The Murphy Method Blog

Last Thursday there was another picking party at the house of some friends. Now, I especially enjoy playing music with folks, so I went over to their house all ready to go. In contrast to the regular crowd, the pickers seemed sparse at first. Cousin David the banjo player would have been there, but he was playing a music job that night a couple of hours away. Linda the bass player had to go a few hours south on family business. Wayne the fiddler didn’t make it for some other reason. Various other banjo players and fiddlers and lead guitar players also did not show up. I chatted with the folks while I got my mandolin out and tuned it, but by 7:30, when it was obvious that all the pickers had arrived, it was an interesting assortment: Carol on bass; Wade, Bob, Gerald, Tim, and David, all playing guitar; and me. We had ten or fifteen  listeners too, but I’ll talk mostly about those five guitar players.

Now, some mandolin players might not like playing much if they had no other lead instruments present and FIVE guitar pickers, none of whom played a lot of lead, especially if (as in this case) I had only picked with a couple of them before. But I grew up picking at parties where there might be 5 or 6 guitar players and maybe (or maybe not) some other instruments, and so I had a good time. And the guitar pickers helped.

They said, “Pick one,” so I started out with “Down Yonder”, a tune most folks around here know. Then Gerald sang “I Wonder Where you are Tonight,” and I followed it with “Head Over Heels.” This goes back to something I wrote a few weeks back. If, in this case, you’re a mandolin player with no other lead instruments, then KEEP IT SIMPLE. This is not the time to show off your new Vernon Derrick licks from a Jimmy Martin instrumental, or that dazzling thing you just learned from Chris Thile. [Editor's note: I like how Red is trying to appeal to our younger audience.] [Side note: Do we even have a younger audience?] It’s not the time to play your favorite original tune from your new CD. This is the time to play something EVERYBODY KNOWS, and to make it easy for them to play it along with you.

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Sandy, who is about my age (the best age!) has been taking fiddle lessons from me now for two or three months. Maybe even four. She’s never played an instrument before. Knowing that if she invested a lot of money in an instrument, she’d feel obliged to stick with it, she bought a good new German fiddle.

We started out slowly, as I always do, just learning to pull the bow across the open strings. Then it was on to “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” We just took it in pieces and Sandy had it down in about a month. She’s very dedicated to her practice. This tune is on our Beginning Fiddle DVD so she had a reference. During this time we were also working on the A major scale.

Because Sandy is an adult and is not clamoring to play in a bluegrass band or even a bluegrass jam session, I veered away from the DVD at this point. I don’t think “Cripple Creek” makes a whole lot of musical sense to someone who had never heard it. Instead, I started her on “Are You Sleeping Brother John.” Since this tune is not on the DVD, Sandy had to memorize each section during the lesson. (I’m not sure why we didn’t use a cassette player. Maybe she doesn’t have one anymore.) Again, we took it in sections, doing only four notes at a time. In addition to playing the song on her fiddle (and since I told her not to write anything down), Sandy would sing the song to herself when she took her daily walk. Again, we had it down in about a month. And “Twinkle” kept getting better.

It was when Sandy was learning her next song “Mary Had A Little Lamb” that the ear training started to pay off. Sandy had mentioned that “Twinkle” was easier to learn than “Brother John” because you stayed on the same note for more bow strokes, so I’d picked “Mary” for exactly that reason. So I showed her the first phrase “Mary Had A Little Lamb” and when she had no trouble with those seven notes, I’d added the rest of the line. Then I told her the first part of the next line was the same as the first phrase. She played that easily. Then she did the most astounding thing: on her own, and never having played this song before, she played the last part of the song ALL BY HERSELF, “its fleece was white as snow.” I was SO HAPPPY! And so proud of her. And she was happy and pretty pleased with herself. As she should have been.

And like I told her, this is how it’s supposed to happen. When you learn by ear, especially if you’ve never played anything before, the first tunes almost have to be learned by rote—with the teacher showing you the notes. And if you stick with the “by ear” part of the program and don’t write anything down, then your ear starts to develop and, sure enough, you start to hear where the notes are yourownself. And then you are on the road to being able to pick out other tunes—whole tunes—by yourself without the aid of a teacher. This is not to say that Sandy will be picking out “The Star-Spangled Banner” next week or even “Old MacDonald” but I’m sure the tunes she’ll be learning will be much easier (we’re fixing to start on Christmas carols from our “Christmas Fiddle Tunes” DVD) and she will be able to pick out parts of them by herself.

So to all of you out there, struggling with the fiddle (or any instrument), I hope Sandy’s story encourages you to hang in there!!!!!!

Our friend Jinx Miller sent us some old photos recently and this one made us laugh. It was a very typical pose for Casey and Murphy back in the day (circa 1980).

L-R: Tuck Tucker, Red Henry, Connie Rose, Murphy Henry, Casey Henry, George Shuffler

One of my students and I just had a very productive conversation about minor chords. Minor chords can be hard, but they’re really neat once you get the hang of them. As I was telling my student, there is a simple way to get to the minor chord from each chord shape (bar, F shape, D shape—you have to know those shapes already for this to make any sense to you. We have an excellent video on vamping if you haven’t branched out into that area yet.  :-)  ).

In the bar chord shape, you lower the note on the second string one fret. (I finger it with my little finger on the 1st string, index on 2nd, ring on 3rd, middle on 4th.)

In the D shape you lower the first and fourth strings one fret. (Little on 1st, ring on 2nd, index on 3rd, middle on 4th.)

In the F shape you lower the third string note one fret. (I flatten out my index to cover the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd strings and don’t use my middle at all, leaving little on 1st and ring on 4th.)

Chord stuff often doesn’t make any sense until you’re ready for it, or unless you have a need to use it right away. But at the right time, it will suddenly start to click, and it’s really cool when it does.

Murphy and I just played a gig—a music job—with our Cousin David. Now, gigs with David always involve some degree of unpredictability, or, if you like, Adventure. The folks involved were Murphy and myself, our friend Scott, and good old Cousin David.

In this case, the Adventure didn’t take long to start. It was raining, and it was time to go. We were all loaded up to drive to the gig in Cousin David’s minivan when I asked him (loudly, because his hearing’s pretty spacey), “All ready to go?” and he said, “That just reminded me. I left my hearing aid in the house!” So he went back through the rain and got his hearing aid and put it in. Then, sitting next to him in the front of the car, I asked him “Got your hearing aid?” — but I said it very softly, so he couldn’t hear me. Cousin David looked at me. I said, “Got that hearing aid in your ear?” even softer. David smiled at me. (He’s really good at covering up.)

Cousin David is not spacey. So we drove two hours away (in the rain) and had gotten in the general vicinity of the gig, and David said, “I meant to find out directions or print out a map of where to go, but I just never got around to it.” So after driving in circles (and triangles, and rectangles) for a while, he called the place for directions. Then we got there. But he is not spacey. It was an Adventure.

It turned out that in order to set up David’s sound system for the gig, we had to carry all the equipment into a big building, move it down an elevator, and set it up in a big lobby nearby. It was a long way. So we all got to work, and just did it. We hustled setting up all the microphones and cords and speakers and cables and all that stuff, and had the sound system ready a whole 11 minutes before it was time to start. Not bad; I almost had time to get my mandolin in tune! More adventure.

So far, the gig had consisted of rain, being lost, moving sound equipment, and stringing together various wires. But now came the good part. Murphy kicked things off with “Lonesome Road Blues” and Scott followed that with “Moonlight on My Cabin,” and we were off. Murphy, Scott, and I alternated in playing and singing various bluegrass favorites for the folks. It was an older audience, so we played plenty of songs and tunes they’d recognize. They liked us. I saw people singing along with Murphy’s “I Saw the Light” and my “Mountain Dew” and Scott’s “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Cousin David played bass and contributed a harmony vocal here and there. We played three sets of good music, and it was fun.

Then, it was back to messing with the sound system: coiling up the cords, packing the equipment up, and moving it back upstairs and out of the building and into David’s car. We drove back to his house just in time for Scott to get in his truck and leave to play another show that night with his own band.

So, it was all an Adventure. There was lots of rain. There was some getting lost. There was plenty of hauling sound equipment around. But you know what? We all had a good time, and the people liked us. And Cousin David’s not a bit spacey.

Just when I think I understand a lot about how students practice, I realize that something important has slipped by me. This week I was surprised to find out that many of my students are playing their songs through only one time. One time only. And then moving on to another song. No, no, no, no, no!

After you have learned the notes to the song and can play the whole thing S-L-O-W-L-Y you need to play the song over and over many times without stopping in between. What is many times? Two times is the minimum. Three or four times is much better. And remember: no stopping in between. When you get to the end of the song, go right back into it.

There are many reasons for this. One is simply to build up stamina—in fingers and in mind—by playing for extended periods of time. If you play “Banjo in the Hollow” one time, you are playing for what? Maybe 60 seconds? Maybe 90 seconds if you’re going really slow? That’s not even time enough to get situated, to get comfortable. You can hardly start to hear what the song sounds like! Repeated playings will allow you to start listening to what you are doing. It will also give you more opportunities to play through your mistakes, to keep on going.

But an even bigger reason is that if you play the song repeatedly you have a chance of finding the “groove.” That’s the magical place where the song starts to flow, where you can let your mind relax and let your fingers do the walking. And the talking. Where, again, you can start listening to what you are playing. And not just to the notes, to see if you are getting them right. But you can start listening to the MUSIC in what you are playing.

By the way, playing along with the DVD, even the Slow Jam DVDs, is not what I’m talking about here. Playing with the DVDs has its place, but the type of practice I’m talking about here is done on your own or with your own personal guitar player. (I used to pay my son Chris to play along with me on guitar when I was learning fiddle!)

Playing a song three or four times in a row is not a hard thing to do and I can almost guarantee that it will improve your playing in a hurry!

This week one of my students ventured out to her first public jam session. She had previously jammed only at group lessons and at the FiddleStar/Murphy Method camp that we held last month. She has been playing just about a year and went to this jam with the intention of just vamping—not taking any leads. She was pleased to find that on most songs she could figure out what the chords were, by paying attention to the guitar player’s hands, and keep up pretty well.

She ran into a stumbling block on “Old Joe Clark.” They were playing it in A (that’s where it is always played), but because we banjos play it in G when there are no fiddles around, she wasn’t sure of the chords. She knew that when she played OJC in G the “off chord” is F. So when she tried to use that chord, only in the key of A, it sounded wrong. Someone leaned over to her and told her she needed a capo for OJC.

She wasn’t using a capo since she wasn’t playing lead, and a capo doesn’t make any difference to your vamping anyway, but it confused her. So here was the simple solution: when you’re vamping in A, you move everything up two frets from where it is in G. She had moved her regular chords up, but she forgot to move the off chord up, too! Problem solved.

These were the excuses from two of my teenaged banjo students last week. Logan you’ve already met.

So this is me: Okay, Logan, what are your excuses for this week?

So this is Logan talking. (My responses are in parenthesis.)

I had two prep sessions for the PSAT, from 6-9 in the evening. (What else?)

I needed to get a good night’s sleep. (Right. What else?)

And there was all the partying and drinking. (He’s just messing with me about this…)

Then Monday was a layoff day. (I took this to mean after a hard weekend of partying….)

My thumb still hurts and I lost my brace. (He’d sprained his thumb playing soccer injury. I give him points for this since the week before he did play with the brace on!)

In spite of all this, we had a good lesson. I’m showing him, piece by piece, how to create a simple break to “Faded Love.” We just did the same thing for “Amazing Grace” and “White Dove.” (This stuff is almost sure to show up on a DVD sometime!) Logan can absorb this because he plays in a regular twice-a-month jam session with some of my other students. They regularly play “Faded Love” and “Amazing Grace” because Patty (one of my Fiddle Sisters) plays them on the fiddle. When I heard from Bob (the Bass Player and a guitar student) that Logan routinely bailed on these and went to get a soda (or as we’d say in Georgia, went to get a Coke), I knew I had my work cut out for me! And because Logan already knew the chords to these tunes from repeated listenings, he was ready to absorb what I showed him. This would not have worked otherwise. The moral: Keep listening to this stuff!

Now for the excuses from Teresa, a younger sister to Gina, Malia, and Christina Furtado whom I have written about in Banjo Newsletter. (And Malia plays on both of our Slow Jam DVDs.)

This is Teresa talking. (My comments are again in parenthesis.)

I had to study hard for a test.

I was gone all day Saturday. (To a banjo contest where she won first prize! I tried to get her to split the money with me, but to no avail!)

What was I doing the rest of the time? (No answer….)

Besides, I’m taking another instrument. (This was news to me. What are you taking?)

Classical guitar. (You mean you’re two-timing me?)

Blank look. (Why are you taking classical guitar?)

My mother is making me. (Can’t fight that!)

We also went on to have a good lesson. All the practice she did for the banjo contest kicked her playing up to another level!

Tune in next time (or sometime) for even more excuses! But I don’t think any of my students will ever top this one: “I spent my pick.” Don’t even ask! (Offered by a student to our Florida friend and banjo teacher Bob Higgenbotham back in the seventies!)

In thinking about right hand position, which I wrote about on Friday, I thought I’d dig out some pictures to show the variation in how people’s right hands look. This first one should need no explanation or identification:

(That’s Earl!) In an ideal world, everyone’s hand would look just like this. But, it’s not an ideal world and people’s hands look all sorts of different ways.

J. D. Crowe at a show in Kentucky, April 22, 2001. I wish I’d been able to zoom in more, but my little camera would only do so much.

Here’s someone you don’t see pickin’ the banjo very often: that’s Bluegrass Unlimited editor Pete Kuykendall at the Maryland Banjo Academy, April 18, 1997.

And this is yours truly, from early 1998, playing my Stealth banjo. I still have that flannel shirt…just sold the banjo, though.

Last Wednesday night I went over to pick at our friends David and Linda’s house. They’ve started hosting some regular picking on Thursday nights, something we haven’t had around this area before. The picking was good, and it brought some good points to mind:

1. When you’re playing music with some folks whose music you don’t know very well (and vice versa), KEEP IT SIMPLE. I mean, PICK OUT THINGS TO PLAY THAT EVERYBODY KNOWS. Now, along with several other folks, Cousin David was there last night. He and I know each other’s music pretty well, and when the two of us are picking, it’s hard for either one of us to get thrown off the track, even if one of us is playing (literally) some musical joke or other. Each of us can figure out and keep up with the other, no matter what we throw into the music on impulse. But this evening we were with several other folks we didn’t know as well, so I needed to keep it simple. When it was time to start, and Linda looked at me and said, “Pick one!”, I selected “Down Yonder” to play. Most folks will know that tune, and everyone there did. And we went from there to “Head Over Heels” and “Faded Love” and lots of three-chord bluegrass songs that everybody knew. And it was fun.

2. DON’T try to be the star of the show. You can almost tell the best musician in most jam sessions– he or she will be the most relaxed and laid-back person there, just waiting for their turn to play. When I see someone who’s trying to dominate a jam session, I generally know two things: (a) that person may not be as great a performer as they think they are, and (b) I want to stay away from there. The idea of a jam session is for everybody to sound good and have fun, and the pickers should all help with that. So this evening, nobody tried to be a star. We took turns selecting songs and tunes to play, and passed the breaks around freely— clockwise, in this case.

(I think that someone could write a phychological paper on “clockwise” versus “counter-clockwise” break-passing in picking sessions!)

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