Posts Tagged ‘red’

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New tunes, okay. How about your old tunes?

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Red Henry

When you’re learning to play, or even after you’ve been playing for a long time, there’s a natural tendency to play your newest tunes. After all, they’re new and much more exciting than your OLD ones. But you can get bored if you only play the tunes you learned most recently, and your musical skills can suffer.

When you’re practicing, or even when you’re picking with other folks, remember to play your old tunes too. This does several good things. Among them: (1) You keep your fingers playing a wider variety of licks and melodies. (2) Your friends will enjoy the variety when you dig up a tune from the past. (3) You have the pleasure of re-discovering a great tune or song you’d almost forgotten.

But one of the best things about picking your old tunes, is that it keeps your brain working. If you play just half a dozen or so songs all the time, it’s easy to get into a musical rut and stay there for years. Instead, consciously go back and find tunes and songs you used to play. Keep learning new tunes too. Go through our Slow Jam DVDs and remember some songs you used to like. Your brain will like it, and your picking friends will thank you for it!

Red

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

The Good Old Thursday Night Jam

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Red Henry

I went over to the local jam last night. Why do I go to that jam? I’ve said it before in these pages: PRACTICE. But on some Thursdays the practice is easier than on others.

Now, when you get into real life jams, some of them aren’t as easy to play along with as (for example) on our Slow Jam or Picking Up the Pace DVDs. Sometimes, you have to work. And at first, I thought this would be one of THOSE THURSDAYS. We kicked off the jam a bit after 7:00, when five guitar players, two fiddlers, a banjo picker, and one mandopicker (me) had arrived and tuned up.

At first, it was heavy slogging. Few of the pickers besides myself wanted to take the lead in playing or singing songs, although Murphy’s banjo student Zac was an exception and played a creditable version of ‘Cripple Creek’. I sang a couple of songs, and it looked like it’d be a long night.

But at that point, help started arriving. Jam hosts (and excellent pickers) Linda and David brought in their bass and guitar, and joined the jam. Guitar picker and singer Gerald came in and added his talents to the mix. Fiddlers Wayne and Stormie arrived and got out their fiddles. Suddenly we really had a jam.

Right away, David and Linda wanted to sing ‘Your Selfish Heart’. That’s an old Stanley Brothers number that we get a good high trio on, and we always have fun singing it. Then Linda, who has one of the finest voices I’ve ever heard, sang ‘I’ll Go Stepping Too’. Things went on from there, and it was all very satisfactory.

With all that talent coming into the jam, we couldn’t miss. All the songs and tunes sounded good. It was fun.

Good practice, too.

Red

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

Stereotype Much?

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Murphy Henry

So on Tuesday, Red and I went to see this movie titled, unbelievably, Red. Which I can now highly recommend, especially if you want to see the tender, touchy/feely side of Bruce Willis. (Really!) With his sidekicks Mary Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, and John Malkovich, he plays a Retired and Extremely Dangerous ex-CIA operative. (Hence the RED.) Much fun is had by all, in spite of lots of shooting, and of course the good guys win in the end.

And why am I telling you all this? Well, in one part Bruce Willis and Mary Louise Parker go to Pensacola, Florida, to meet up with the John Malkovich character. He appears to live in a shack at the edge of a swamp with an old wreck of a car in the front yard, possibly a washing machine on a sagging front porch, and a rusty tin roof. You get the picture, yes?

As Mary Louise Parker approaches the house, she says, “All we need is a banjo.” DUH! Doesn’t she know that Steve Martin plays banjo? That Bela Fleck plays banjo? That Harvard graduate Alison Brown plays banjo? That Dixie Chick Emily Robison plays banjo? Hello! The long arms of Deliverance have struck again. This also points up that Rodney Dillard’s long-ago concerns about playing the dumb hillbillies on the Andy Griffith Show were not unfounded.

All I can do is sigh and quote from Pete Seeger: When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?

Next blog (I hope): Bob Mc learns to improvise! Stay tuned!

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Posted in banjo, By Murphy | 3 Comments »

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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Posted in banjo, By Red, guitar, Practice | No Comments »

Professional? Amateur? or Both?

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Red Henry

I’m just back from Hiawassee, Georgia, where I was one of the judges at the Georgia State Fiddlers Convention. There were contests for fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, Dobro, and other instruments, so we did probably 15 hours of judging over two days.

The judges, along with contest MC Barry Palmer and friends, played a set of music each day– after all, since we were judging the contest, we needed to show that we could play! Our Saturday set went real well (no surprise, since the five people on stage probably had 150 or 200 years of professional musical experience between them), and afterwards I was talking with Chuck Nation, another of the judges, about how much fun our set was. Chuck expresses himself very well, and he commented about playing in a band: “The difference between amateurs and professionals, is that amateurs are competing with each other, and professionals are helping each other.” Well said!

I’ve talked about it before on this blog, but Chuck’s comment really put it down plainly where we can understand it. If you’re playing in a group– on stage or off– are you listening? Are you trying every second to help the BAND (not just yourself) sound as good as possible? Are you playing so as to support the other musicians, not just to make yourself sound good? Your level of proficiency doesn’t matter, and plenty of people who can play well don’t play in a professional manner, in this respect!

You may be an amateur player, but you can play in a professional way. Think about it.

Red

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Posted in By Red, General, Improvising, jamming, shows | No Comments »

Jamming: One Easy Time, and one Challenging Situation

Friday, October 8th, 2010

Red Henry

Last weekend I went over to Nashville for the International Bluegrass Music Association convention. During the day I helped Casey with our Murphy Method booth, but both nights I went over to my uncle John’s house to pick. John Hedgecoth is a banjo player with long-standing credentials including a stint in Bill Monroe’s band in the 1970s. He can also play ANYTHING on a banjo, from bluegrass ro jazz to classical, so it was good to pick with him. He invited a few other folks over, and we played a whole lot of tunes. We picked quite a few Bill Monroe numbers. We played lots of traditional tunes. We also played some entertaining numbers like ‘Sweet Sue,’ ‘Baby Elephant Walk,’ and “When I’m 64.” John played them all on banjo with aplomb. Nothing could be easier than picking with him, and it was all good.

Then last night, back here in Winchester, I went over to the weekly Thursday Night Jam. Playing music there was a different situation. About 15 local musicians were playing for an audience of about 50, inside a greenhouse. (It wasn’t any stranger than it sounds, but the acoustics were not the best.) There were about 7 guitar players, three mandolin players, two each playing banjo and fiddle, and (thank goodness) a string bass. So I got near the bass player and played firm rhythm on Randy Wood #3– a mandolin with unexcelled projection– and the rhythm was there. Not great rhythm, but adequate. The on-beat was there from the bass and the off-beat was there from the mandolin, and everybody hung together adequately. And everybody had a good time.

Congratulations to Murphy’s student Zac, who won the banjo contest at Burlington, WV last Sunday! Way to go! We had him play ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ at the jam, and he did quite well with both the low break and the high break. Good picking–

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

The Murphy Method at IBMA

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Red Henry

Again this year, for I-don’t-know-how-many-years-in-a-row, we set up a booth for the IBMA Fan Fair. The Nashville Convention Center was a busy place, with plenty of bands, dealers, instrument makers, and fans on hand for the weekend. After Lynn Morris won an IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award (see Casey’s post just below) and her husband Marshall Wilburn was voted Bass Player of the Year, we were especially proud to be offering Lynn’s clawhammer-instruction DVDs and Marshall’s bass-teaching DVDs as well.

Red Henry at the Murphy Method IBMA booth.

Red Henry at the Murphy Method IBMA booth.

Casey and I and our friend, festival promoter Patty Pullen, were our on-site staff for the weekend. Folks were picking up Murphy Method DVDs all across the board– banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bass, and Dobro too. It was a good weekend for us, and it was great to see so many of our DVDs going home with our Murphy Method students, many of whom we met this weekend for the first time.

A special highlight of the trip for me was watching Casey playing banjo for the Dixie Bee-Liners in their showcase set on Friday. The room was full, the band was “on,” and the music was Mighty Fine. (They’d played some showcases after midnight earlier in the week, but I didn’t manage to stay up that late!)

I ought to send some special thanks to Bob Fehr and the Martin Guitar folks for setting out so many nice new guitars for people to play– there was a particularly-amazing “sunburst” D-28 that showed how Martin is making them as well as ever– and also to Stan Werbin of Elderly Instruments, who invited me to play the A-5 mandolin. (More on that later.)

If you’ve never been to IBMA, you might like to be there sometime. Think about it.

Red

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

Picking in the Gazebo

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Red Henry

Last Saturday I had a good time playing music with family and friends in the gazebo. And, you may ask, just where is that particular gazebo? Well, it’s some distance from here. It’s on the town square in Clarkesville, Georgia. And, in spite of some rain, we all had a good time.

The band for this occasion included, along with myself on mandolin, my old friend and now brother-in-law Mike Johnson, on banjo; Murphy’s #3 sister (and Mike’s wife) Argen Hicks, on bass; Murphy’s #4 sister, excellent singer/songwriter Nancy Pate on guitar; and our friend, multi-instrumentalist Barry Palmer on fiddle. What did we do? We just played music. Well, we did run over some numbers at Argen and Mike’s house beforehand. That was fun, too. Then we went over to the middle of town and set up at the gazebo and played our first set.

Now, I’ve talked before about how good it is when people are really playing together. This can happen immediately, as is did at that party I talked about a few days ago, or it can happen because everybody listens and adapts. On this particular day we had a group that hadn’t ever played together before, and I think we all played with slightly different natural rhythms. When we started practicing back at the house we sounded a bit loose, but by the time we started up at the gazebo, we sounded pretty tight. So how did this happen? It happened because everybody there was a very experienced performer and knew what to do. Everyone was listening and adapting to everyone else, one song after another, and in a short time we were really playing together well.

You don’t have to be a professional picker to do this. You don’t have to have played for 20 (or 30, or 40) years to listen to everyone else and adapt to their rhythm and play what sounds good.

As soon as you are able to play in a group, you can start listening to the other pickers (in fact, those two things go together). You can start listening to the other instruments and to the vocals, and follow your ears in trying to play (or not play) things that help the whole group sound good. If there’s a banjo or guitar player drowning everybody out you usually can’t help that, but if that player is YOU, then you can. Whatever instrument you’re playing, try to play steadily and supportively to the others. (Sometimes this means scarcely playing at all, during other leads or vocals.) When it comes time for you to take a lead, think about it ahead of time– stop playing for a few beats if you need to, to set up your hands and brain to start playing the break at the right time– and then keep listening to the rhythm while you’re playing your lead. That way, whether you’re playing lead or backup, you’ll be playing together with the others. And that can help them do the same thing (more on that later).

Happy picking!

Red

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

Are You Playing the Song Together? — Or Just “at the Same Time”?

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

Red Henry

The title for this blog may seem strange, but it’s pretty important. As I mentioned before, Christopher and I played a party Saturday night before last, and we had two fine musicians with us– Mike Munford and Ira Gitlin. All four of us fit together perfectly, and our band dynamics– making the instrument leads stand out, putting the vocals out front, adapting the backup every moment to make the lead sound its best– were excellent.

During our first set break, Ira commented on this. He knew how rare it is for everybody in a band to be paying attention and always playing so as to make the lead instrument or vocal sound its best. He knew how very often, even with good musicians, the guitar player will be showing off his fancy bass runs, or the harmony singers will pay little attention to the lead singer, or the lead singer will be drowned out by a banjo player who’s playing lead all the time, all over everybody else’s vocals and instruments. But the four of us were playing TOGETHER– not just playing the same song at the same time, but listening to each other and playing together. And it was good.

You can pay attention to this too, whenever you’re playing music with other people. Is someone else singing a song? Make sure you’re not the one drowning him (or her) out. Is somebody else playing a lead break? Listen to that person, and play some gentle backup as appropriate to make the lead sound good. LISTEN all the time, and do whatever your ears tell you to, to make the music always sound as good as it can. That way, you won’t be just playing the song at the same time– you’ll be playing it together.

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Posted in By Red, Improvising, jamming | 7 Comments »

“When Should I Change My Strings?”

Friday, September 17th, 2010

Red Henry

“When should I change my strings?” That’s a question we often hear. New strings usually sound better, but there are as many answers to this question as there are musicians. Some things that you can consider are:

1. There’s no ‘official’ time to change strings. I used to change the strings on two guitars and two mandolins every day when we played bluegrass festivals, but Bill Monroe changed his strings once a year– at New Year’s– and from then on, he just changed them when they broke (which was pretty often, by summertime).

2. Some people like the sound of old strings. Our Cousin David loves the sound (or lack of it) that old strings have, and would probably prefer never to play on new-sounding strings. I think that brand-new strings can sound a bit tinny, myself, but sometimes– such as when I have a big stage show to play, or a noisy party gig or bar gig where there’s going to be plenty of musical stress and challenge– I’ll make sure at least that my strings aren’t too old.

3. Generally speaking, newer strings make your instrument get in tune (and stay in tune) better. This is because (a) a new string isn’t worn from playing and is still about the same diameter from one end to the other, so it “frets” more in tune; (b) the string is not very corroded yet, so it slides through the nut-slots and bridge-slots more smoothly as you twist the tuners; and (c) the lack of rougher, corroded surfaces on the string make its vibrations more coherent so you (or your electronic tuner) can hear the string’s note better. Also, new strings (or preferably a day or two old. so they’re “stretched” and stable) are usually better for recording, because getting exact tuning, and having the strings stay there, is really critical if you’re in a recording session.

. . . . .

So those are some things you can think about.

Editor’s Note: For even more detailed info on this topic, you can see Red’s previous post on this same topic.

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Posted in banjo, By Red, General, Instruments | 1 Comment »

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