Banjo versus TV week 119: Getting Sirius

A check-in on the Banjo versus TV project — J.R.'s ongoing plan to spend more time on his banjo than on TV. This post covers 6/6/2010 through 6/12/2010.

After letting it sit on a shelf for some time I've gotten back to listening to my Sirius radio.

I've got an older model Sportster Replay (with car kit) and a Sirius Replay Boombox.



The Replay can pause during playback, which is a great feature for playing along.

My favorite channels:

• 13  Elvis Radio
• 22  1st Wave
• 38  Area
• 65  Bluegrass Junction
• 74  B.B. King's Bluesville
• 77  On Broadway
• 100 Howard 100

I'm finding myself listening mostly to B.B. King's Bluesville. There's not much banjo there but I did hear a gem from Catherine Russell. She covered Howlin’ Wolf’s Spoonful, arranging it for banjo, drums and tuba. It's got a jazzy sort of sound but, to my ear, the banjo player is finger picking a la bluegrass rather than strumming like a 4-string jazz banjo player.

This song is on Catherine Russell's album Inside This Heart of Mine...



...which is reviewed here and which is now going on my Amazon wish list.




 

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Also in the last week:

Check out this handy pencil holder that Deniece uses on her music stand.



Wish I knew where she got it.

Cross-posted at J.R.'s Banjo Hangout blog

Banjo versus TV week 118: The nut that holds the picks

A check-in on the Banjo versus TV project — J.R.'s ongoing plan to spend more time on his banjo than on TV. This post covers 5/30/2010 through 6/5/2010. And yes, I'm posting it about 8 weeks after the fact. Life is busy right now.

I've been thinking for a while that I needed to put more energy toward improving my banjo fundamentals. This week I read something from the October 2008 Banjo Newsletter that clinched it.

A few of this issue's articles dealt with how to get the "pre-war sound" from a banjo. Various banjo luminaries were asked to opine on the topic. Some opined that various aspects of banjo composition were key to the pre-war sound; for example, Geoff Stelling said it's the age of the wood.

But I think the best answer, put forward by several people, was that the pre-war sound is mostly about the player.

Roger Siminoff described an experience with Earl Scruggs:

There are four main elements of attack: the method of attack, the location of attack, the duration of attack, and the intensity of attack. A fifth and lesser element is the direction of attack. Each of these greatly affects how the instrument sounds. Similarly, changing any one of or a few of these will creatly change how the instrument sounds. One could almost stretch this idea to suggest that Earl has a "pre-war method of attack".

The attack — exactly how Earl picks the strings — is a critical component of the sound of his banjo. And while this may surprise you, he carries that sound to other well set-up banjos he plays.

Back in 1985 when I was working with Gibson on the development of the Earl Scruggs model banjo, we had prepared several banjos for Earl to play. As I sat there listening to him pick one each on, it was apparent that the sound from each of them had one major thing in common: Earl!

Bill Palmer puts it like this:

[M]y conclusion is that by and large the most important component in the sound of the banjo is the nut that holds the picks.

If I want my banjo to sound better, I've got to improve the quality of that nut. With my banjoversary approaching it's a good time to take stock of my banjo practice habits and to make some improvements. Stay tuned.

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Also in the last week:

• Worked a little on installing my newly-arrived Silent Banjo System. More on that in later posts.
• I tried out some of the YouTube videos from FreeBanjoLessons, such as Cumberland Gap, but I didn't find them to be very helpful.
• Every now and again I just have to watch the most-viewed video on YouTube: Evolution of Dance:
  
  
  
  Sure, the lack of banjo means this puts 6 minutes of time on the TV side of the scale, but it's worth it.

Cross-posted at J.R.'s Banjo Hangout blog

Ties on a trash bin

Another great thing about the alleys of Chicago is that you occasionally get free neckties.

Kodak EasyShare C913 repair

I'm pretty hard on my digital cameras. It's been a while so I'm not sure what mistreatment caused my Kodak EasyShare C913's screen to go all fuzzy...

...but it probably has to do with my habit of just tossing the camera into a banjo gig bag or carrying it around in my hip pocket.

I thought of this busted camera, which has been sitting on a shelf for some time, when I ran across a YouTube video showing how easy it is to replace a broken digital camera screen.

So I took my camera apart with a plan to find the part number of the broken screen and ordering a replacement. (You can get replacement screens on eBay for $15-$20.)

But when I got it open I found that the screen's internal connector...

...was loose and just needed a little nudge to make things right again.

It's too bad I didn't know that before I purchased a replacement camera last year.

Speaking of which, my next repair task is to fix the replacement camera, which seems to have suffered an even worse fate than its predecessor.

Happy 3rd banjoversary to me!

It's my third banjoversary! Three years since the redhead gave me a banjo for my birthday on that fateful day.

And how did she honor my banjoversary this year? Why, she gathered my family at that very same vegetarian diner (Try the Dagwood!) and gave me another banjo!!!

This one's a Gold Tone CC-IT, which stands for Cripple Creek Irish Tenor. It's tuned to G d a e', which is just like my recently-acquired (and not yet learned-to-play) mandolin-banjo's tuning of g d' a' e'', just one octave lower.

But my banjoversary is about more than receiving banjos. Although, don't get me wrong, that really helps the festive tone of the day.

My banjoversary is also about my annual introspective/retrospective look at my banjo skills, where I've been and what I plan to do.

So, like last year and the year before, I'll be spending the next few days (weeks?) looking backward, inward and forward. Stay tuned for some posts under the 3rd banjoversary label.

Cross-posted at J.R.'s Banjo Hangout blog

Banjo versus TV week 117: The Ballad of Bering Strait

A check-in on the Banjo versus TV project — J.R.'s ongoing plan to spend more time on his banjo than on TV. This post covers 5/23/2010 through 5/29/2010.

I watched the film The Ballad of Bering Strait (and you can watch it too, for free, on Hulu). This 2003 documentary follows the Russian "redgrass" band Bering Strait.



It's a little bittersweet watching this film about a group of kids trying to make it to the big time when I knew that the band would break up due to lack of sales only three years after this film was released.

But there are some great scenes, like this one of banjo player Ilya Toshinsky trying to explain his bluegrass set (Natchez Trace and Foggy Mountain Breakdown) to the faculty at a traditional Russian art academy.

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Also in the last week:

• I discovered Songsterr.com...
  
  
  
  ...a site that plays guitar tabs for you. It looks to be a useful practice tool.
  
  And for extra geekiness, it's got its own Songsterr API!
• The various mutes that I mentioned ordering have now all arrived. I hope to have a chance to try them out and compare them soon.

Cross-posted at J.R.'s Banjo Hangout blog

Tempos of four banjo practice DVDs

Here's an analysis of the tempos of four banjo practice DVDs.

Why would I create such a thing? The other week I criticized The Ultimate Beginner Series by Alfred Music for having a play-along-with-the-band section that was "waaaaay too fast for a beginner to keep up with."

I'd wondered since if I'd been too harsh. So I pulled out my handy-dandy Korg MA-30 Metronome and used its tap function to find the tempo of the songs from that DVD.

Of course I needed to do the same with some other DVDs to compare. And I had to put them into a spreadsheet.

I color-coded each song, arbitrarily selecting these ranges:

(I treated most of these songs as being in 4/4 time so you might need to divide these tempos by two if you want to think in 2/4 terms.)

Then one thing led to another and soon I had...

...a chart of the songs and their tempos, in beats per minute. (Click on the chart for a better view.)

Let's run through the four DVDs that I compared, shall we? I've put together some slides to show how many slow, medium, fast and superfast songs are on each DVD.

Bluegrass Slow Jam for the Total Beginner is the beginner-friendliest of my four practice DVDs, tempo-wise. Most of its 14 songs are played at a nice, slow tempo and the rest at a medium.

Each song has its own DVD chapter but it's a little awkward to practice with since the play-along chapters are mixed with chapters of advice and instruction. I wish the DVDs creators had tacked on a DVD menu that would allow you to play song after song after song as you practice, which is how I like to do it.

Most of the songs are in G, a few are in D.

I just purchased Slow Jam With Murphy and Casey a couple of weeks ago but its quickly become my favorite play-along DVD. It's got more songs than the other DVDs and the key changes are few and far between. The DVD is dedicated to play-along sessions so there's very little of the advice and instruction that interrupts some other DVDs.

(Incidentally, they threw in that one superfast song just so you'd hear what one sounds like.)

Intermediate Bluegrass Jamming (which has apparently been repackaged as Intermediate Bluegrass Jam Session since I bought my copy a few years ago) is basically a faster version of Bluegrass Slow Jam for the Total Beginner. Its songs are pretty evenly divided between fast and superfast, with a token medium and a token slow song.

The songs are in a variety of keys: G, C, G, D, C, A, A, A, A, B, B, B, D, F, F, G, A, E, A, E, G, G, Bb, A.

I practice with this DVD occasionally. I'll admit that its higher speeds have scared me off, but this project has made me rethink that a little. I think I'll start using it more often. Besides, as the DVD's host Pete Wernick has pointed out, the tempos of these songs are pretty representative of what you'll encounter at a jam.

The fastest of my four practice DVDs, Bluegrass Banjo Basics And Beyond is part of The Ultimate Beginner Series. This DVD (and accompanying book) is also available in a mandolin or guitar.

You can read my critique of this series here. But, basically, the play-along sections of this DVD really are waaaaay too fast for beginners.

Cross-posted at J.R.'s Banjo Hangout blog

Sprint Mobile Broadband speed test

Using my Sprint 3G/4G USB U301 Modem from my my home office in Rogers Park, Chicago.

4G speeds:

3G speeds:

For comparison sake here's the speed tests for my Comcast home service:

Banjo versus TV week 116: The question of the mandolin-banjo

A check-in on the Banjo versus TV project — J.R.'s ongoing plan to spend more time on his banjo than on TV. This post covers 5/16/2010 through 5/22/2010.

The Banjo versus TV project faces an existential question.

When I started this project I set out the rules that determine what counts as banjo time, what counts as TV time, what counts as both and what counts as neither.

But those rules didn't anticipate this question: What do I do about the time I spend on the Gold Tone Mandobanjo 850 that I just bought (for $267.77, cheap!) on eBay?

It's mandolin-banjo and isn't strictly a banjo. So should I count the time I spend on the mandolin-banjo as banjo time or not?

Arguments against counting mandolin-banjo time as banjo time

The mandolin-banjo...

...is really a mandolin...

...with a banjo head. It's got eight strings (four identically-tuned two-string courses) like a mandolin. It's got the same scale length as a mandolin. It's tuned in perfect fifths, g d' a' e'', like a mandolin (and like a fiddle).

And if it's a different instrument than the banjo then I shouldn't count time spent on it as banjo time, just as I haven't counted time spent on other instruments as banjo time. Since I started this project in 2008 I've played various jug band instruments: kazoo, washtub bass, washboard, spoons and bottles. I also took a couple of months of guitar lessons so I could learn to follow along with the guitar player at a jam. And I've never counted the time spent on those instruments as banjo time.

Arguments for counting mandolin-banjo time as banjo time

Consider the banjolin.

The banjolin is really just a Irish tenor banjo...

...with a shorter scale length. The banjolin is tuned to g d' a' e'', one octave higher than the Irish tenor banjo's tuning of G d a e'.

The mandolin-banjo is just like a banjolin except that the mandolin-banjo has four two-string courses of strings instead of four strings. Same scale length, same tuning.

So the banjolin is a shorter Irish tenor banjo and the mandolin-banjo is an eight-stringed banjolin.

If I were playing an Irish tenor banjo (which I don't own, yet) I'd certainly count the time as banjo time. If I were playing its shorter cousin the banjolin (which I also don't own, also yet) I'd count that as banjo time, too. After all, I've counted the time spent on my sawed-off banjo...

...as banjo time.

So I should treat time spent on the mandolin-banjo the same way I'd treat time spent on the Irish tenor banjo or the banjolin: as banjo time. The extra four strings shouldn't make a difference.

 

All things considered, I'm going to count mandolin-banjo time as banjo time. Welcome to the family, new mandolin-banjo!

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Things I learned at this week's banjo lesson:

• I've been working on that play-the-melody-on-a-single-string Alan Munde technique but I haven't been able to figure out what to do with the other strings. So we worked on that.
  
  I'd like to write up an explanation, but honestly I'm still processing it.
• Also, of course, we talked about my new mandolin-banjo.

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Also in the last week:

• I've been thinking about that DrumDial that I saw demonstrated the other week and how it seems like a great way to verify even tension on a banjo head. So I bought one.
  
  
  
  I noted with interest a thread at the Banjo Hangout about tension readings. The thread was mostly about the readings for a Neary Drum Torque Wrench but a few people discussed the settings for their Drumdial. The Drumdial settings were 89 for a Gold Tone, 94 for an OME and 90 for some other banjo.
  
  I also found this advice (apparently from Tom at Janet Davis Music):

  For most Mastertone style banjos using a Remo Weatherking head, setting the head around 89 will give you a nice bass response with a clear treble, and going up to 90 or 91 will brighten the tone considerably. Different heads, like the 5-Star and Ludwig heads are thicker material, and will have better clarity around 92-93. Personal preference does play a role, so you can start with the tension around 88 and tighten the head evenly until you find the tone you like best.

• A few weeks ago I ordered the banjo, mandolin and guitar DVDs and books from The Ultimate Beginner Series by Alfred Music.
  
  
  
  They've just arrived.
  
  I dunno about this series. On the plus side the instructions seem to be pretty good and I really like the way that all of the books feature the same songs. If you and some buddies are learning the instruments at the same time I can see that it would be fun to learn using this series.
  
  But the downside is it all seems kind of fast. The lessons don't have a lot of detail and they go through it very quickly. But the biggest speed problem is with the play-along-with-the-band portion of the DVD. Those guys are playing these songs waaaaay too fast for a beginner to keep up with.
  
  I followed the first few chapters of the mandolin book and the first half hour of the mandolin DVD with my new mandolin-banjo and I felt that I learned some good stuff. Nonetheless I have the feeling these books and DVDs are going to gather dust on my shelves for a while.
• I just found out that one of my favorite comics, The Walking Dead is being made into a TV show for AMC. Cool.
• I had to do without my iPhone for a while because I dropped it in a toilet.
  
  
  
  It made me aware of how much I use my iPhone for my banjo practice. I use a Metronome app...
  
  
  
  ...and the Omnituner app...
  
  
  
  ...a lot. But most often I use the included timer and camera to record my practice time.
  
  
  
  Those two images tell me everything I need to know for my practice log: When I practiced, how much time I practice for and what I was doing. See, that's the floor of my laundry room, which reminds me that I was working on chord forms while I was waiting on laundry. And these two images...
  
  
  
  ...tell me that I spent 20 minutes playing along with the Slow Jam With Murphy and Casey DVD.
   

Cross-posted at J.R.'s Banjo Hangout blog