The Murphy Method Blog

If some of you are members of the Mandolin Cafe discussion site, you’ve seen that mandolin bridges have generated a couple of good discussions lately. One topic has to do with a subject of many experiments I’ve done, and that is mandolin bridge weight.

Most folks may never think much about the bridge that comes on their mandolin—it’s only a bridge, right?—but finding the right bridge is possibly the easiest (and sometimes the cheapest) way to give your mandolin a big improvement in sound.

One well-proven possibility is to put a maple bridge on your mandolin. Maple bridges are easy to make, and the material is cheap. I also offer bridges that I make (check out my bridge page), but I recommend that you make your own, starting with designs that I’ve developed and going on to test your own ideas.

One of the most remarkable things about maple bridges is that they weigh so much less than conventional, two-piece ebony ones. For example, a maple bridge will typically weigh from 6 to 10 grams installed, and a two-piece ebony bridge might weigh from 13 to 22 grams! —that’s a lot of extra bridge-weight for the mandolin to try to overcome.

So how did I find this out? By making over a hundred experimental bridges. First, I tried to make lighter and lighter bridges. Here’s a photo of Bridge #2:

This bridge was fairly thin and weighed only 4/5 grams, which I soon found out was pushing the low end of the bridge-weight range. My next bridge, #3, was even thinner and lighter, coming in at about 4 grams:

–and not only was the bridge thinner than the last one, but the sound was thinner too, with less volume as well. So now I had a lower limit on bridge weight. I made a much heavier bridge, almost 1/2″ thick, and reduced the thickness gradually while playing it to see how the sound was changing. It turned out the best sound came into the bridge at about 10g., and then there was very little variation until the weight came down to 4g. or so. After another 15 or so bridges, experimenting with the design as well as the weight, I developed a standard model:

This “winged” bridge was my standard for a couple of years. These have all weighed about 7g. to 10g. installed (on bluegrass mandolins), and their sound is very rich, clear, and consistent.

So that’s how I found out the best weight for a mandolin bridge. Don’t believe it? Try making one for yourself!

We’ve just added a clip from our Beginning Bass DVD to YouTube. Here it is:

For those of you who do not receive our monthly e-mailings, here is the link to our September Newsletter.

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is improvising in C position—that is, playing in the key of C without capoing or re-tuning. One thing I noticed in leading the slow jams at Kaufman Kamp was that standard three-chord bluegrass songs become exponentially more difficult for banjos when you sing them in the key of C or D, which is where I usually sing them. Not so much if you just capo up five or seven frets, but some of my more intermediate students are wanting to be able to play the breaks open, and it becomes a pain in the butt to do all that capoing.

I’ve started working with one of my students on this skill and I’m trying to approach it like I approach teaching improvising in G. I start out teaching a bunch of three-chord singing songs to build up a repertoire of licks. All the licks are different in C—even the tag lick—and it takes some mental adjustment to get used to starting and ending on your C chord instead of with the good old tag lick in G. For students who use the videos, working through the two “Playing in C” volumes would be a good place to start. (“Playing in C Volume 1”, re-titled “Wildwood Flower” will be out on DVD in a month or so…)

Once you have those C licks in your fingers (which could take months—don’t try to rush this process!), you can apply the same method to working out breaks in C as you did in G. First, figure out the chord progression for the song (this is always the very important first step). Then figure out what licks you already know will fit into the spot. You’ll usually start out with eight or so beats of C, then go to F for four, or six, beats, then back to C. Then to G and end in C. Or some variation on that theme. You have the licks; just plug them into the spots. (For more on improvising see Murphy’s posts on the subject.) It’s a simple concept. Not easy, but simple, and definitely a cure for those of you who complain that all your breaks sound the same. Everything sounds fundamentally different in C, and is more challenging. Tired of “Blue Ridge Cabin Home” in G? Try it in C!

You’ve seen bands on stage, right? You’ve seen them playing music and having fun entertaining the audience. This is good. But have you ever thought about what they had to do to get there and get ready to play? Sometimes a band’s gig experience is dominated by everything besides the music. A job we just played is a good case in point:

Murphy and I recently got a call to perform one Saturday afternoon, outdoors in the City Park in Hagerstown, Maryland. That’s a little over an hour away from here. The trouble was that Murphy was already committed for that date, so I booked it myself as “Red Henry and Friends”. Now I needed the friends. I’d be playing mandolin, so I called up David McLaughlin, who can play either guitar, banjo, or bass, and guitarist Scott Brannon, and they both kindly agreed to play the job with me. But I still needed one more band member, someone who could play either banjo, fiddle, or bass. I had called a few people until… good surprise! Murphy turned out to be free on that day. So the job turned into a regular (and fun) ‘Red and Murphy & Co.’ gig. Enough confusion so far?

Scott lives not far from Hagerstown, so he’d drive there by himself, but we needed to carry David with us. Since I normally keep all the extra seats out of the minivan we’d be driving, that meant I’d need to install a seat so the car would carry three—no problem a year or two ago, but my back won’t carry those seats any more. How could I get the seat in the car?

A larger problem, and one that we usually have to deal with, was the sound system. When we bought our sound equipment, years ago, it seemed fairly small and light to carry around. And I guess it was. When I was in my 30s and 40s I could toss this equipment around pretty easily, but it’s not like that now. Stored in the house we had two big speakers, two monitor speakers, two amplifiers, a heavy suitcase full of microphones and cords, and several microphone and speaker stands. The light stuff (stands and such) would be okay, but my back wouldn’t do the heavy stuff any more. And David couldn’t make it out to our house ahead of time to help load the stuff in the car. What to do?

Well, I had an idea. Last year we had acquired a hand-truck to use moving furniture, and Thursday I decided to to try it out on moving seats and sound equipment. Sure enough, it carried that heavy car seat just fine, from where I had it stored out to the car. On Friday I got busy and moved all the heavy speakers, “tipping” each of them onto the car floor and sliding them into place. Then I put in everything else I could think of—microphone stands, speaker stands, amplifiers, and a tote-bag full of CDs and Murphy Method DVDs to sell. So far, so good.

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The question posed in the title is one that I hear frequently. And it’s a good one, especially if you’re using the DVDs without a teacher, as many people are. In a nutshell (in case you are in a hurry to get back to practicing and don’t want to read to the end of the blog!), my rule of thumb is one song a month. There are, of course, exceptions. The exception to this, for banjo players, is “Banjo in the Hollow” which is so wonderfully easy that almost everyone gets it down pretty well in a week or two. But after that, it’s back to one song a month. The other exception is young people, teenagers in particular. Many of them are simply going to blast through the material at their own pace. And I say let ‘em at it. It’s so much easier for them with their young, uncrowded brains. Plus, as I often point out, they have someone to cook their meals, wash their clothes, shop for their groceries and in general take care of the million and one things the rest of us grownups (or Grups as they said on Star Trek) have to contend with.

How did I come up with the one song a month rule? By observing (over the last thirty years) what my live and in-person students were managing to accomplish. Over a year’s time, it usually averages out to one song a month. Twelve songs a year. Often it’s fewer. And that’s fine with me because as we all know Speed Is Not Important. Not even when you’re learning new tunes.

Sure most everyone starts off like gangbusters, vowing to practice at least thirty minutes a day every day. But you know what? Life always gets in the way. Something happens that interferes with your banjo/fiddle/guitar/mandolin/bass/Dobro playing. (I like to call it “playing” rather than “practicing.”) You get sick, someone in your family gets sick, you lose your job, you change jobs, your boss doubles your work load, you have to travel, holidays come up, you decide to add a room to your house, you decide to build a house. And on and on. Stuff happens. The idea of one song a month can keep you from freaking out and thinking you don’t have time or energy for your music. Plus, when you start learning an instrument, I like for you to think of it not as something you’re trying to learn in a specific amount of time, but something you will be doing for the rest of your life.

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Yesterday I drove up to Hendersonville, Tenn., to pick up my new Casey Henry Signature Model banjo from Robin Smith at Heartland Banjos. This is the third Casey Henry model. I played the first one for about seven months and then sold it to one of my students. The second one went to a gal in New England. And now here we are at number three.

Even though they are all supposed to be exactly alike, there are some differences. I asked Robin to give me a fifth sting peg that didn’t have the little sticky-outy part to wind the string around (that’s another one of those technical terms), rather, the string winds around the inner shaft of the peg. My old banjo has that kind and I prefer it. I also asked him to give me two railroad spikes for the fifth string (again, like my old banjo) instead of four. I actually got three, but he’s getting closer.

The main difference is that the brown color of this banjo is darker than the previous ones. I prefer the lighter color, but it is fall, after all, and I’m sure it will match my autumn and winter wardrobe better. Here are a couple shots of the new model (click for bigger versions):

For the sake of comparison, here are a couple shots of the other two. First is my friend Dick Bowden picking #1, second is Michelle Canning picking #2:

I found out that it is particularly hard to photograph shiny new banjos because the flash reflects back all over the place. So please forgive the slight out-of-focusness.

I’ll have the new axe at the Thomas Point Beach festival next week, so if you’re there and want to pick on it, or want a banjo lesson, come find me (I’ll be camped near the workshop tent).

We played music for a local restaurant last Saturday, and I thought that the job was a good illustration of things that can happen when you’re performing. The gig was outdoors, in a shady location next to the restaurant, which was billing the event as “Bluegrass and Barbeque.” Our friends Charlie and Charlotte and their Sweetwater String Band were playing three sets in front of us, and then we were to play from 7:00 till 10.

A big complication for us was that Murphy and I had an out-of-town show the next day. We needed to get on the road early Sunday, drive for seven hours to North Carolina, and perform with Murphy’s sisters at a church service that evening. So even starting on Saturday, we had to allow for the time and fatigue factors so we could get through the two days and have plenty of energy (and voice) left to perform well on Sunday evening.

Since this Saturday event was outdoors, a sound system would definitely be needed. To save some time and energy, we arranged for Charlie and Charlotte to let us use their sound system—that was a big help. We wouldn’t need to lug our own equipment out of the house, set it up and take it down at the gig, and then move it back into our house late at night. (That kind of sound-system hassle is normally a BIG part of playing music.) Instead, it was easy. We just arrived at the restaurant at about 6:00, got tuned up and warmed up, and got up on the stage to play. Charlie and Charlotte drove away after they finished playing, saying they’d be back for their sound system at 10.

Now, it really helped, since we were playing music in a place where we hadn’t been before, that we had a band we could depend on. Murphy was on banjo, of course, and I was playing mandolin. In this case we had really strong pickers with us: David McLaughlin played bass, and Scott Brannon was on guitar. Those guys have been playing music about as long as we have, and have also seen a multitude of performing situations. So we knew that we could handle whatever came up.

The stage? It was a flatbed trailer—a standard bluegrass performing venue. The first set went fine, as Murphy, Scott, and I alternated vocal numbers interspersed with some instrumentals. The listening crowd was on a pleasant, shady patio right in front of the stage, feeling good and digging the music. (This is important—the closer the crowd is to you, the better they will usually like you.) It was a really enjoyable job so far.

But something will always happen. As we took our break after the set, it began to sprinkle lightly. That was ominous, because there were thunderstorms all around. Of course we got our instruments in the cases right away, but then, what were we going to do about the sound system? It belonged to Charlie and Charlotte, and we were responsible for it. And the weather couldn’t decide what to do, either. It sprinkled, and then quit. Sprinkled, and then quit again. There were still thunderstorms nearby, though, and we couldn’t take a chance. So when it started sprinkling the third time, we decided to move inside and play without the sound system. It might start raining very heavily at any minute. So we quickly packed up all the sound equipment, with the help of some bluegrass fans to move the large, heavy speakers and amps. We put the stuff under a well-secured tarp, and put an awning over that. It ought to be safe, we figured, unless a really big storm came in and blew the tarp off of it.

Now, of course, we were behind schedule, but primarily, we’d had to put a lot of attention and energy we didn’t anticipate into dealing with the weather and the sound system because of the weather. We had been warmed up singing and playing our instruments, but now we’d been packing up mikes and cables and speakers and amps until it was much like starting all over again. We were a bit out-of-breath from moving stuff, and (to put it mildly) our hands were de-sensitized from the instrument necks. But we got inside the restaurant—still with a good crowd even after that break, the place was nearly full—and started our next set, playing without a sound system.

Since our environment changed from playing outside with sound to playing inside without it, our band’s sound (both as the audience heard it and as we heard it ourselves) changed a lot. One advantage to playing without a sound system is that sometimes the band members can hear each other better. Another plus is that there’s no sound system to put a barrier between you and the audience. Disadvantages include having to project more with the vocals, and having to play quietly to avoid having the instruments drown out the voices. But we’d all done this many times before, so we jumped into it. Murphy sang some of her original songs, and several great old bluegrass numbers. Scott sang some fine old Reno & Smiley songs, and more. David and Scott sang a few very nice duets. Murphy and I traded licks on some good old banjo and mandolin tunes, and the crowd loved it all. We played those last two sets indoors, and wrapped it up. Everybody had a great time, and Murphy and I were all ready to drive to North Carolina the next morning.

And the rain, which had caused all that commotion in the middle of our show? After those first sprinkles, it never came back.

Hi all. Just walked back in the door from a lightning fast trip to Nashville which I made right after we shot most of the Slow Jam DVD. I rode over with Casey on Sunday (we did crosswords and listened to books on tape) and flew back today (Tuesday). Red picked me up at Baltimore’s BWI airport and after a quick two-hour ride home, here I am once more in front of the computer. Casey indicated in her blog today that I’d be telling you about some equipment problems during the shoot (read: banjo developed buzzing string necessitating a bridge replacement), but that will have to wait for another day.

I will tell you that one of the unexpected joys of recording the Slow Jam DVD was the three-part harmony singing that magically came together during the run through of the first number “I Saw The Light.” I hadn’t really figured on any harmony singing but when Casey and David McLaughlin added tenor and baritone to my lead the sound was so good that we ended up using the trio on almost all of the singing numbers. And while Casey and David and I have played together before in numerous configurations at parties and on stage I’m not sure we’d ever sung a trio together before. So having our voices blend so well together was a welcome surprise and a real treat. And it made recording the DVD even more fun than we had anticipated. I think you’ll really enjoy it. And I hope when we start the editing process that we’ll be able to include some outtakes and bloopers so you can see that things aren’t always as serious as they may seem on screen. And on that note, I will retire to vegetative form on front of the TV!

Oh, but speaking of TV, just one more thing. While Casey was here for the weekend we tuned in to a new TV program on CMT, Outsider’s Inn, that featured our friends Leroy Troy and Mike Armistead. What a thrill to see people you really know and have talked to and played music with actually acting in a sit-com! They both did a great job and I’m looking forward to seeing future episodes! Check it out! [It comes on Friday evenings.]

Last weekend we filmed the majority of the new Slow Jam DVD (to be titled Picking Up The Pace: More Slow Jamming with Murphy and Casey) in Winchester. Over the course of two days we recorded eighteen or so songs at tempos ranging from slowish to mediumish (those are the technical terms…). We always mean to prepare more in advance, but the night before found Murphy finalizing the song list, and the morning of the taping found us donning different outfits to see which ones looked best in front of the camera.

David McLaughlin joined us for the first day of taping. The first song always goes the slowest as we try to work out lights, sound, and camera shots. We were rolling along, knocking out song after song in G. When we decided to move to A we ran into a host of equipment problems, which I’m sure Murphy will tell you about tomorrow.

David McLaughlin, Murphy Henry, and Casey Henry on the first day of filming. Photo by Red Henry.

As we worked out each song, the process went something like this: First we’d play the song through a couple of times to make sure we were all on the same page. Then we’d do the arrangement, which was usually banjo kick, verse/chorus, mandolin, verse/chorus, hole for the student to play their break in, verse/chorus, another hole, chorus and out. Or if there were enough verses we’d have two banjo and mandolin breaks as well. We played the arrangement correctly on all but one song, and I’ll let you try and figure out which one that is!

On the second day of taping we were joined by Malia Furtado on fiddle, who also played on our first Slow Jam DVD. She was fresh from winning third place in the fiddle contest at the Galax Fiddler’s Convention. With Malia we did mostly instrumentals: “Liberty,” “Soldier’s Joy,” “Amazing Grace,” “Arkansas Traveler.” She has amazing tone and played wonderful simple arrangements of the tunes that will be easy to pick-up even if you haven’t learned the songs off of our fiddle videos.

The first song of the day, true to form, was the hardest to get. When we were in the middle of the first take I realized that I had propped my feet on a higher rung of my stool than the day before and that you could now see my bare feet on camera. Murphy thought it was okay, but Red ardently disagreed, so we re-shot the song, with mes pieds again out of the frame.

There are still some things left to shoot, like the introduction for the beginning of the DVD and the guitar left hand, which Murphy will do, for the picture-in-picture, but we got the majority of it done. Red will edit and assemble the footage and we will have them available in time for Christmas!