Banjo versus TV: Week 33

A weekly check-in on the Banjo versus TV project — J.R.'s resolution to spend more time in 2008 on his banjo than on TV. J.R.'s a few weeks behind, so he's furiously getting caught up in order to concentrate on the Four Corners Folk Festival.

Things I took away from this week's banjo lesson:

• We spoke quite a bit about using music to process grief, which is something that's been on my mind due to a recent death in my family.
• Dave likes the sticker on my case, which I got from BanjoDog.com:
  
  I have a bunch of them to share with people who get it. I'll bring one for Dave next time.
• This kicked off a discussion of Earl Scruggs' involvement in the peace movement. Dave has the album of Earl Scruggs: The Bluegrass Legend: Family & Friends from but has never seen the video. (You all remember my discussion of that video from Week 16, right?)
• Most of the time when Dave does the D chord at the second fret, rather than use the full 4-fingered D form...
  
  ...he'll leave the ring finger out of it and make a 3-fingered chord instead:
  
• As we were playing and singing, I reached for a G chord...
  
  ...that I've been practicing a little, but which I'm not good at yet. And I and missed it. Dave said, "The thing is, when you're playing and singing with other people is not the time to experiment with other chords. It's the time to use what you know you can do; what you know you can get to."
• Dave was pleased to see that I'd found a copy of the out-of-print lick book he'd mentioned, Bill Knopf's Hot Licks & Fiddle Tunes for the Bluegrass Banjo Player
. We practiced the first lick of chapter 1 ("30 Ways to End a Solo Break"):


• Dave showed me some variations on this lick, which lead to a discussion of how to learn what notes are played at what frets. Dave suggested that I write out a grid of the gGDBD neck, which was and exercise I'd already done on my own. (And by "on my own" I mean "following the same suggestion from James McKinney, who recommended this approach in a workshop at Midwest Banjo Camp.") I had a few "ah-hah!" moments when I did that exercise.
• What Martin Mull said in Licks Off of Records is true:

  I see you getting all warm and runny
  From my guitar and the way my fingers burn.
  I hate to disillusion you honey,
  But it's just licks off of records that I'm learned.

• We played along with Dolly Parton as she sang a 3/4 time Hazel Dickens song, Just a Few Old Memories, from her album The Grass is Blue (which I just found in a pawn shop the other day). It's got an easy-to-follow G-C-G-D-G progression with a chorus that goes G-C-G-C-D.

My homework from this week's lesson:

• Practice some licks from Bill Knopf's book Hot Licks & Fiddle Tunes for the Bluegrass Banjo Player
.
• Play along with Dolly Parton's Just a Few Old Memories. Try a 3/4 version of the forward-backward roll. Also try the barred C at 5 and the barred D at 7. (Remember to use the index finger for the barre; I'll need to do that when we get to Foggy Mountain Breakdown.)
• Continue working on Good Old Mountain Dew.

Also in the last week:

• I discovered that searching for the term "banjo" at the Live Music Archive (part of the Internet Archive) yields all kinds of free banjo music.
• I'd planned on bringing instruments and doing some jamming at BARcamp Chicago this week, but life intruded so I had to settle for sending the instruments. I understand the instruments had a good time without me.
  
  
• I played my banjo for the neighbors who live across the street from the home I grew up in. They said my father would be proud, which is just about the best thing that anyone could say to me.

Banjo versus TV: Week 32

A weekly check-in on the Banjo versus TV project — J.R.'s resolution to spend more time in 2008 on his banjo than on TV. J.R.'s a few weeks behind, so he's furiously getting caught up in order to concentrate on the Four Corners Folk Festival.

Things I took away from this week's banjo lesson:

• I really need to set aside the time to warm up before my lesson. My Mountain Dew solo was much, much worse than it was when I was working it up this week.
• Still, I'm really pleased at having created my first solo without so much as a glance at tablature.
• We talked a lot about wrong notes. (Go figure!)
  • A music prof of Dave's (from his Washington College days) told his singers, "If you hit something wrong, never let your face show it."
  • Joe Pass wrote (possibly in a book called The Zen of Guitar) that if you hit a wrong note, hit it again. Hit it again. Hit it again! Make something out of it.
• My left-hand position is troubled.
  • My thumb should be lined up with the index finger like a pair of pliers. Instead, my thumb is currently about three inches down the neck from my index finger. I'll work on it.
  • I should get used to using my left index finger for barre chords. (I keep wanting to use my middle finger.) Dave says I'll thank him for this later when it's time to switch rapidly from chord to chord.
  • The second string is difficult to barre due to the crease in your phalanges that hits just above that string. Practice.
• We played along with a great Sam Bush recording of Old Joe Clark.
  • This is a great version for me to play along with at this stage in my chord control. It's in the key of D, which if this was a I-IV-V song would mean D-G-A. That would be bad, since I'm not good on the A chord. But it's a I-IV-flatVII, so it's D-G-C. And I know a couple of C chords! (Another song like this: The Rolling Stone's Great Expectations.)
  • I had a "hot damn, this is fun" moment about 20 minutes in to that. (The first 19 were a little rough.)
  • We also listened to version of Old Joseph by the The Dillards.
• I told Dave (proudly) that it's been a struggle not to crack a book these last two weeks. Dave says the point of this is not struggling, so he gives me the OK to crack a book if there's one particular tune in one particular book that I want to work on. He says that learning from the book is a valid way of learning, although I'm also now ready to learn in other ways, too.
• We talked about muted banjo.
  • I told Dave that I've been practicing about half of the time with a muted banjo, as recommended by James McFinney at Midwest Banjo Camp. McFinney says it really lets you hear what your right hand is doing.
  • I showed Dave the mute I made from a foam paint brush.
  • Dave played a version of Richland Woman Blues with Maria Muldaur (of Midnight At The Oasis fame) on vocals and uke, with Bill Keith on muted banjo.
  • I told him the redhead loves the sound of the muted banjo.
• What's next in my lessons? More playing along with recordings. That's the prelude to being able to play well with other people.

Also in the last week:

• I watched a bunch of banjo-related YouTube videos:
  • Clifftop, Appalachian String Band Festival
    
  • Cathy Fink, Clifftop Banjo Contest finals. I met Cathy at Midwest Banjo Camp and videoed her most wonderful banjo puppets. It's a shame that the camera angle doesn't show you Cathy's excellent fingerwork.
    
    
  • Tony Trischka @ Floydfest 7 Hill Holler 7-27-08
    
  • The Best Of Bluegrass - Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms
    

Banjo versus TV: Week 31

A weekly check-in on the Banjo versus TV project — J.R.'s resolution to spend more time in 2008 on his banjo than on TV. J.R.'s a few weeks behind, so he's furiously getting caught up in order to concentrate on the Four Corners Folk Festival.

I was at a medical device conference in Washington DC this last week. I got a little banjo practice in at a park near my hotel...

...but it was a pretty slow week, banjo-wise. One of the booths at the show had some cool medical swabs...

...which are great for cleaning those hard-to-reach banjo surfaces...

...so I've got that going for me.

Also in the last week:

• At the conference I bought a sweet little digital camera from DigiLife: the PMP DV Camcorder DV1080HD.
  
  
  
  I got a great price, probably because they were clearing out their inventory in anticipation of introducing their new model: the PMP DV Camcorder DDV-V3HD.
• Over on the Internet-videos-count-as-TV-time front, I really enjoyed...
  
  
  I liked it so much, I'm adding a Captain Hammer t-shirt to J.R.'s wish list.
  
  
  
  Am I easy to shop for, or what?

Andy's Music

The other day I went past a cool-looking music store in Chicago: Andy's Music. It sure looked great through the window.

Looks like a fun place. I'm going to have to get back there during store hours.

On the road to the Four Corners Folk Festival

Hello to the friends, new and old, I met along the way to the Four Corners Folk Festival in Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

Hello to my high school friend Samir and his wife, Kshama, who just happened to be riding the same plane to New Mexico. It was nice catching up with you.

Hello to Bridget, my seatmate who let me talk her arm off about my Banjo versus TV project. Bridget, the web site I recommended to you is Flatpicker Hangout, the companion site to the Banjo Hangout. Enjoy the wedding and keep up the guitar practice!

Hello to Maggie, who works the counter at Avis and who once had Steve Martin stay over at her house, back when he was a banjo-and-balloon-animal comedian. Yes, Steve Martin knows how to handle a heckler. "I remember my first beer" is brilliant.

And hello to the kitteh in the window of the room downstairs from mine at the Days Inn.

Let's hear it for pets-allowed hotels!

Bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it

Yes, I'm supposed to be catching up on my blogging backlog, but I came across a movie review that's just so deliciously mean I had to point it out. In his review of Meet the Spartans, Slate's Josh Levin says:

Isn't it massive consumer fraud to charge $10.50 for a barely hour-long movie? Perhaps, but it would've been unforgivable to make Meet the Spartans any longer than an hour. This was the worst movie I've ever seen, so bad that I hesitate to label it a "movie" and thus reflect shame upon the entire medium of film. Friedberg and Seltzer do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it. They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline under the weight of too many pop culture references.

Heh.

I'm going to see Earl!

I'm behind on my Banjo versus TV blogging by (count them: 31, 32, 33, 34) four weeks. Life's been busy. But I've got to get all caught up so I can blog about my upcoming weekend in which...

...I GET TO SEE EARL SCRUGGS PERFORM!!!...

...at the Four Corners Folk Festival in Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

So expect to see some fast-and-furious catch-up blogging in the next couple of days. Then? Earl.

BARcamp starts in a week

I'm one of the organizers for...

What?	BARcamp Chicago 2008
Web?	http://barcampchicago.com
When?	20:00 (8pm) Friday Aug 15 - 20:00 (8:00pm) Sunday Aug 17
Where?	A University of Illinois at Chicago commercial space at 1240 W. Harrison St, Chicago, IL 60607 (pictures)
Who?	You and lots of others (http://barcampchicago.com/index.php?wiki=AttendeeList)
Why?	http://barcampchicago.com/index.php?wiki=WhyPage

Also, bring your instruments for a jam! (Yes, I'll be there with the banjo.)

Banjo versus TV: Week 30

A weekly check-in on the Banjo versus TV project — J.R.'s resolution to spend more time in 2008 on his banjo than on TV.

I really enjoyed my first lesson with Dave.

I'd asked Dave if I could record my lessons with him so I could review them later. The answer was not just yes, but hell yes, because Dave really thinks it helps. I listened to the recording from that first lesson and here's what jumped out at me:

• I want to play and sing. Dave says these are four separate skills: (1) playing, (2) playing for a singer, (3) singing and (4) playing while you sing.
• My F form and D form are really weak. We'll work on these, since they are two of the three important movable chord forms. (The barre is the third.)
• Dave recommends a three-fingered approach to playing backup:
  
  
  
  This is a little tricky for me because I keep wanting to play "The Pinch" that I learned from my Hal Leonard book:
  
  
• At this point, Dave wants me to keep my nose out of books. He says we'll be doing a lot of playing along with recordings and playing by ear. We might look at lick books a little: Janet Davis' Splitting the Licks, for example. Dave also mentioned an out-of-print lick book by Bill Knopf that he says is really good. (Update a couple days later: Out-of-print shmout-of-print -- I found a copy online and ordered it.)

My homework is simple: Work on Good Old Mountain Dew, the simplest of the half-dozen songs Dave asked me to choose. Here are the ground rules:

• Find a lot of recordings of Good Old Mountain Dew and listen to them.
• I'm supposed to figure out my own solo without looking at any books.
• I should use these chords: Open G, 3-finger G, 2-finger D7, G as F-form between 3 & 5, C as barre at 5 and D as barre at 7

Due to schedule conflicts, I'll have two weeks to work on this before my next lesson.

The Sneeze is back!

Why are you reading my blog when you could be reading Steve's brilliant blog, The Sneeze?

Yes, Steve went bye-bye for a while, but he's back now.

Likelihood of you being MALE is 93%

Mike's JavaScript tool confirms my masculinity to a high degree of likelihood.

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 7%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 93%

So there's that.

The Fuwa, the betta

The Wall Street Journal's blog, China Journal, shows a page from the sketchbook of artist Han Meilin, who is none too pleased that his original concept for the Beijing Olympic mascots, the Fuwa, went from this...

...to this...

...due to his sponsors mucking about with his creation.

An accompanying WSJ article explains.

Then the bureaucrats got involved. "There had to be a panda, even though you'd think the public would have had enough of them," says the 72-year-old artist.

That article also has a slideshow of the brief history of Olympic mascots. Do you recognize any of these? Hover over a pic for the name of the critter.

Banjo versus TV: Week 29

A weekly check-in on the Banjo versus TV project — J.R.'s resolution to spend more time in 2008 on his banjo than on TV.

In preparation for my (upcoming) first lesson with Dave, I was supposed to pick a list of a half-dozen songs that I wanted to learn to play for jams. Here's what I've come up with:

1. Keep on the Sunnyside
2. Foggy Mountain Breakdown
3. Mountain Dew
4. One Drop of Water
5. Pretty Polly
6. Polka on the Banjo

Also in the last week:

• Brain breakthrough: That C chord I've been playing is really the D chord form, with the index finger portion of the chord chopped off by the nut.
• It was a travellin' week. Six flights: O'Hare, San Diego, Las Vegas, O'Hare again, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth then back to O'Hare one last time. And I took my banjo with me.
  
  My observations on flying with a banjo:
  • Read The Definitive Guide to Flying With a Banjo at the Banjo Hangout.
  • Do everything you can to take your banjo on as a carry-on item, but put it in a hard case because you might be required to gate-check it.
  • Reserve a seat near the back of the plane, since that increases your odds of being on the first boarding group.
  • Carry printed copies of the TSA and airline guidelines.
    • Print up a copy of your airline's musical instrument policies (American Airlines's is here)
    • Print up the TSA's letter to the American Federation of Musicians regarding "revised policy and procedures regarding the screening and carriage of musical instruments through security checkpoints at our nation's airports and transport of musical instruments aboard aircraft."
    • Very important point: Do not pull out the TSA policies when speaking to the airline staff and do pull out the airline policies when speaking to the TSA staff. When I was challenged by an American Airline employee I made the mistake of citing the TSA document as proof that it was OK for me to carry my banjo onboard. Mis. Take. The airline employees don't like the TSA and they're only too eager to point out that the airplane staff gets the final word on what comes on board and what doesn't. So we wound up in a confrontational mode rather than a problem-solving mode, with her insisting that I had to gate-check the banjo and me insisting that I was allowed to bring it as a carry-on item. ("You can gate-check the guitar or you can not fly, what's your choice?") I was losing the argument badly, with her having applied a gate-check tag to my banjo and preparing to send it off to the hold, before I was finally able to negotiate a deal with her. (I gate-checked another bag, resulting in me having to pay $15 for the gate-check plus $12 to have the bag delivered to my office after the airline lost it.)
    • I'm just going to leave those letters in my case.
  • Have a banjo-related joke ready for the flight attendants. They'll be more helpful if you've broken the ice. (I use "What do you say to a banjo player in a suit? 'Will the defendant please rise.'")
• Banjo-related things seem to happen to my office in my absence. Usually these are practical jokes or crimes of passion. This time, I found that various people had dropped off banjo resources while I was away. Some thank yous are in order.
  
  Thank You #1 goes to whomever left that Reader's Digest article about David Hochman's mid-life-mandolin-learning experience. I empathize with Hochman's desire to start the learning-through-jamming phase of his musical life. (The article is on pages 110-113 of the August 2008 print issue. I'd provide a link to an online article on rd.com, but it's not listed there. Come on, Reader's Digest. It's the Internet age.)
  
  I send Thank You #2 to Mr. and Mrs. Newlywed, who left me an LP of Banjo Spectacular! String Along with the Banjo Barons.
  
  
  
  Apparently they'd seen it at a library sale and thought I had to have it. And how right they were! Just check out the blurby goodness:
  
  
  
  These unexpected gifts are exactly in sync with my recent less-book/more-jamming direction.
  
  But there was also a book waiting on my desk, delivered from Amazon. So Thank You #3 goes to...me! for that copy of Tony Trischka's Complete 5 String Banjo Player book-and-CD-and-download set. Hey, my new teacher Dave said we might use it. And you can't expect a guy to quit his banjo-book-buying habits cold turkey, can you?