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Picking the Wildwood Flower

Monday, March 8th, 2010
Murphy Henry

Murphy Henry

I am having the best time teaching my 20-year-old guitar student, Cody. He’s been taking now for not quite a year, and he and his dad Elvis are the wonderful folks who plow our driveway when it snows. (I’ve seen a lot of them this year!) Cody started off learning G, C, and D, of course, and then we ventured pretty quickly into E, A, and B-7 so he could learn “Folsom Prison Blues.” To quote Travis Tritt, Cody is a “member of the country club”, and country music is what he loves. So we’ve also done “A Country Boy Can Survive” (in D), the theme song from the Dukes of Hazzard “Just Good Ol’ Boys” (in E), “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound,” (in G) and are working on Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.” (Don’t expect to see these on a DVD any time soon!)

One of the things Cody does that is really helping his playing is, guess what? Getting together with other people and playing. Of course, they play electric guitars and use a lot of barre chords, but that doesn’t matter. Cody is still immersing himself in music. Early on he came back from one of these jam sessions and said one of the guys was picking out a song he really liked. What was the song? I asked. Cody couldn’t remember the name. I took a not-too-wild guess and said Does it sound like this and then picked a little of the “Wildwood Flower.” Bingo!

So we spent the next month or so learning to pick “Wildwood Flower” in C. Unfortunately it’s not yet on DVD, so Cody had to remember it a few notes at a time. The F chord in particular gave him fits and evoked some colorful language. (In today’s culture it was pretty mild but Cody has such a flair for it that it always tickles me.) But he “got ‘er done” and now plays it quite well and is able to trade off breaks with me easily.

Which brings me to the whole point of what I thought was going to be a short blog! Yesterday when Cody came for his lesson the idea came into my head to show him how to pick “Wildwood Flower” in the key of G. (I wonder now if that was inspired by all the blog talk here about banjo players playing in different keys.) Anyhow, we started learning the first line in G, following the same melody we used in C. After the first couple of times through Cody looks up and says, “Wow! That’s a lot of moving!”

That struck me as funny and oh-so-appropriate, so I wrote it down and thought I’d share. And I did! (I would have shared earlier but I was out yesterday square dancing! Four hours! My feet hurt when I got in and I was hearing “four ladies chain” and “weave the ring” in my sleep. But, oh my gosh, it was so much fun!)

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Posted in By Murphy, guitar, lessons | No 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 »

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 »

Ukulele DVD

Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Murphy Henry

Murphy 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!)

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Posted in By Murphy, DVDs | 1 Comment »

Metronomes

Monday, February 15th, 2010
Murphy Henry

Murphy Henry

The question: I just purchased a metronome and trying to figure how fast Casey and you are playing “Nine Pound Hammer” on Easy Songs for Banjo. In recent jams I seem to speed up and slow down and do not hold a constant beat. I am hopeful that purchasing the metronome will assist. What are your thoughts? Feel free to use this on your blog.  -Drew

Hi Drew,

Thanks for the question. I hope I don’t put you off by saying I am not a fan of the metronome. I’m sure it has its usefulness somewhere—I know Lynn Morris used to use one to sharpen her picking skills to a fine point—but for banjo students, especially beginning ones, I don’t find them useful. I have never suggested that my students use a metronome. And if they tell me they are using one, I just try to pretend like I didn’t hear them!

The timing problems beginning banjo students have are usually related to timing in a way that the metronome cannot address (or fix). Their timing problems tend to be related more to not hearing a lick correctly or not being able to execute it properly or just flat out not understanding how the timing is supposed to sound. (Like that “D” lick in John Hardy, the one that has timing like “In The Mood.” Once you understand that timing in your head, once you can “hear” it in your head, you can play it. Until then, it’s just a series of notes. But the metronome cannot help with that.) Or their timing problems are the result of simply being a new student who doesn’t yet have the small-muscle motor skills to play smoothly or fast.

Sometimes, even with the help of the DVDs, a student will simply get the timing wrong. And easy example is the E minor lick in “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Some students have been known to play those eighth notes too fast initially. We can usually straighten that out quickly by me playing along with them and/or playing guitar. But if you’re doing it wrong and don’t know it, that will sure throw you off in a jam!

Without hearing you play, it’s hard to know what the speeding up and slowing down in jams is all about. My guess it’s more likely a result of nervousness, being a new jammer, and/or having rhythm players who are not too solid. And a metronome can’t help with that.

My guess is that you probably just need to play each song many, many, times over in a row (without stopping) until you can develop some solidity. And of course there’s nothing like jamming to help you learn to jam. Metronomes cannot help with jamming—that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

Again, I think metronomes are for fine-tuning your timing, something a professional player might want to do. I’ve heard that Ron Block uses a metronome a lot.

And, lest you think this is a case of me telling you one thing and doing another, I confess that I have never used a metronome for more than the few seconds I needed to find out that I didn’t like them. They simply would not stay in time with me!

Hope this helps!

Murphy (Do you think you could get a refund on that metronome??? )

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Posted in Accessories, By Murphy, Practice | 4 Comments »

Winter Wonderland

Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Murphy Henry

Murphy Henry

I thought you might like to see a few pictures of what it’s like up here in what Red calls the “cold and snowy frozen north.”

We’ve basically been house-bound since last Friday, February 5. We did get out for a few hours yesterday, but today the brutal wind and drifting snow has once again kept us indoors.

Snow on the back deck.

Snow on the back deck.

But we’ve been lucky so far—KNOCK ON WOOD BIG TIME—in that we’ve not lost power. We did get a flicker about an hour ago, so I filled up the bathtub with water and laid out candles and matches, just in case.

All my lessons for today canceled so I’m not in a very musical mood. However, I did talk to a fellow on the phone the other day who gave me a great big grin. He was talking about how he didn’t like a lot of the new bluegrass, that he much preferred the old. And while I do like a “right smart” of the new stuff (Old Crowe Medicine Show, Robin and Linda Williams, the Dixie Bee-Liners, Laurie Lewis) I understood where he was coming from. Especially when he said, of the new music, “It don’t make no lump come in your throat.”

Snow sculpture?

Snow sculpture?

And that’s pretty much all I want from music. Which is why I also like George Jones and Conway Twitty.

Hope you’re staying warm!

Crazy snow art.

Crazy snow art.

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Posted in By Murphy, General | 2 Comments »

Tab vs By Ear

Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Murphy Henry

Murphy Henry

Some of you may be following the thread over on Banjo Hangout about learning by tab versus learning by ear. I sent in a post yesterday offering my two cents worth (guess which side I’m on!) and I thought I might expand on some of those ideas here — although I realize I’m preaching to the choir.

As I said on BHO, when I started teaching banjo, back about 1975, I was using tab! I quit because it didn’t work. My students weren’t learning to play, and frankly, I was having to listen to some really bad music. Students were playing stuff like “Lonesome Road Blues” from the Scruggs Book and leaving out whole portions of the tune without realizing it. It was painful. And it left me nowhere to go as a teacher—do you just keep throwing songs at a student when they can’t play the earlier and easier ones?

So, as I always say, it was in desperation that I talked my first song “Old Joe Clark” onto a cassette. And the student learned it better than she’d ever learned anything before. It sounded like a tune! Eureka! Soon I was talking “Old Joe” onto cassettes for everyone and doing all the other tunes that way as well. The improvement was dramatic. By ear work; tab didn’t. You think that would be “nuff said.”

But no. After a while I realized (a slow process) that even if you were learning by ear, there is a big difference in learning tunes and playing the banjo. My students could learn tunes all day long and play them well—no problem. But this alone did not make them banjo players. As my book And There You Have It chronicles, I realized students had to learn to hear chord changes and they had to play with other people. Thus the Misfits Jam emerged, where, finally “my people” really began to learn to play.

Could they have done this with tab? I don’t think so.

In addition to that, I offer my own experience: while I did use tab (from the Scruggs Book) to learn a few songs, I think my experience with “Sally Goodwin” set me back for years—I couldn’t “hear” the timing, and played it “wrong” (although not out of time) for a long time. I remember playing it in front of the Flint Hill Flash one time and he was completely bewildered as to how I made it come out “right” in the end. I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t know! (I guess the silver lining to my “Sally Goodwin” experience is that I can now make it easy for students to learn it “right” on our Advanced Earl DVD. You’re welcome!) Then there were many others that I COULDN’T learn from the tab including “Ballad of Jed Clampett” and “Blue Ridge Cabin Home.” Not to mention those that made such little sense I didn’t even try them: “Careless Love” and “Little Maggie” come to mind.

So you can see I didn’t just dream up this “by ear” Method. I started it because it works! And thanks to all of you who have used the Murphy Method and who are out there spreading the word!

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Posted in By Murphy, Learning By Ear, banjo | 6 Comments »

Improvising

Monday, February 1st, 2010
Murphy Henry

Murphy Henry

Happy February! Only 24 more days till Ralph Stanley’s birthday!

Today, I’m gonna let Martha C. toot the improvising horn again:

I cannot emphasize how thankful I am that I had you to get me started on the banjo. I was a really hopeless case until I started using your teaching methods. I simply could not get away from my classical and traditional music background of reading notes. As I type this email, I am looking at a poster which I bought when I went to the Maryland Banjo Academy in Buckeystown, Maryland in 2000. You and Casey were both there. What I remember most about that experience was that the improvising skills that I had learned from your tape finally clicked. One day, you asked me to try to play a song that I had not played before, using the techniques that you had taught on the improvising tape. I was shocked and thrilled beyond words that I could do it!!! This was real eureka moment for me because I realized that the whole world of improvising was now open to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

You’re welcome, you’re welcome, you’re welcome!

PS: Just back from a trip into the Cit-tay (Washington, D.C.) with Robyn and Logan to see a one-man play about the Catholic monk Thomas Merton. Bluegrass connection: We listened to Reno and Smiley CDs all the way down. Well, Logan and I listened. Robyn tolerated. She’s not quite there yet. The Gusto label has just reissued the 4-CD set of all the Reno and Smiley King Label stuff (with Gary Reid’s fine liner notes) and it is wonderful! I can’t tell you how much fun it is to have Logan into Reno and Smiley! And I only wish that I had studied more Reno so I could show him some stuff. Oh, Casey……..

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Posted in By Murphy, Improvising | 4 Comments »

Who’s Phil?

Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Murphy Henry

Murphy Henry

So, I’ve just finished giving two-days worth of marathon banjo lessons to Andy, who drove up from the Charlotte, N.C., area. We’ve had four hours of extremely good playing on his part and I’ve provided an outline—at his request—of what I think he should be learning for the next six months. I’ve just met his wife and his two lovely young daughters who play violin and cello Suzuki style. We are saying our good-byes, preparatory to Andy walking out of the studio.

Then out of the blue he says, “Who’s Phil?”

I’m totally caught off guard and not understanding the question, so I say, “What do you mean?”

He says, “You know, in the DVDs you’re always talking about Phil. You’re always saying, ‘Put in a fifth string for Phil.’ I was just wondering who Phil was.”

I’m going, “You’re kidding, right? This is a joke.”

And he’s going, “No, I’m serious. Who is this Phil guy?”

Then I realize that he IS serious. And I say, “Ohhhhhh…..That’s just a miscommunication, a misunderstanding. What I mean is put in a fifth string for fill-in. It’s just a fill-in note….and so I just say ‘fill’—put in a fifth string for fill. But, of course, I totally understand, if you’re just hearing it, that there’s no reason you shouldn’t be thinking of Phil.”

And then we had a good laugh, and Andy gave me permission to blog about this, because, of course, now I’m thinking about how many other people are wondering who Phil is.

And I can guarantee the next time I say, “Put in a fifth string note….I’ll be thinking of Phil, too!”

Posted in By Murphy, banjo | 2 Comments »

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