Archive for the ‘banjo’ Category

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New Custom Lessons Available

Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Casey Henry

Casey Henry

Just a quick update on a few new custom lessons I have recently done that haven’t yet made it onto the complete list. Today I just taped a lesson for Earl’s break to “Pearl, Pearl, Pearl.” If you’re not familiar with that tune, you need to watch more Beverly Hillbillies.

“Faded Love” is also ready. That’s a popular tune with fiddles, but tricky to play on the banjo. I think I’ve come up with a playable break that most intermediate students should be able to handle.

Two variations for “John Hardy.” This standard is a staple of the beginning banjo repertoire, so it’s understandable if you’re sick of the one break that we teach on the Beginning Banjo DVD. These two breaks (one low, one high) are the ones that Murphy recorded on the Stelling Banjo Anthology CD. They’re definitely harder than the regular break, but totally doable.

And to complete the list, the walkdown and high break for “Earl’s Breakdown,” and a tune called “Sasha.”

If you’re interested in copies of any of these ($30 per song), just email me: themurphymethod@gmail.com.

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Playing in D

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Casey Henry

Casey Henry

This post kind of parallels our playing in C discussion of the last couple of weeks. Students never ask about playing in the key of D until it comes up in a jam and they realize they don’t know how to do it. There are three or four ways you can play in the key of D. The easiest is to capo at the seventh fret and play your regular G breaks. But it sounds very tinky way up there on the neck.

Option #2 is the second easiest, and that is to capo at the second fret and play out of C position. Now, you’ll need to have learned how to play in C position for this to work, but it’s a great option once you’ve crossed that hurdle.

Option #3 is to play out of open D position. This requires no retuning, except for your fifth string (which goes to an A note—the seventh fret spike). But playing out of D position is a whole level harder than playing out of C. I remember when I was trying to learn how to do it, the first break I attempted was “I Saw the Light.” I took my C position break and moved it up two frets, imagining that my fingers were the capo at the second fret. I just literally moved every single note up two frets. It worked (kinda) but it was very hard.

I was listening to a lot of the Del McCoury Band at the time and the banjo player Rob is particularly good at playing out of D. One time at a festival I asked him if he had any tips for learning to do it better and his answer was, in effect, just do it a lot and play around with it. It wasn’t a terribly helpful answer but it was accurate. By the time you get good enough to be playing in D, you’re also good enough to figure out how to do it by yourself. I was kinda bummed that there were no shortcuts.

Option #4 is almost not an option at all, but I’ll throw it in just for the heck of it. You can play in D tuning (like the tune “Reuben”). Almost nobody does this as a way to play normal, everyday tunes in D. Except Keith Little. He does it, and it’s awesome. Because you’re in a different tuning, all the chord shapes are different, even if many of the rolls are the same. It’s (almost) like learning a whole new instrument, so I wouldn’t recommend it.

For the most part, I’d say stick with option #1 until you have several years—like ten—of playing under your belt. It’ll get you by and won’t make your brain explode.

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Posted in By Casey, banjo | 4 Comments »

More About Playing in C

Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Murphy Henry

Murphy Henry

Steve from Japan had some interesting thoughts in response to Casey’s comment about my original blog “Playing in C.” I thought I’d post them here, so I can add my two cents worth.

Hi Casey, I don’t mean any fighting words here, but I disagree with your comment about students not needing to learn to play in open C. It’s not that difficult to do and, here anyway, many of the Carter Family songs such as Wabash Cannonball, Wildwood Flower, etc. are played as instrumentals at jam sessions. Also, here in Japan there’s a rather good balance of men and women (singers) in amateur bluegrass too. I’ll be a student of the banjo for the remaining years of my life and I want to learn to play, as proficiently as possible, in the Key of C and D. I think you ought to encourage students to learn to play some in open C as soon as possible. It goes with the territory, so to speak. From the back of the classroom, the bad boy’s 2 cents.

Steve, you do have a good point about women in jam sessions and the fact that most women sing in the higher keys of C or D. That’s why for beginners I suggest the use of the capo. Yes, even in D! And Carter Family numbers such as “Wabash Cannonball” and “Wildwood Flower” are typically played in C. (Although as instrumentals they could be played in any key.)

I think your operative words are “I think you ought to encourage students to learn to play some in open C as soon as possible.”

I agree with this. I just think our definitions of “possible” are different! I am always thinking of the students I see on a day-to-day basis.

Most of the students I see and have seen typically struggle with playing tunes in G for the first couple of years. At some point we start the usually tedious and difficult process of learning to vamp and learning to hear chord changes. Usually, the only playing they do with anyone is with me in the lesson. Most of them do not get out and jam. So their understanding of the banjo and banjo tunes and songs and even basic music theory is quite limited. For these folks, playing in C is, in fact, very difficult (did I mention the F chord?). And more than that, it is confusing.

This is why Casey said, and I agree, that until a student has considerable jamming experience and really needs to play in C because someone is singing in C or playing a tune in C, it is best to wait until the student’s skills are more developed. (Which will also make it much, much easier to learn and understand.) But, I totally agree with you that life-long banjo players do, at some point, need to learn to play in C and D (and maybe even E and F!) to become well-rounded players. That’s exactly why we devoted two whole DVDs to playing in C! Wildwood Flower and Soldier’s Joy.

PS (totally unrelated to the above!): I’ve not yet mentioned that I’ve been taking square dancing lessons since September and am now completely besotted with this mentally challenging activity. (So many new licks….I mean calls to learn: Load The Boat, Spin Chain the Gears, Relay the Deucy, Ping Pong Circulate.) It’s a lot like learning banjo and it’s so much FUN! Anyhow, I’d given our instructor Mike McIntyre one of my M and M Blues CDs, and he liked it and asked if he could use some of my music in a square dance call. I said Sure! So last night I had the mind-boggling experience of square dancing to “Hazel Creek” (the Murphy Method theme song)! I could hardly keep my feet moving in the right direction because I was listening so intently to the music. Mike had cut out the slow introductory part and had somehow spliced together the rest of the song to make it the requisite six minutes long for a dance. (He’d also slowed it down from something like 147 beats per minute to around 126. It was a bit strange to hear it so slow. Yet that was still fast to dance to!)  All the folks at the lesson were very complimentary about the music and I left with my head several sizes larger! Any other square dancers out there??

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Posted in By Murphy, banjo | 2 Comments »

Banjo Art

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Casey Henry

Casey Henry

Yesterday my student Ginny sent me these drawings she did and I immediately freaked out because they’re so awesome. I forwarded them to my parents and they agreed with me about them. Both said, and I quote, “WOW!!” When I saw them, after recovering from the shock of awesomeness, I could immediately picture them hanging on the wall of a baby’s room. You need to start introducing those subliminal banjo messages as soon as possible, you know! :)

pgs 2,3pgs 4,5pgs 6,7back

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Playing in C

Monday, March 1st, 2010
Murphy Henry

Murphy Henry

Here’s a question from Susan: Could one or both of you (Murphy and/or Casey): talk about what you look for in a student’s progress that signals the student is ready to learn to play in a different key, say C?

What Susan is talking about is, of course, playing in C without a capo. It’s not a big deal to capo to the fifth fret and play out of G position.

So, when is it time to tackle a new key?

Roughly speaking, I’d say after you’ve been playing a couple of years, have learned 20 or 30 tunes, and can improvise. In other words, you want to be totally comfortable in the key of G first. I would also add that you need to have some substantial jamming experience.

What do I base this on? I base it on the difficulty that some of my previous students have had in moving into the Key of C. And I also base it on the trouble I had myself. It’s not as easy as it might seem.

Aside: One of my (many) pet peeves as a teacher is hearing that other teachers are using “Reuben” as a beginning tune. Reuben, as you may know, is in the key of D and you have to retune the banjo to play it. Sure, the rolls are easy and are mostly the same ones you use in the key of G. But getting a beginning student to retune a banjo? I don’t think so! (Even with a tuner.) And then the sound that the rolls make in G are so completely different in the Key of D. “Reuben,” in my book, is an advanced tune. And how often does it come up in a jam session anyway?

So, why is it hard to play in the key of C? For one thing, you have to use the F chord! And while you’re holding the F chord down, you often have to move your ring finger down to the second string. Not impossible, just different. And you often are moving from the C chord (three fingers down) to the F chord (three fingers down) and that’s a lot of having to keep your fingers down! There is not so much of that nice open G chord or even the often open D chord. For another thing, the “tag lick,” which is so easy and automatic once you learn it in G, it much harder in C. There is also, generally speaking, much more movement of the left hand involved because you frequently have to go up to the fifth fret first string to get a melody note. And then there are a number of totally new rolls that you have to learn. None of this is impossible, it’s just hard.

Lastly, there is the whole issue of hearing and thinking in a new key, a key in which the G chord is now the V (five) chord, not the I (one), and C chord is now the I and not the IV (four). And then there is the F chord. Oh, I already said that. Well, it bears repeating. Then there is the F chord.

In short, you need to be a fairly competent banjo player in the key of G before you tackle C. There is no reason to make things harder than they have to be by trying to learn them too soon. In the mean time, use your capo!

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Posted in By Murphy, banjo | 9 Comments »

What I Heard on the Radio

Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Murphy Henry

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!

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Posted in By Murphy, CDs, banjo | 12 Comments »

Flatpicking the Banjo

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Casey Henry

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!

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Posted in By Casey, banjo | 3 Comments »

Good Question

Sunday, February 21st, 2010
Casey Henry

Casey 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!

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Posted in By Casey, DVDs, banjo | 3 Comments »

Earl’s Breakdown Custom Lesson

Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Casey Henry

Casey 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)

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Posted in By Casey, banjo, lessons | 1 Comment »

Tone Rings

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
Casey Henry

Casey Henry

As I sit here staring at my blank computer screen trying to figure out what to blog about, something of necessity banjo related, something that will be interesting to you, as opposed to blogging about the amazing roasted cauliflower I made last night for supper, I hit upon the subject of tone rings. Now, tone rings are not very interesting to me. I don’t really care about banjos in a technical way – when peopple start talking about switching parts and trying to get that pre-war sound my eyes immediately glaze over. But people don’t believe me even when I tell them this in so many words. I don’t care what a banjo IS – the wood, the metal, the strings, the picks – I only care if I like the way it sounds or not. And I’m not interested in trying to improve the sound. Once I have a sound that is satisfactory to me, I’m done. I’ll play it for the rest of my life.

I tell you all this so that when I tell you that yesterday I played a banjo that had a tone ring that I a.) noticed and b.) fell in love with, you’ll realize how amazing the experience has to be to get past my very high level of not caring about banjo parts.

Steve Huber has been working on a new tone ring. He said his original ring was “the” ring, but apparently it wasn’t. This new ring is “the” ring. And I had absoultely no interest in trying it out, because I don’t care. But yesterday a friend of mine put his banjo in my hands and said “pick something on it,” and I did, because it would have been rude not to. And holy. Crap. It was freakin awesome. I don’t think I’d ever played that banjo before, so I have no basis for comparison, but I could have played it for a long time. (Actually, I couldn’t have because my next student was standing there, waiting for me to be done.) It had one of Steve’s prototype rings in it and those thirty seconds that I played it were enough to have me considering which banjo of mine I might be able to put one of those rings in. And that hasn’t happened in the eleven years since I got a Huber ring put in my style 11.

So I just wanted to share. I don’t think the rings are on the market yet, and I’m sure they will be expensive, but they may quite possibly be worth it.

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Posted in Accessories, By Casey, banjo | 7 Comments »

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