still confined to the tab. And that’s why I rant against it. [RANT OVER.]

Fortunately, improvising is a learned skill. And most people can learn it (if they just listen to me and do what I tell them! ) And the cornerstone to improvising is LEARNING TO HEAR YOUR CHORD CHANGES. Need I add BY EAR? (more…)

I have three completely unrelated things to tell you about today. The first is absolutely non-bluegrass and non-banjo related. You must watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. It is the creation of Joss Whedon (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame) and his brothers. It is brilliant. You can get it on for $3.99, and I promise, it will be the best four bucks you spend today. Possibly the best four bucks you spend this month.

Next, The Murphy Method and FiddleStar are teaming up to sponsor a camp in Nashville on September 25-28, 2008 (just before the IBMA convention). All instruments will be offered—Casey is teaching banjo. This is the first ever Murphy-Method-sponsored camp event. More details will be forthcoming, but you might want to seriously consider coming. It will be more fun that you can even imagine, and there will probably be some clogging…

And lastly, my report from the weekend picking party that Murphy told you about Monday, and that Red will tell you more about tomorrow. At said party I was playing mostly fiddle, my worst instrument, by far (well, actually, followed pretty closely by the mandolin). Murphy and I were playing some fiddle tunes at a slowish pace, accompanied on guitar by her sister Argen, and then Tuck Tucker (Dobro player who used to play with Red and Murphy and Company). Gradually we attracted more people to our little session until we got to a point where the jam clearly out-stripped my fiddle abilities, but I just kept on holding it and playing what I could and chopping the rest of the time.

Now, apparently when I’m holding a fiddle I LOOK like I know what I’m doing (so I’ve been told). At the party was a great bluegrass fiddler named Randall Collins. He was checking out our little session, taking a break from his own high-powered jam at the other end of the pavilion. He was observing us from the edge of the circle and said to me, “Fiddle one,” or something to that effect. We’d already played all the tunes I knew, so I chose to repeat “Arkansas Traveler,” one of my best (if I do say so myself). Part way through the tune he leans over and says, “Keep playing, I’ll get my fiddle,” or something to that effect. I thought, “Oh, no,” because I could see exactly where this was headed. I was fairly sure it had more to do with the fact that I was wearing shorts and a snug t-shirt than with my fiddling.

He came back and asked what tune we could play together. Desperately, I called “Turkey in the Straw,” and kicked it off. About half-way through the first A-part I could see Randall register the fact that I am not a very good fiddle player. It went around the circle once. When it ended he asked in a bit of a shell-shocked manner, “Is there another one you want to do?” I answered, “I’ve played all I know,” and he quickly extricated himself from the situation. I thought the scenario was a fine demonstration of why we call our little jam group “At Least We’re Hot.” Clearly being hot can fool a lot of people, and it makes up for a multitude of things, including lack of skill on your particular instrument.

OK. In my first article about bridges, you got an idea of the experiments I’ve done in finding out what kind of bridge sounds best. Now, let’s go over some choices in bridge types, which you can use to bring out one part or another of your mandolin’s sound. These three are the very best of the 25 or 30 designs I have tried:

a. The 11-hole bridge

This design is my favorite, and offers exceptional volume along with excellent richness, giving a pleasing bass/treble balance with remarkable clarity and sustain. This is a first choice for bridges 5/8″ inches high or more, and it sounds very good in a variety of woods including maple, cherry, yew, and mahogany. (My current regular-height bridges, and some low-profile bridges also, are of this type.)

b. The 6-hole bridge

Comments: Developed after more experiments, this design yields not only volume but also exceptionally clear highs and excellent sustain, with a satisfying “fullness” of sound. For oval-hole instruments, there seems to be little difference between the 6-hole and 11-hole designs. This design can also be used where there is insufficient vertical space for an 11-hole pattern. (Some of my low-profile bridges, and all my bridges below 1/2″, are of this type.)

c. The winged bridge:

Comments: This design was the first one I developed, and was my standard for two years. The sound typically features very good volume, a resonant low end, very good sustain and clarity, and excellent projection. Overall volume may not be quite as good as with the 6-hole and 11-hole bridges, but these winged bridges have an advantage over the 6 hole type in richness.

—so there you have three excellent designs for one-piece bridges, developed by sheer experimentation from a lot of other types. For a history of bridge experiments, take a look at these early bridges. And I urge anyone with the interest to make your own maple bridge. It’s the cheapest way I know to make a mandolin sound better!

Just walked in the door from a nine hour trip back from North Georgia (Hiawassee for the geographically curious) where family and friends once again celebrated my sister Argen’s wedding anniversary with bluegrass music, barbeque, and beverages of choice. Argen’s husband, Mike Johnson, whom I am proud to call “Bro,” built the neck to my Gibson banjo many long years ago. I now have a copy of that very neck on my Stelling Murphyflower, complete with arched fingerboard.

I was in so many good jams sessions over the long weekend that my fingers are still smarting! All were excellent in their own ways, but one of my favorite was Saturday morning when I got out the guitar and Red got out the mandolin and he and I sang a bunch of oldie moldies that we used to do probably before Casey and Chris were even born. I’m talking about what Eddie Stubbs calls “deep catalog,” primarily from the Stanley Brothers. Songs like “Little Glass of Wine,” “Lonely Tombs,” and “Mother No Longer Awaits Me At Home.” Songs where morbidity reigns and someone always dies.

Then we got Casey (who was sitting there listening, deeply engrossed in Jane Eyre), to lead us in “Next Sunday Darling Is My Birthday” whose title sounds like it could be happy (Birthday party! Cake! Ice Cream! Presents!) but whose chorus actually goes:

While friends are singing Happy Birthday,
There’ll be a smile upon my face;
But when they’re gone the smile will vanish,
A broken heart will take its place.

That song is on the classic Stanley Brothers album Sweeter Than The Flowers which has just been released on CD. That’s one of my all-time favorite LPs and I’ve been listening to it religiously in the car. So naturally we had to do the title number, another song about death and dying, which I kicked off on guitar, trying hard to sound like George Shuffler. (And failing miserably, but having fun trying!)

Which finally provoked son Chris to ask us to do something a bit less dreary. So we launched into “S-A-V-E-D” (“it’s g-l-o-r-y to know I’m s-a-v-e-d, I’m h-a-p-p-y- because I’m f-r-double e”) followed by “Keep on the Sunny Side.”

His asking for some happy songs reminded me of a time when Red and I had a regular Wednesday night gig here in Winchester in the basement of Brill’s Barber Shop (where I still teach). The crowd was small so we decided to entertain ourselves by doing a bunch of songs that we really, really enjoyed singing. (Not particularly professional, but we were among friends.) Most of these, like “White Dove” and “Rank Strangers” were profoundly sad and usually included the demise of at least one person. Sometimes two. We were having the best time, and didn’t realize how our choice of material might be perceived by the audience till someone came up to us on the break and said, “You all seem so sad. Who died?” I tried hard to reassure them that these were the songs we sang when we were feeling good!

What is it about these sad songs that are so much fun to sing? For me it’s the incredible harmony the Stanley Brothers come up with, something we always try to replicate with varying degrees of success. If you are among the brave and the strong, you might want to venture into Stanley Brothers territory and listen to some of their gut-wrenching recordings. But be forewarned: These are not for the faint of heart! If you’re new to bluegrass and still in your Alison Krauss/Rhonda Vincent/Cherryholmes phase, you might want to wait a few years. But for some of us, the best bluegrass jam sessions always include a hefty dose of Ralph and Carter, the Stanley Brothers.

At the moment, I’m working on writing an article for Bluegrass Unlimited on Cherryholmes. The band played at the Ryman Auditorium here in Nashville last Thursday, so I took the opportunity to spend some time with them and see their show. I enjoyed myself the whole day—they are all engaging, well-spoken people to interview—but a couple of strange coincidences occurred that I’d like to share.

Jere and Sandy, the Cherryholmes parents, have recently bought a house in Goodlettesville, TN. They were describing the house to me—ten acres, big yard, guest house in the back—and I realized that it sounded incredibly familiar. Turns out that my dad and I had looked at the same house when he was here a couple months back on a real estate scouting trip. Of all the houses that we looked at as possibilities for my parents to buy, that was the one that we all liked the best. They didn’t buy it (obviously), but I’m glad it went to good folks.

The other coincidence happened just as the show started that night. The Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman are sponsored by Springer Mountain Farms chicken. The president of the company, Gus Arrendale, was there that night to give his chicken spiel. Just before Cherryholmes took the stage, he was standing near me and I was so bold as to introduce myself, because I knew he grew up in Clarkesville, Ga, where my mom grew up. I told him who my grandparents are, and who my mom is, and just about the first thing he said was, “I had such a crush on one of your aunts in high school.” That was good for much amusement in our family over the weekend, especially for my happily-married aunt!

Bradley Walker, a country-style crooner fairly new to the bluegrass scene, opened the show and he also came out and sang a duet with Cia on the Cherryholmes set. Cherryholmes does put on a really good show and after the last number the crowd practically leapt to its feet to cheer for an encore. They obliged with a crazy-fast version of Orange Blossom Special, that eternal crowd favorite. The band can wow a crowd from the stage, now I just have to figure out how to capture that wow on the page.

As you may suspect from the title, this is the first article of many I’ll write about bridges. After making over a hundred experimental bridges of many different woods and designs, I’ve settled on a standard size and shape which I produce (in different heights) for mandolin. I’ve sold about 600 of these bridges now:

As you can see, this bridge is not adjustable. As you can also see, if you’re used to looking at ordinary bridges, it’s not only a funny shape, but a funny color too– in fact, it’s made of maple, not ebony or rosewood as usual. “Why,” I hear you asking, “did you make them out of maple, and make them such a strange shape?”

Well, the answer is simple: The SOUND. I want to get the very best sound out of any mandolin, and a one-piece maple bridge seems to do it, in 99 out of 100 cases. After trying ebony, rosewood, mahogany, oak, hickory, cherry, yew, chestnut, dogwood, Osage orange, persimmon, blackwood, redwood, teak, and probably 15 other woods, maple still sounded best. And why not? The violin world has known for hundreds of years that a maple bridge sounds best. And the banjo players know it too. So since maple’s best for fiddle and banjo bridges, it’s not surprising that it sounds best on mandolins too.

By “best,” what do I mean? Well, here’s what you typically hear when a mandolin has a well-designed maple bridge: (1) More volume. (2) More sustain. (3) Clearer treble (”bell-like” E and A strings, in many cases). (4) clearer D and G strings. And also (this is pretty important), a maple bridge seems to help the mandolin play in tune better and stay in tune while you’re playing it.

Is this the end of the story? Is this kind of bridge, made from maple, all there is to discover about mandolin bridges? Of course not. I encourage anyone with minor woodworking ability (or ambition) to make your own bridges– for mandolin, or for banjo, either one. Try out all the different woods and designs you can imagine. You may be able to discover something new, or at least make yourself a bridge that you like better than the one you have. Maple is easy to find (it’s in a lot of scrap furniture and flooring), and you can also find low-priced maple strips on our website, cheap.

I’ve been using a maple bridge for over 5 years on both my mandolins, and Chris usually has one on his mandolin too. He had a maple bridge on his mandolin when he recorded our Bill-Monroe Style Mandolin DVD. And those of you who took Mandolin 101 from Casey at Kaufman Kamp saw (and heard) the maple bridge on the mandolin she was playing. If you feel like experimenting with bridges yourself, you can find a description of the bridgemaking process on our site. Let me know how you do!

Red Henry (redhenry@visuallink.com)

Relevant links:
Making a bridge
The maple bridge design page