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“Be Prepared.”

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Red Henry

Red Henry


Have you ever been in a jam session, and were taken by surprise by something? Maybe the other pickers asked you to play or sing a song. Or perhaps while the group was playing, you suddenly had the tune passed to you–and you didn’t know what to play!

If you’re new to playing in jams, things like that can take you by surprise. If it’s all you can do to watch a guitar player to find out the chords, figure out where they are on the banjo, and then vamp or play some simple backup, it’s hard to do anything else at the same time–such as think about a break to play before it’s your turn. But you can have a plan of action.

Think ahead, and know ahead of time what you’re going to do. If the chords to the tune are pretty familiar and you can use some of your familiar Scruggs licks to build a break, start planning for that as soon as you have the chords figured out. If, on the other hand, you don’t know the tune and don’t want to make a leap into nowhere with your banjo break, just tell yourself ahead of time that if the tune gets passed to you, you’ll just nod to the next person and pass the break off before it’s time to start playing. Whichever you do, the tune will go on smoothly, and you’ll be more confident and better prepared for the next time.

“Be Prepared.”

Red

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Posted in By Red, Improvising, Practice | 1 Comment »

Sale Ends at Midnight Tonight

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Red Henry

Red Henry


Just a reminder to everyone that our big 5-DVD for $89 sale ends at midnight tonight (Sunday, Feb. 28th). Put your orders in if you’d like to take advantage of this great offer! We’ll send your DVDs out tomorrow.

Red

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Posted in By Red, DVDs, lessons | No Comments »

Extending your Learning-Limit

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Red Henry

Red Henry


Many of you will recall that in addition to our musical activities, I’m learning to fly. I had a great flight last Wednesday. Snowstorms and high winds had prohibited flying for almost three weeks, so I needed some practice, especially landing the plane. So I took off solo and made 3 landings at the airport here at Winchester, then flew up to Martinsburg, WV and made 10 landings on the big runway there, then came back to Winchester and finished up with 3 more: total, 16 landings in a little over 3 hours.

How did it go? Well, at first the airplane seemed pretty unfamiliar (it had been 3 weeks!) and it took the first one or two landings for me to doing them again. Then, the first several landings at Martinsburg were the best ones I made. When I came back to Winchester I was beginning to get a bit tired, and the last couple of landings could have been improved on. But it took those 3 hours for me to reach that point, and I remember when a 1-hour flight exhausted me, not so long ago. Things are improving fast.

And what does this have with learning to play music? A lot. When you’re learning to play, the instrument may seem pretty unfamiliar in your hands. It can take a while to get warmed up, and then you can get “max’d out” if you play for too long a time without rest. Your ability to learn and to play (and especially your endurance in playing) improves gradually as you go along. At first it might wear your hands and brain out to play for 30 minutes, but after a while you can play for an hour or two without feeling strained. Later, you might get with some other pickers and go all afternoon or evening, and not feel nearly as worn out as you did after a half-hour at first.

Practice, that’s the key. What you’re learning gets better, and easier, as you go along. Practice might not make perfect, but it sure helps!

Red

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Posted in By Red, Learning By Ear, Practice, jamming, lessons | 2 Comments »

Picking with Others is the Easiest Practice

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Red Henry

Red Henry


Folks, we’ve discussed practice several times on this blog lately. Some of my own entries have had to do with how to keep up with your practice when you don’t have much spare time available. But there are other aspects of practice to talk about, including “What’s the easiest way to practice?” and “What kind of practice is best?”

In my own case, I discovered in 1967 (about a week after I started playing) that for me, picking with others was the easiest and best way to practice. It’s that way for others, too. When you are playing with other people, (1) you don’t have to provide all the musical energy– energy circulates around the group (even if it’s only two or three people) and comes back to help you; (2) practice time passes so much more quickly that three or four hours playing music with others make seem shorter than one hour at home; and (3) it’s a lot more fun. And you sure learn a lot, painlessly. This is why Murphy says over and over at the end of our videos, “Find some people to pick with!”

Now, I know that in some parts of the country (and the world) there are few other players of bluegrass, country, folk, gospel, or other similar material whom you can get with. For example, I spent a year at an Air Force base in Del Rio, Texas, and didn’t find any other musicians that year. Nowadays, of course, things are a lot better: we have our Murphy Method Slow Jam and Picking Up the Pace DVDs, and you can have a jam session any time right in your house!

So as I said, when you’re picking with others, you not only have a better time than in solo practice, but you learn faster. You also begin improvising, and backing up other players, in a live setting where people are having a good time. Playing in almost any kind of group is not only the easiest kind of practice– but the best.

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Posted in By Red, Practice, jamming | No Comments »

Telephone Sale Going Great

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Red Henry

Red Henry


As Casey mentioned yesterday, we have a sale going on: Call us on the phone, and take your choice of any 5 Murphy Method DVDs for just $89. And folks are really calling! I was busy all day yesterday taking and packing orders. The sale ends on the 28th, just 9 days away, so give us a call.

I’ll be on the phone myself most of today: 800-227-2357! Talk to you soon!

Red

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Posted in By Red, DVDs, Learning By Ear | No Comments »

Take Your Pick!

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Red Henry

Red Henry

Now, this little blog isn’t about banjo picks, so rest easy that there won’t be any battles started about those. There are as many opinions about banjo picks as there are banjo players!

But today’s story is about FLATPICKS. We sometimes take them for granted, but not everyone knows what they are. Once a lady had seen our ad for the “Flatpicking Guitar DVD”, and called us to ask, “What does ‘flat picking’ mean?” Well, we did our best to explain, but if you don’t know what a flatpick is, then this won’t mean much to you.

I have a particular, favorite kind of flatpick. These were made of a particular kind of plastic by just a few companies (such as Gibson), and they’re no longer made. Well, I had hoarded about a dozen of these picks, and I used or lost less than one a year, thinking they were a lifetime supply. Then, about a year ago, I put them in a safe place.

Well, you know what that means. I lost them. They were so safe that I couldn’t remember where I’d put them. I looked in every great “safe place” I could think of. I only had two of the picks that I hadn’t put away, and I thought maybe those two would have to be my lifetime supply…

That is, until two days ago. The picks were on a shelf in in plain sight, and fell off when I put something else on that shelf. There they were, my favorite plastic. Good grief.

The moral of all this (if one exists) applies not just to flatpicks but also to banjo thumbpicks, and is in three parts:

(1) Don’t get attached to just one kind of plastic for your picks;

(2) Use lots of different kinds of picks, like Bill Monroe did, so that your fingers are used to variety and can adapt to other kinds of plastic; AND–

(3) When you put your picks in a safe place, Don’t put them in too safe a place. Put them in a place you can find again!

Everybody pick purty–

Red

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Posted in Accessories, By Red | 1 Comment »

Out of shape picking? Get in shape!

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Red Henry

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

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Posted in By Red, Practice, jamming | 2 Comments »

Flying and Picking (6)

Friday, February 5th, 2010
Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Folks, a few days ago I mentioned that my flight instructor and I had gone on a cross-country flight to another airport here in the Shenandoah Valley. Well, yesterday we went on another longer cross-country, and a parallel really struck me between flying and playing music.

The first time, we flew to an airport near Harrisonburg, Va. I had my hands full trying to identify my checkpoints, keep my log of the time at each one, and dial in my radio navaids to confirm my navigation. We got there right on time and course, but I had my hands full just taking care of those “mechanical” things.

Then yesterday, we flew down to Charlottesville. I was able to do all those things, plus keep checking on the chart to make sure that we were in exactly the right place every minute, and looking ahead to what came next. This time the forecast winds were not as perfect as last time, so we might get a little off course, but this time I could detect it soon and correct for it. I was able to make everything go more smoothly. I think I kept us within a half-mile of our planned course the whole way, and when we were about 15 miles from the Charlottesville airport I spotted our destination runway straight ahead (and we were, almost eerily, nearly lined up with it again). Not only had we arrived on target and on time, but I’d been able to look ahead and think of the flight as a whole, instead of as a series of individual steps.

How does this connect with playing music? Well, you start out learning the notes to a tune, and you play them as well as you can. You eventually get to where you can play all the way through the tune without (hopefully) losing your place, or, at least, if you miss a lick you can recover and keep playing in time. This means that you have the “mechanical” part of the tune under control. But as you keep listening to the DVD over and over (for example, Cripple Creek on our Beginning Banjo Vol.1 or Earl Scruggs playing his original version on the Foggy Mountain Banjo CD), the more you hear. You may automatically pick up the subtle way Murphy and other players syncopate the notes to make the tune more listenable. You start hearing notes that are more accentuated than the others, which define (or at least imply) the melody. You start hearing the overall tune, which is more than just the notes.

You come back to the DVD lesson or Earl’s CD a few weeks or months later, and you can hear more than you did the first time. You start hearing more than the notes. In other words, you start hearing the tune as a piece of music. So keep listening to Murphy, keep listening to Earl, and keep picking!

Red

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Posted in By Red, General, Learning By Ear | 1 Comment »

Flying and Picking (5)

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
Red, Jan. 13th

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

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Posted in By Red, Learning By Ear, Practice, jamming | 1 Comment »

Listening with Your Eyes

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Red Henry

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

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Posted in By Red, Learning By Ear, banjo, jamming | 1 Comment »

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