Red Henry

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

Red Henry

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.

Casey Henry

I’ve had a couple little students jams in the last month. After each jam I resolve to hold jams more often, but somehow I never do. This time, though, I really mean it. (Ha! How often has that been said?) Part of the problem is that at the moment I don’t have a group of students who are at the same level. I do, however, have two who are roughly compatible level-wise, and it only takes two people to have a jam, so I decided to go with it.

Ginny (the one who is now flatpicking the banjo) and Jean have enough material in common that we can jam for a good hour. Last night was an all-instrumental jam because my lingering cold prevents me from singing. We didn’t avoid the singing songs (Two Dollar Bill, Worried Man, Mountain Dew), we just played them as instrumentals.

I had a small revelation last night while I was watching them trade breaks back and forth. I’ve been thinking a lot about backup lately because I’m getting ready to film a new DVD teaching backup. Students are often impatient to learn backup because they find vamping boring. What I realized last night was that when someone else is taking a break, you shouldn’t be paying attention to your own vamping — that should just happen by rote (i.e. you should know the chords so well that you don’t have to think about them). You should be paying attention to, and watching, what the lead player is doing. The only reason students get bored vamping is that that’s all they’re thinking about. If you’re bored, then you’re not doing the right thing.

To use a sports metaphor (which I hardly ever do, but this one seems particularly appropriate): keep your eye on the ball. Keep your eye on the melody.

When I was in eighth grade, I played basketball for our middle school team. One particular game sticks in my memory. I played forward; I was never much of a ball handler. We were down at our end of the court, trying to score. One of my teammates had the ball and I was between her and the basket. She was dribbling, dribbling, then she shot. The moment the ball left her hand I turned and looked toward the basket, hoping for the rebound. Unfortunately, her shot was considerably short and instead of hitting the basket, it hit me in the head. Yes. Hit me in the head. Why? Because I took my eye off the ball.

If you’re playing lead, you’ve got the ball. If you are vamping, you should always be looking at the person with the lead, ready to take it at a second’s notice, or with no notice. When you hand off the lead, you need to follow it to its destination (the other player) and make sure it gets there. Once it’s there, what do you do? Keep watching! You don’t want it to come back and hit you in the head.

Red Henry

You know, in many parts of the country, this time of year there’s not much going on musically– few festivals, few shows, maybe not even any picking parties to keep up your playing ability. In my case I’ve been distracted by flying a lot since November, and by late January I got pretty rusty on the mandolin. So what do you do?

I simply started playing some every day. Not a lot, because I didn’t have enough time and energy to spend an hour or two at it, but last week I started playing 15 to 30 minutes a day. And it sure helps! Just a short practice, every day, can get you back into shape without a lot of stress and strain trying to play for hours on end.

Now, I admit that the music comes back into my fingers easily partly because I’ve been playing for a long time. But even when I’d only played for a year or two and I was going to school, I found that when the schedule was really crowded, if I could play 15 or 20 minutes each day, it really helped.

You might not learn a lot of new material with short practice sessions, but you might be surprised at how you can preserve the skills you already have. Take it easy on yourself. Review the tunes from Beginning Banjo Vol.1 or Banjo for Misfits. So? What are you waiting for? Today’s 15 minutes starts now!

Red

Red Henry, Jan. 13th

Folks, a few days ago I had a great first cross-country flight with my flying instructor. After carefully plotting our course, winds, and checkpoints, we flew down the Shenandoah Valley to an airport 63 miles away, and came out right on target. I mean, we weren’t a hundred yards off course when we got there. In fact, we were exactly lined up with the airport’s runway.

Now, how do you make things come out exactly right on a flight like that? First you do your homework, getting all your preparation as right as you can get it. Then when you get into the airplane and take off, you get in a rhythm. You constantly check your altitude, airspeed, and heading, to make sure you’re going exactly right. At and between your checkpoints, which are about 10 miles apart, you check your course on a chart to make sure you know exactly where you are. You get into a rhythm. After each checkpoint, you start getting ready for the next one. This combination of preparation, thinking ahead, and staying in rhythm makes your flight end precisely, and safely too.

So how can you apply this to playing music? In plenty of ways. Now, we practice at home and learn new tunes not only for our own amusement, but mainly (at least in my case) to get with a group of other musicians and either pick or perform. This means, that when you’re at home, you need to do your homework. Practice your tunes, and stay in time. As Murphy says, don’t play any parts of the tunes any faster than you can play the hardest parts. (Our two “Slow Jam” DVDs are perfect for developing this skill.) You need to have your arrangements down, so that you can play them in good time without having to think about every note.

Then when you’re in a group, you can not only play the tune, but also pay attention to the other musicians while you’re playing — listen to the rhythm, and stick with it. If there’s a particularly hard part in the tune, you have to stay in rhythm while you play it. As you play each phrase (your checkpoints) listen to make sure you’re still with the others. And then, when you’ve navigated your way through your break so that you reach the end (your destination) right together with the other players, be thinking ahead to either hand the tune off or end it, and at the end, it’s a great musical experience for everybody.

Flying and picking– I love it.

Red

Red Henry

Folks, that might seem like a strange title for a post, but I just wanted to point out how musicians sometimes seem to evaluate instruments on the basis of what they look like, rather than what they sound like.

This really comes into play with banjos, and the musicians are well aware of it. They know that others will evaluate their music partly on the basis of what kind of instrument they play. For example, I recently saw a band photo session where the banjo player hadn’t brought her banjo, and she was going to have to hold a banjo brought by one of the other band members. She was a bit alarmed by that, and said, “Is it a crummy banjo? I’m not having my picture taken holding a crummy banjo!” Fortunately, this banjo had ‘Gibson’ on the peghead and looked even older than the one she’d left at home. So she held it happily in the photo. That was a banjo she didn’t mind being seen with.

I was reminded of this another time at a big picking party. A friend of ours owned one of the quite valuable Gibson F-5 mandolins from the early 1920s. He couldn’t come to the party, but sent the mandolin there with another friend of ours, who handed it to me to play.

Now, the jam session had been going loud and long at this point. I had no problem with that, since my two mandolins (Randy Wood #1 and #3) will cut through any number of banjo and guitar players, and the pickers certainly weren’t giving me any slack. But then I started playing that old F-5, and suddenly everything changed. The whole jam session quieted down to hear that $100,000 Gibson mandolin– and they needed to. The instrument was not remarkable either for tone or for volume, and it couldn’t have been heard otherwise. So the pickers were using their eyes, not their ears, to evaluate that mandolin, and they quieted down to let it be heard. They hadn’t done that when I was playing my Randy Wood, which was frankly a much better instrument.

So, next time you’re in a group of pickers, really pay attention to what the other people’s instruments sound like. Don’t listen with your eyes, listen with your EARS!

Red

Murphy Henry

As I write this blog it is Sunday, January 3. This is an auspicious day in my life and Red’s too, because this is Casey’s birthday! Happy Birthday, Casey! You can see the picture of the birthday cake I made her, brown sugar pound cake with cream cheese icing, hand decorated by moi, as you can probably tell!

Casey's wonderful, banjo-rific birthday cake, made and decorated by Murphy.

This past week, when Casey was home with us, she came into my office and said, “Guess what?” Without waiting for a  “what?” she started singing, “Next Sunday, darling, is my birthday…” She’d just realized that this year, that great old Stanley Brothers song fit the occasion. How cool is it to have a daughter who appreciates stuff like that and knows the words, too?

She is currently down in Georgia doing her weekend with her grandparents and has planned a lovely birthday supper for which she will try out Julia Child’s recipe for baked chicken. My sisters Claire and Argen will provide a veg and homemade rolls, and Rita, who is one of the angels who helps out with the ‘rents, has supplied her fabulous pound cake with caramel icing, a birthday surprise for Casey. She’s almost got enough cakes for a cake walk!

On the music front, my friend and fiddle sister Patty had picking party last night. This time I took my fiddle and was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn’t totally suck, since it’s been a while since I’ve played anything other than Christmas carols on the devil’s instrument. Logan was there with his banjo, and again he acquitted himself well, although there were plenty of tunes he still needs to learn including:

Gold Rush

Soldier’s Joy

Remington Ride

Rawhide

Turkey in the Straw (optional)

Actually, he did pretty well on the first half of “Rawhide.” Since it’s in C, I told him to capo up to the fifth fret and play the break to “Lonesome Road Blues” through twice. He totally grokked what I was saying (to use a Heinlein word), and then I asked Red to come in on the second part which has lots of weird chords. (I wasn’t strong enough to carry it on the fiddle, although I was pretty proud of what I did on my own break! Go me!) Logan thought the second part sounded really hard, but I told him it wasn’t. Rudy Lyle took the most amazingly awesome break on the bridge, consisting of two up-the-neck chord positions and a bunch of slow backward rolls. Piece of cake. I can’t wait to show it to Logan.

The other folks in the jam like to do a lot of contemporary material including “Welcome To New York.” I told Logan he didn’t have to learn that. They have also been known to play “Caravan” and “Little Rock Getaway,” both of which are optional in my book. (Read: I can’t play ‘em!) Of course my hope for Logan is that he surpasses what I can do on the banjo and learns all these tunes and more. (Like Reno’s kickoff to “I Know You’re Married.”) Casey has already done this, and I am so proud of her.
In honor of Casey, here’s a little song rewrite:

This Sunday, darling, is your birthday

A day that should be free from care

Best wishes and congratulations

From both your parents way up hyear.

We both sang happy birthday to you

I knew a smile was on your face

When we hung up, I hope it stayed there

And nothing sad would take its place.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CASEY!

(Georgia typeface!)

Murphy Henry

As you may have noticed, we have been rather recalcitrant about blogging this week. Call it the Christmas ho-hums. And it’s not really ho-hums so much—we’ve all got plenty to do—but it’s just that our various schedules are still in interruption mode. Which is wonderful because Red’s mom is visiting us from Tallahassee and Casey is here from Nashville. So we’ve been busy doing things with them, which lives little time for blogging.

I will mention that on Christmas Eve, David McLaughlin had his annual open house, which we have turned into an annual picking party because we don’t know how to behave at a “regular” party where you might have to actually talk to people…about something other than bluegrass! So we hide behind our instruments and this makes us happy and in general pleases most of the people at the party.

Red, Casey, Chris, Jenny Obert, David Himself, Gerald Crowell, Logan, and I rendered tunes for about three hours with no stopping other than the obligatory nature calls. Casey was playing her fretless, nylon-string Fielding banjo which provided a novel element (in a good way!), Logan outdid himself on my Stelling banjo, David played mostly fiddle and a little bass, Red and Chris played mandolins, Jenny played fiddle, and Gerald and I played guitar. I was perfectly content to play guitar, because that enables me to sing more, which seemed like a good thing that night.

My favorite jam sessions feature the old, moldy songs generally from the Stanley Brothers, but it seems like we hit quite a variety of numbers. It’s been several days since the party but I do remember these:

Please Papa Don’t Whip Little Benny (sung by Casey)

Daddy Frank

I Don’t Want Your Rambling Letters

East Virginia Blues (which sounds just like Rambling Letters so we didn’t do them close together)

The Prisoner’s Song

Beautiful Star of Bethlehem

Christmas Time’s A-Coming

Sally Goodwin (so Logan could practice it)

Cumberland Gap (which Logan mixed up with Sally Goodwin, of course—everybody does it)

Cripple Creek (which sounded great on the fretless banjo)

Traveling the Highway Home

Better Get in That Number

I’m Going Back To Old Virginia (sung by Casey and Chris—it’s a number David wrote and they recorded)

Rank Stranger

We ended with Beer Barrel Polka followed by Old Spinning Wheel, for which I took over on banjo

Robyn, Logan’s mother, asked for Blackberry Blossom but, of course, I wouldn’t do it. Later, I told her that the type of jam session we were in made BB inappropriate. So Robyn later asks, “At what type of session would it be appropriate?” Casey immediately says, “One that Murphy’s not at.” I had to protest, but only a little bit, because that is partly true. But on another level, to me, each jam session that’s really rolling has its own flavor, and we were doing old singing songs. Of which Blackberry Blossom is not one (to use good grammar….I think!). Besides, Logan didn’t play it. It just didn’t have the right energy. Besides, it was too early for me to go get a beer, which is what I usually do when BB surfaces!

All in all, a good time was had and we went home and nestled all snug in our beds. And, sure enough, Santa arrived sometime during the night! And we had a glorious time opening presents the next morning! Hope you got everything you asked for. I know I did!

Murphy Henry

Okay, this is so funny I have to tell it first before I forget how it went.

So in the middle of “Old Joe Clark” I catch Logan yawning. After the song is over, I say something to him about being tired. Before he can even respond Bob Van barks, “What time did you get up this morning, boy?”

I immediately say to Logan, “Don’t answer that!” Because I know where Bob is going.

Logan, ignoring my advice (!), boldly says, “Four o’clock.”

I’m going like, “Way to go, Logan!” And everybody is laughing.

Then, Logan takes it a step further and says to Bob, just as brassy as can be, “What time did YOU get up?”

The rest of us are holding our sides with laughter. What happened to the quiet young man who usually shows up at the jam?

Bob says, “Quarter till four.”

More laughter. I figure Bob is just one-upping Logan in that oh-so-masculine way. Then Bob says, “My alarm didn’t go off.”

Susan, Ellen, Mark, and I are now hysterical with laughter. I’m thinking, “This jam is SO worth it!”

But Logan wasn’t done for the evening. Before our last song, “Wagon Wheel,” I was looking around for my piece of paper with the words on it. I asked Logan to look in a stack of papers that was near him. He came up with several pages of sheet music which he was looking at. Bob, standing nearby with the bass, could see them too.

“What kind of music is that?” Bob asks. (Like Logan would know.)

Logan answers, man-style, “Ukulele music.”

I’m thinking, “Huh?” (I actually thought it was music to “Loveliest Night of the Year” that a fiddle student had brought in.)

Bob goes, “How do you know that?”

Logan says, “Because I’m the Bluegrass Master!”

The rest of us burst out laughing.

Then Bob, obviously consumed with curiosity, says, “Now really. How did you know that?”

(And frankly I was wondering that too. I thought maybe it had some 4-string chord shapes in little boxes over the words and notes.)

Logan replies, “It says so right here on the music. For ukulele.”
Bada-bing!

So, the unusual tunes we played tonight were “Sally Goodwin” and “Old Home Place” (from the Easy Songs DVD—might as well get in a plug!)

Logan had learned the high and low breaks to “Sally Goodwin” (off Advanced Earl) and he did a great job. Susan (who was the inspiration for Logan’s learning it) and Logan haven’t gotten to where they can switch breaks yet—which is hard—so they just played everything they knew to play (AABB high, AABB low) and then we quit!

Interestingly enough, Logan was “hearing” the B part the same wrong way I first heard it, but we got that straightened out. I hope to blog further about my own trials and tribulations with “Sally Goodwin” when I find a good long stretch of time. (Which I used today to go Christmas shopping!) Right now Logan hates the tune (even after listening to Earl! Sacrilege!). I told him that I believe over time he’ll just learn to love it. And told him to listen to J.D. Crowe’s version. His next challenge is “Ground Speed.” He’s making noises about wanting to play professionally so we are Seriously Studying Earl. I’ll keep you posted! (He’s definitely getting the humor thing down! Which is essential for going on the road….)