Red Henry
Just a reminder to everyone that our big 5-DVD for $89 sale ends at midnight tonight (Sunday, Feb. 28th). Put your orders in if you’d like to take advantage of this great offer! We’ll send your DVDs out tomorrow.
Red
Archive for February, 2010
Sale Ends at Midnight Tonight
Sunday, February 28th, 2010Just a reminder to everyone that our big 5-DVD for $89 sale ends at midnight tonight (Sunday, Feb. 28th). Put your orders in if you’d like to take advantage of this great offer! We’ll send your DVDs out tomorrow.
Extending your Learning-Limit
Friday, February 26th, 2010
Red Henry
Many of you will recall that in addition to our musical activities, I’m learning to fly. I had a great flight last Wednesday. Snowstorms and high winds had prohibited flying for almost three weeks, so I needed some practice, especially landing the plane. So I took off solo and made 3 landings at the airport here at Winchester, then flew up to Martinsburg, WV and made 10 landings on the big runway there, then came back to Winchester and finished up with 3 more: total, 16 landings in a little over 3 hours.
How did it go? Well, at first the airplane seemed pretty unfamiliar (it had been 3 weeks!) and it took the first one or two landings for me to doing them again. Then, the first several landings at Martinsburg were the best ones I made. When I came back to Winchester I was beginning to get a bit tired, and the last couple of landings could have been improved on. But it took those 3 hours for me to reach that point, and I remember when a 1-hour flight exhausted me, not so long ago. Things are improving fast.
And what does this have with learning to play music? A lot. When you’re learning to play, the instrument may seem pretty unfamiliar in your hands. It can take a while to get warmed up, and then you can get “max’d out” if you play for too long a time without rest. Your ability to learn and to play (and especially your endurance in playing) improves gradually as you go along. At first it might wear your hands and brain out to play for 30 minutes, but after a while you can play for an hour or two without feeling strained. Later, you might get with some other pickers and go all afternoon or evening, and not feel nearly as worn out as you did after a half-hour at first.
Practice, that’s the key. What you’re learning gets better, and easier, as you go along. Practice might not make perfect, but it sure helps!
Red
What I Heard on the Radio
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Murphy Henry
Blog P.S. (which in this case stands for pre-script)
Just had to tell you this:
So I’m teaching Cody, my 20-year-old guitar student, how to play Hank Jr’s song “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound.” (A great song, by the way.) I’d sent him home last week and told him to listen to the song to see if he could figure out the chord changes himself. (They are not hard.) This week he comes back and says he couldn’t figure them out.
Me: Did you actually listen to the song?
Cody: Yes.
Me: It’s just G, C, and D.
Cody: I know. I just don’t know where to put them in.
Bada-bing! I love that!
Now, back to my originally scheduled blog!
While I was driving down to Georgia this past weekend, I was channel surfing on the radio when I heard banjo music! I stayed right there where I was soon happy to hear Tony Trischka and his new road band Territory broadcasting live from radio station WNCW somewhere in Western North Carolina. (I was near Asheville.)
Tony is one of the finest people on the face of the earth and he came across so well on the radio: humble, self-deprecating, quick to credit others, funny with an outrageously dry wit, creative beyond belief, and also a great banjo player in many styles. (His Christmas CD, Glory Shone Around, is one of my favorites.) In short, he is many things I strive to be. Sometimes more successfully than others.
Aside: Case in point: Bob Van and I were working up a gospel song at his lesson last week. I think we were singing “Kneel At The Cross.” We were trying to decide exactly how we wanted to do something and Bob wanted to do it one way and I wanted to do it another. Bob says, “I guess we’ll do it my way because I’m singing the lead. After all, it’s all about me.” Pause. “I learned that from my teacher.” Ouch! And touché!
So back to Tony. He’s talking to the deejay about one of the songs on his new album, Territory. Tony says, “Yeah, Walt Whitman and I got together in Nashville and hammered this out.” And I get the sense that the deejay is not quite sure if Tony is kidding or not because he (the deejay) is a bit hesitant in his response. I know Tony is kidding because that’s his kind of humor. Then the deejay says, tentatively, “We’re not talking about the Walt Whitman, are we?”
And then Tony explains that he is talking about the Walt Whitman because he has taken Whitman’s poem about Abe Lincoln, O, Captain! My Captain!, and has made a song out of it. Which he and the band proceed to play. Very nice. Tony says he is working on a whole album of songs that reflect the Civil War era. I feel the urge to tell Tony that Down Here, when I was in grammar and high school, and we had to write essays for the United Daughters of the Confederacy, we were not allowed to refer the Great Conflict as the Civil War. We were required to call it The War Between The States. That was a very big deal. (I’m not making this up.)
Toward the end of the interview, the deejay asks Tony to tell the folks how they can find him and his music online. Tony goes into this whole explanation about how hard it is to spell his last name. He said that once when Tony Trischka and Skyline were playing a gig he was billed as Tony Krishna and Skylab! Too funny! But I did remember the time I wrote a lot about Tony in my Banjo Newsletter column and misspelled his name every time. I felt so embarrassed when it came out. I called Tony immediately to apologize. He was so gracious and such a gentleman about it. He said it was no big deal. I felt much better. What a guy. You can actually read up on Tony at www.tonytrischka.com. I know how to spell his name now!
I’d like to close by saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Ralph Stanley, my sister Argen Hicks, and Pete Wernick! Quite an impressive lineup for February 25th!
Flatpicking the Banjo
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Casey Henry
I’ve written in the past on several occasions about my student Ginny (here, here, and here) who, in response to some right-hand issues, is now playing banjo with a flatpick. I think her story is unique (at least I’ve never heard of any other student switching to a flatpicking technique) and I’m really excited at how well it’s working out, after some initial floundering around on my part to find a suitable approach. I wrote my March Banjo Newsletter article about her and this post is a supplement to that article. (The magazine doesn’t have content online, so if you want to read it, subscribe already!)
Below are some sound files, mp3s of Ginny playing the flatpick versions we’ve developed of some of the beginning songs. (Click on the song title to hear it.)
First, Banjo in the Hollow. I know all of you know this one. It’s the first song on Beginning Banjo Vol. 1, and the first one we went back to each time Ginny and I started over with the flatpicking approach. She actually hates this tune, but because it’s the first one everybody learns, she ends up having to play it a lot.
Cripple Creek. I was really happy at the way this tune laid out in the playing-half-the-number-of-notes style we’re pursuing now.
Old Joe Clark. This is one of the tunes Ginny worked out on her own while I was away on tour. She said this version, “seemed to fall right out,” much like “Cripple Creek” did.
And finally Lonesome Road Blues. Ginny worked out both the high and low breaks on her own, and in this recording, from early February, you can really hear how this approach allows her to play fast. This one is at a regular jam tempo, and although it is not mistake free (and we’ve worked on the timing on the ending lick), clearly the tempo is comfortable. In this version I particularly like the lick she uses in the low break to lead into the C chord.
I’m sure you’ll hear more about Ginny in the future. Recently we’ve started learning the first entirely new song (as opposed to modifying a break she already knew three-finger style): “Groundspeed”. A whole new set of challenges has arisen, not the least of which is that the melody in the first phrase is very syncopated. Also, as is the case with a lot of the tunes Earl wrote, because it is a tune written on and specifically for the banjo, I consider ALL the notes to be the melody, which makes choosing which notes to play and which to leave out particularly challenging. Stay tuned!
Picking with Others is the Easiest Practice
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Red Henry
Folks, we’ve discussed practice several times on this blog lately. Some of my own entries have had to do with how to keep up with your practice when you don’t have much spare time available. But there are other aspects of practice to talk about, including “What’s the easiest way to practice?” and “What kind of practice is best?”
In my own case, I discovered in 1967 (about a week after I started playing) that for me, picking with others was the easiest and best way to practice. It’s that way for others, too. When you are playing with other people, (1) you don’t have to provide all the musical energy– energy circulates around the group (even if it’s only two or three people) and comes back to help you; (2) practice time passes so much more quickly that three or four hours playing music with others make seem shorter than one hour at home; and (3) it’s a lot more fun. And you sure learn a lot, painlessly. This is why Murphy says over and over at the end of our videos, “Find some people to pick with!”
Now, I know that in some parts of the country (and the world) there are few other players of bluegrass, country, folk, gospel, or other similar material whom you can get with. For example, I spent a year at an Air Force base in Del Rio, Texas, and didn’t find any other musicians that year. Nowadays, of course, things are a lot better: we have our Murphy Method Slow Jam and Picking Up the Pace DVDs, and you can have a jam session any time right in your house!
So as I said, when you’re picking with others, you not only have a better time than in solo practice, but you learn faster. You also begin improvising, and backing up other players, in a live setting where people are having a good time. Playing in almost any kind of group is not only the easiest kind of practice– but the best.
Ukulele DVD
Monday, February 22nd, 2010Murphy Henry
Every once in a while we will have someone call to ask us a question about our Ukulele DVD For Kids. (And kids at heart!) This question is almost always something like this: “Why do you call the chords G, C, and D when they are really C, F, and G?”
An excellent question, which I actually try really hard to explain on the DVD!
But for the sake of posterity, reference, and clarity, let me make another stab at it.
The little ukulele (tenor) that we use is tuned higher than a guitar. It’s tuned, top to bottom, to the “My Dog Has Fleas” phrase, which is: G, C, E, A.
Now the cool thing is that you can still make your basic chord SHAPES—G, C, D (and everything else)— the same way. It’s like playing on the last four strings of the guitar. So, instead of confusing everybody (especially the kids) with different names for those common shapes, I decided to call them G, C, and D. (I wish now I’d referred to them as SHAPES but I didn’t. Live and learn.)
I did mention—and totally demonstrate—that if you capo your guitar at the fifth fret and play those same SHAPES—G, C, D—you can play along with the kid on the (uncapoed) uke. The key ends up being the key of C. So bass players, mandolin players, and fiddle players would be playing along in the regular key of C. (Banjo players—except for Casey—would of course take the easy way out and capo!) Guitar players could, of course, also play open (no capo) and use the chords C, F, and G. (But why would anybody make an F unless they really had to????)
Again, my thinking was that most kids will use the uke as a springboard for guitar, so I wanted them to internalize the names of those SHAPES as the shapes they would be using later on the guitar. I mean, how confusing would it be later on to be thinking a D shape is G? You know how hard it is to root out those first impressions of something totally new. Scarred for life! (And also the chords on the bigger baritone uke are named just as they are on the guitar, and sound the same.)
Ukulele was my first stringed instrument. I started playing in the fourth grade, on the tail end of the big Folk Boom. (Or Folk Scare as some people call it!) It was on the uke that I learned the basics of chords and chord changes and keys. I can no longer remember how I learned my first chords. It was either from a Mel Bay book or from my friend Jeff. But I’m pretty sure I never thought of the chords as anything but G, C, and D. And when I taught my sisters to play, and then Casey and Chris, I always called the chords G, C, and D. And they seem to have done alright. So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Casey tells me the ukulele is now “in” and that there are actually some ukulele bands around now. Whoo hoo! The Murphy Method is ready. I expect Ukulele DVDs to start flying off the shelves! And if you want to see how cute Casey and Chris were in their younger years, check out this DVD!
PS: If you need more explanation: Since the uke is tuned higher, the actual sounds coming out are higher (a different pitch) so G shape really sounds like C, C shape really sounds like F, and D shape really sounds like G. (Confused?) That’s why I did it the way I did it!
I’d never heard of I, IV, and V chords, so after I’d been playing a while and had noticed that certain chords “went together” I made up my own numbering system and called them 1, 2, and 3. (At least I got the “1” right!)
Good Question
Sunday, February 21st, 2010Casey Henry
Someone just emailed me this inquiry:
I just purchased your first beginner’s video a few weeks ago and think it is great. I’m 73 and trying to learn the banjo. The first three songs went pretty well and I can play them although not smoothly yet. I’m struggling with Foggy Mt. Breakdown but I will get it eventually.
Now I see your promotion for 5 videos for $89 and I’m wondering which ones to order. The second beginner’s video is certainly on the list but I’m looking for some suggestions for the other 4. If you have time to think about this and recommend 4 others I would appreciate it.
It occurred to me that others may be wondering the same thing, so I’ll post my answer here for all to see:
If you’re going to go for five I’d recommend Banjo for Misfits, Beginning Banjo Vol. 2, Vamping, Slow Jam with Murphy and Casey, and Improvising (or Jam Session Standards). That will give you plenty to work on, plus you’ll get the backup (vamping) and be able to practice along with the Slow Jam disc. Murphy wrote a good blog post (here) about the best order to do the songs, and you might pick up some pointers from that, too.
Remember the sale ends on Februray 28th, so call us soon!
Telephone Sale Going Great
Friday, February 19th, 2010Red Henry
As Casey mentioned yesterday, we have a sale going on: Call us on the phone, and take your choice of any 5 Murphy Method DVDs for just $89. And folks are really calling! I was busy all day yesterday taking and packing orders. The sale ends on the 28th, just 9 days away, so give us a call.
I’ll be on the phone myself most of today: 800-227-2357! Talk to you soon!
Red
Earl’s Breakdown Custom Lesson
Thursday, February 18th, 2010Casey Henry
I’ve just finished with a custom lesson on the walk-down break and high break for “Earl’s Breakdown”. The first break for the tune is taught on More Advanced Earl, with the tuner section and everything, so this lesson is intended to be supplementary. You have to do the More Advanced Earl lesson first, then use this lesson to add on the variations. It joins the rest of the songs I have available immediately as custom lessons ($30 apiece). You can get them from me directly by emailing me, if you’re interested. (themurphymethod@gmail.com)
5 DVDs for $89 Telephone Sale
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
By now you may have heard of our sale either through our monthly newsletter or on our website, but we believe in market saturation, so you’re hearing about it here on our blog as well.
This is a TELEPHONE sale. You call us, order any FIVE DVDs and they only cost $89 (plus $6 shipping). 800-227-2357
If you don’t know what you want, go browse around for a while and get some ideas.
This offer is only good through the end of February, so get crackin’!
The reason this is a telephone only sale is that to do it on the website we’d have to get our website programmer involved, because none of us here knows how to change the price in funny ways and make it come out right in the shopping cart. Over the phone we can sell anything for any price we want. So that’s what we’re doing.