The Murphy Method Blog

We had fresh blood at the jam tonight and a whopping crowd of eight pickers. Plus one audient, as we are wont to call a solitary listener. (That was Steve’s wife, Vicki.)

Susan, Mark, Steve, Ray, and Bob Mc were on banjos, Ellen was on guitar, Bill was on tenor guitar (four strings), and Bob Van was on bass. The new attendees were Steve, Ray, and Bill and I don’t think we scared them off!

Songs played:

The Big Three: (Banjo in the Hollow, Cripple Creek, Boil Them Cabbage; all the banjos playing in unison. A fine cacophony and a great way to warm up!)

Then it was on to:

Foggy Mountain Breakdown
I Saw the Light
Blue Ridge Cabin Home
Old Joe Clark
Two Dollar Bill

Susan and Mark, who have been playing OJC the longest, are doing quite well now at coming in for their breaks since Mark shared his “secret recipe” with Susan (come in on the four pickup notes). Bob has not yet learned the B part, so he played the A part and everybody came in together on his B part, which was kinda cool. And I managed to get totally lost in the middle of Steve’s break, bringing the jam to a screeching halt.

It was like this: During Steve’s lesson before the jam, he and I had been working on his tendency to speed up during some of his breaks. It’s no big thing, just a predilection to play slightly ahead of the beat until sometimes, but not always, he manages to pull about one note ahead. What I usually do is make a slight adjustment in my own guitar rhythm to stay with him. I realized tonight that this was not helping him—he often didn’t realize he was out of time since everything eventually evened out—so I told him I’d try to do better about holding the time. (That’s really hard for me to do when someone is just slightly off!)

So during the jam, when he took his break on OJC and started speeding up slightly, sure enough, I followed him! But the rest of the players didn’t, so soon both he and I were completely out of time and I couldn’t stand it, so I stopped everybody. Told them it was totally my fault. Which it was. So Steve started his break again and this time, when I felt him speeding up and wanted to go with him, I actually LISTENED TO THE BASS and that kept me in line. But durn I hated to have to admit that because I knew Bob Van would gloat and fall all over himself grinning. But in the interest of full disclosure—and as part of the overall learning experience for the students—I ‘fessed up, and sure enough, Bob was so tickled he looked like a possum up a gum stump. I told the students if they ever mentioned this again, I would deny the whole story!

I was particularly proud of the students for vamping so quietly. Even in this large crowd, we could always hear the lead being played.

But speaking of hearing, let me close out with this wonderful quote from Ray. When the jam was over and the folks were dispersing, he came up to me and said, “I’ve got to get over this self-centeredness. If I can’t hear me, I can’t play.”

Funny as that is, I knew what he meant. I told him that as he did more jamming he would actually learn to tune out the other instruments so he could hear himself better. But a banjo player getting over self-centeredness? Please! <Grin>