Archive for the ‘guitar’ Category

Tuning Story

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

Murphy Henry

So, Cody, who is now taking banjo, comes in for his lesson last night. I ask Bob Van to stay and play some guitar, so I can play banjo and Cody and I can trade breaks. Well, Bob and I haven’t been in tune for the whole hour of his lesson. My fault, not his. His tuner is off from mine, and I was just too lazy to ask him to retune. And it wasn’t off that much.

But by the time Cody came in, I was ready to be in tune. And since Cody’s banjo wasn’t quite in tune, I asked him to tune it. He didn’t have his tuner with him so I handed him mine. Then, I asked Bob to go ahead and use that tuner to tune, so we’d all be in tune together. No big deal, right? All I wanted (for Christmas) was for them to get in tune…

So Cody looks at Bob and says, “ I think I’m gonna buy her a T-shirt that says, ‘Please be in tune WITH ME.’ ”

And Bob says, “Yeah. And the operative words are WITH ME.”

Hmmm….somehow I never thought of it like that!

Murphy

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Picking Salt Creek on the Guitar

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

Murphy Henry

I know we mostly write about banjo playing here, but I thought a word or two about Bob Van and his guitar playing was in order. Since he’s doing SO WELL.

As you may recall, Bobby has been taking guitar lessons from me forever. One of my favorite stories about him is when he came in for his first lesson, lo these many years ago, before either of us were wearing glasses! He’d been learning to pick the lead on some songs from our CASSETTE series, Carter Family Guitar. Songs like Will The Circle Be Unbroken and Worried Man. He said he’d gone through all the songs in the series. I was impressed.

“Play one,” I said. So he did. And, yes indeed, he had all the notes exactly right. But he was leaving out all the strums! And thus began our long-term battle over timing. Which happened again yesterday as he was working on the lead break to the Stanley Brothers song Could You Love Me One More Time. (His choice.)

“Bobby,” I said, “would you do me a favor and play again, this time using the correct timing?”

“Hell,” he says, “I’m having enough trouble remembering the notes. I can’t worry about the timing.”

My response?

“If you can’t play it in time, then you can’t play it.”

His response?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. What else is new?”

It has always been thus. Fortunately we’ve always been able to laugh (and cuss!) at whatever is going on in the lesson.

But lately Bob’s lead guitar playing has taken quantum leap, due, in part I think, to his learning to pick Salt Creek. Note by tedious note. Let me be quick to say he didn’t do it without a monstrous amount of complaining. “I hate this song. It doesn’t have a melody.”

My response?

“Yeah, yeah. Try it again and this time get the pick strokes right.”

We latched on to Salt Creek only because he’d tried to pick the lead to Ashoken Farewell in the key of D. It’s a hard song on guitar to start with, and the key of open D is not an easy key to pick in. And did I mention he’s pretty bullheaded? So we went around and around with Ashoken Farewell for several months. Frankly, I think we lost.

So I said, “Next time, let ME choose the tune.”

Amazingly, he said, “Okay.”

So I chose Salt Creek. Why? Mainly because the banjo pickers that he plays with somewhat regularly (Ruth, Susan, Logan) all know this tune and he’d actually get a chance to perform it in a jam. And it has become sort of a flatpicking standard.

I taught him the old-fashioned way, by recording it onto a cassette! Explaining it note-by-note, including the directions of the pick strokes. And yes, it took a while, but, by Jove, he finally got it! And while he still professes to hate it, he can play it, chord it, and come back in for his break after the banjo plays. At least he could do that yesterday. Marty is coming for a marathon lesson on Saturday and I’ve arranged for some students to come jam with him. Bob is one of them. We’ll see how he does on Salt Creek then. Pressure’s on, Bobby! Step up to the plate!

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Just stringing along

Friday, November 12th, 2010

Red Henry

Yesterday I was stringing up a mandolin for Murphy’s student Zac, and got to thinking about how it’s a challenge, at first, for students to change strings on their instruments. Changing banjo and guitar strings is enough of a hassle, the first few times, and changing mandolin strings can be an amazing challenge. Fortunately, though, most students don’t need to change their strings very often.

But this leads into another question: “What kinds of strings are best?” –and this has many different answers. For banjos and especially for guitars and mandolins, there are a bewildering number of choices in strings: light gauge, medium gauge, or heavy gauge; nickel-wound; bright bronze; phospher bronze; “bluegrass” alloys; and the modern high-priced, long-lasting string sets. Which do you need?

If you like your old set of strings, I’d recommend sticking with the same kind when you change them. But if you’d like to try something new, there are a few general guidelines you can go by when choosing strings. Usually, medium-gauge strings provide more volume but are not quite as easy to play, but there are exceptions to that. And very old (pre-war) Gibson mandolins or Martin guitars may really need light-gauge strings, to avoid putting too much string-tension on a fragile instrument. In any case, on banjos, light-gauge strings often sound and play best.

On guitars and mandolins, phosphor-bronze strings may provide the most volume and bassy tone, but also may have the shortest life before they go dead. Nickel-wound strings may give less bass, but may last the longest. “Bright” bronze strings, my personal favorites, may be somewhere in the middle. The new “long-life” string brands seem related to bright bronze, and they do last a long time, but they sometimes seem stiff and difficult to play. And you’ll find instruments, and different string brands, and individual string-sets, which will surprise you on all these counts!

If you have the time and energy, try different kinds and brands of strings until you find the ones you like best. If you don’t want to be changing strings lots of times to find the right ones, ask around, especially among folks who have been playing a while, to see what kind of strings you might like. (Be aware that usually the answer will be the strings THEY like, not the ones YOU might like, but you can filter the answers and figure out what to try.) Good luck!

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Playing and Judging at Music Contests

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

Red Henry

Some of you may have entered a music contest from time to time. A few of Murphy’s students enter contests as often as they can. If you live in a part of the world where there are contests, you might consider entering a few yourself.

There are several benefits from entering contests. The first reason (and maybe the biggest) lies in the preparation. This works into the “Quality” theme of Murphy’s post yesterday. Your tunes need to be thoroughly learned, as smooth and good-sounding as you can get them, so that you could play them without thinking about them– because at first, when you get on a contest stage to play, your mind may go blank and you’ve got to just PLAY. As well as you can. Without thinking. This simply takes a lot of practice, and practice is good for you!

At contests you get to play in front of different audiences, in different places and situations. You might be indoors in a poorly-lit school auditorium. You might be on stage in a big music hall with good lights and sound system. Or you might be playing on a flatbed trailer outdoors in 45-degree weather. If you can play your tunes well in ANY situation, its good for your music.

And why can you win some contests without being the best picker? It’s because of the judging. Some local contests simply do not have musical experts available as judges. So your job at those contests is not to play the most advanced tunes you can. Your job is to play a tune that sounds good, and to look like you know what you’re doing. If on stage you LOOK confident of being a winner, you’ll have a better chance of actually being one.

At a lot of contests, the best player does not win. The judges may pick their favorite based on looks, facial expression, posture, gender, age, or other un-musical considerations. On the other hand, there are contests where the judges are excellent musicians and very well qualified to judge, in great and accurate detail, how well the contestants can actually play.

But no matter how the judging goes, you accept it and roll with the flow. Playing contests is not about the judging, it’s its own reward. You endure the waiting and the drawing for playing-order, you go out in front of the people, and you play your tunes as well as you can. (The first one or two contests, your playing may not exactly be your best. But keep at it.) And when you’ve played some contests, your music is so much more solid than it was before. If you’re placed a few times, your confidence is too.

So if the judging seems weird, don’t take it seriously. At a contest, the judging is not the point. Winning prizes is not the point. Your music is.

Red

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Picking

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

Red Henry

Yesterday afternoon we had a real good picking session. The participants were what made it work. Besides Murphy, Chris, and myself, we had a teenage banjo player, a forest ranger, a deaf banjo player, a singer converted from hip-hop, and an out-of-work bass player. A well-matched group, huh?

Okay. I guess you are wondering who these people were and why they fit together so well musically. Well, the teenage banjo player was Murphy’s student Logan, a good student and up-and-coming player whom she’s blogged about before. And the party was for Logan’s 18th birthday. The forest ranger was local guitar picker and singer Gerald C., who happens to be Logan’s scoutmaster. The deaf banjo player was our Cousin David, about whom you’ve heard before. (Just kidding about the “deaf” part.) The convert from hip-hip was our friend Chris L., a new Stanley Brothers/Flatt & Scruggs/Reno & Smiley freak who used to be in a rock band with our Chris. (The band was called, appropriately enough, The Bends.) And the bass player was Murphy’s long-time student Bob V., a fine picker and witty person.

So why did we fit together so well? Well, aside from Murphy’s formidable skill at leading a jam session (as amply demonstrated on our Slow Jam and More Slow Jam DVDs), it was because everybody knew a lot of the same material or could pick up on it well. You do find jam sessions where the players all have their own favorite songs but can’t really play anyone else’s. In this case, everybody picked up on what everyone else was doing, and it worked out fine.

Sometimes you find the strangest combinations of folks in jam sessions… and the music still works!

Red

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“How often should I change my strings?”

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Red Henry

Well, how often should you change them? I hear this question pretty frequently. The answer is, that it’s up to you. How helpful is that?

Well, the reason is that everybody’s strings need changing at different times. Some reasons are because (1) there are so many kinds of strings and they age differently; (2) people all play differently and their strings wear out (or corrode) faster or slower as a result; and (3) in different parts of the country (or the world) strings are just going to need changing more often.

So, what do you look for in deciding whether to change them? One thing can be obvious: buildup of corrosion or gunk on the string. This really happens a lot in warm, humid climates. If the buildup can’t be removed with a little steel wool, then it’d definitely time to change strings! (When I was starting out, this happened on my mandolin strings every few days.)

Another sign is when the strings get hard to tune. Often it’s because they’re not sliding smoothly through the string-nut (that’s the little white thing with slots at the bottom of the peghead). If you put on new strings, and when you’re at it, put a little graphite — pencil-lead dust will do– in the bottoms of the little nut-slots, then the tuning should get a lot better.

Another sign of elderly strings might be that they don’t play in tune. If you’re pretty sure that your bridge is in the right place, but your banjo is still “noting out” more than usual up the neck, then new strings might be what you need.

One more sign of old strings may not be as obvious. If the instrument (banjo or otherwise) just doesn’t sound right, the strings may have gotten too old to sound good at all. When does this happen? Well, this is the most extreme case of old strings, since it may take several months or a year for the strings to get this old.

Some players take extreme steps to keep new strings on their instruments, especially if they break a lot of strings. Back when we were playing a lot of festivals, I used to change the strings on both mandolins and both guitars every morning before we played our first set. That was a lot of work, but it helped keep the string-breakage to a minimum. Others take a different approach. I’ve heard that Bill Monroe changed his mandolin strings once a year, at New Year’s, and from then on just changed them as they broke (which they did, pretty often).

Now, this all applies to the fretted instruments. Fiddle strings seem to fall into a different category. I’ve known fiddle players who changed their strings every few months, but as for myself, if the fiddle gets new strings every five years, that’s a lot. I suspect that the strings on my fiddle now have been on it for longer than that!

So the answer to the question is, that it’s up to you yourself to decide when to change strings. There are a lot of reasons for changing them (better tone, volume, and tuning), and there are plenty of reasons for just leaving them on there (less hassle with awkward work, and less risk of getting your banjo or mandolin bridge out of place in the string-changing process, among other things). But if you go in for a lesson and your teacher takes one look at your strings and turns as green as they are, then it’s time.

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Scrabble Report

Monday, May 17th, 2010
Murphy Henry

Murphy Henry

So, I’m down here in Georgia again, visiting my folks. My dad and I have the same birthday, May 18, so we’re doing an early birthday weekend. One of our wonderful helpers made me a birthday cake and Daddy is having a piece right now.

This morning Mama and I played a game of Scrabble and I thought you (especially Marty) would like a report, so I took notes during the game. It was the best game she’s played in years! I was SO HAPPY!

Mama went first and was absolutely fine for four turns making BEAT, DREW, attaching SUN to SHARES for a triple word score, and then making LOPE. Unfortunately she hit a snag when she put down VAZE. Here is our conversation after that play:

Me: What does that spell?

Ma: Vase.

Me: In what universe?

Ma: That doesn’t spell vase?

Me: No.

Ma: What spells vase? (Isn’t that cute?)

Me: V-A-S-E.

Ma: It was a perfectly good place to use a Z. (Pause.) And you had to mess it up.

And of course then I felt like a complete heel, because in the larger scheme of things WHO CARES? I told her that if she put it down again (which she often does, having forgotten she’s already played the word), I’d just let it go. But, amazingly, she did not put it down again but put down VAGUE and later used her Z later to make DOZE. I’m telling you, she was firing on all cylinders.

After VAGUE, she was leading so I said, “You’re ahead of me! You’re ahead of me!” To which she responded, “Good, good, good!”

At another juncture she was even further ahead. I said, “That puts you 15 points ahead of me.” She said, “Some days are like that.”

Other words she made were: JANE, RAG, ANDREW (adding AN to DREW), WORMY, KIND, QUIET, MEN and ON in the same play, and TO and DO in the same play which also landed on another triple word score. But her cleverest play was adding TED to ALLOT for her third triple word score.

In spite of all her great words and excellent plays, by the end, I had finally pulled ahead. (The Force was with me!) When I told her I had won, she said, “You beat me?” I said, “Only by 13 points.” She said, “Wow. That’s ridiculous.” Which it was. Why didn’t I let her WIN??????? She’s 85 years old and I still try to beat her? What’s wrong with this picture?? On the other hand, I know me well enough to know that if I let her win all the time, I eventually wouldn’t want to play. So, all I can do is work with what I’ve got right now. And sometimes she does win. And that makes me happy too. As Kenny Rogers said, “You’ve gotta know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.” Okay, so that was about poker. Somehow it seemed appropriate….Go figure!

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A Visiting Mandolin

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Red Henry

Red Henry


A friend of ours has left a mandolin with us, just for a visit. It’s a very nice mandolin but he hasn’t been playing it much, so he wanted me to “play it in” and bring it back to sounding its best. I play it most of the time for my daily practice, and its sound is indeed improving. This is something that happens with most instruments. If you play them regularly, they sound better than if you don’t.

Some folks don’t believe this happens, and say there’s no such thing as an instrument’s sound improving from being played. But I believe that they ought to say, “I haven’t heard this happen myself.” Maybe they’ve never heard an instrument improve, but it sure happens, and folks all over the stringed instrument world are aware of it.

It’s well known in the violin world that instruments sound better if they’re played. A friend of ours was in a group which played a concert in Cremona, Italy, where many of the old master violins were made, long ago. He and his friends visited a violin museum there. Among all the beautiful old violins there was a little old man whose job it was to play them, each of them, every day, in order to keep them sounding their best. What a job, to play millions of dollars worth of violins every day of the week. Life is hard! But it did keep the instruments sounding great.

So why am I telling you all this? Because it applies to the instrument you play, whether it’s a mandolin, fiddle, guitar, or banjo. Play it every day, and keep it sounding good. You’ll have your own million-dollar sound.

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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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