The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Happy New Year, banjo friends! Welcome to 2018. I hope the holiday season was kind to you, and you had ample opportunity to play that five-string, or at least hear some good banjo music. Each new year brings the promise of rebirth. We all create goals or make resolutions to help start off the year right. I'm no different. For me, though, Jan. 1 also marks an anniversary. It was on that date five years ago that I started playing the fiddle . I bought my fiddle from my friend, Guy, who was also a big help over the years with numerous pointers. I got a decent carbon-fiber bow and started sawing my way through various instructional books and videos, including from Brad Leftwich , Bruce Molsky and Erynn Marshall . Last year, as you know, I broke away from the instruction materials to learn tunes from the repertoire of Ward Jarvis . That project has gone a long way toward developing my abilities. However, I know I have a lot of work yet ahead of me. As Dwight Diller once said, ...

If you've been holding your breath since my last post, my apologies to your family. It's hard to believe it's been more than three months. My only excuse is that I haven't had much banjo-related news to report, as the fiddle has been my main instrument as I continue to tackle the fickle beast. Bertie the Bus on Banjo Road. The few times I do drag out the banjo, it becomes part of  my son's playground. It most recently served as a road for his toy bus to drive along. His muting of the strings has actually led me toward a new staccato way of playing when I do manage to be left alone. The fiddle, though, reigns supreme. This month marked a year and a half of working through Brad Leftwich's Learn to Play Old-Time Fiddle videos. Last week I started the final tune of the two DVD set, "Old-Time Blackberry Blossom" (aka " Garfield's Blackberry Blossom "). It's a real finger workout, but it's a fun tune.

Welcome back, banjo nerds. I took a much-needed hiatus over the solstice celebration, and I return to you fresh as a daisy. But in the intervening weeks between my last post and this one, I've missed a few milestones. So, Happy New Year! Now, let's get back into the swing of things. Christmas marked three important anniversaries: Last year, I received the Brad Leftwich DVDs that I've been using to learn down-bow fiddling. In that time, I've made it through all of Lesson 1 and halfway through Lesson 2. The videos have greatly improved my bowing, though I know I still have a LONG WAY to go. I expect to finish Lesson 2 by June. By then I should have a nice repertory of tunes under my belt in various keys and tunings.  With that said, two years ago was when I bought my fiddle from my friend Guy and began this crazy journey. It's hard to believe it's been that long. The time has flown by, and it's been a heckuva challenge.  Finally, six years ago, I purch...

Today marks nine months of working with Brad Leftwich's two-disc Homespun DVD series Learn to Play Old-Time Fiddle . At last report , I had switched over to Lesson 2, which where the "down-bow" style gets much more complex. Leftwich teaches a series of patterns named after the greats he learned from, such as "Tommy's Lick," named after Tommy Jarrell, and "Melvin's Lick." named after Melvin Wine, and others. These short patterns have some variations and can be slotted into various tunes to help drive the rhythm by keeping the beginning of phrases as a powerful downward bow stroke. This past weekend, I started working on "Rocky Road to Dublin," from West Virginia fiddler Burl Hammons . So far, it's been very rocky road indeed. This is the second tune that Leftwich teaches using "Melvin's Lick," which is basically a shuffle and a pulsed up-bow. As the lessons have gone on, I've had a harder time picking up...

It's been six months since I started working with Brad Leftwich's Homespun two-disc DVD series Learn to Play Old-Time Fiddle . This is my second quarterly report on my progress. You already heard from me earlier this month when I switched over to Lesson 2 . There hasn't been much progress in the intervening two weeks since then. I've been listening hard to a couple different versions of "Citico" to get the rhythm of the tune better fixed in my head. I'm starting to hear how my slow playing will eventually become the up-to-speed version I'm listening to from Lowe Stokes, Leftwich and Marcus Martin. However, the Martin version is reportedly in AEAC#, aka "Calico" tuning, not GDAD as the Stokes and Leftwich are. My biggest problem so far with this second disc is getting the feel of the syncopation on "Tommy's Lick." I'm hoping that it will click the more I play the tune and get closer to the sound, but it may require sl...

All this playing fiddle in the park has been a big help in my progression with Brad Leftwich's instructional DVDs . Up until now, I've been  consumed with Lesson 1 of his Learn to Play Old-Time Fiddle series from Homespun. Yesterday, I finally cracked the seal on Lesson 2 . The disc starts off with what Leftwich calls "Tommy's Lick" or what some refer to as " synco shuffle " (for syncopated shuffle), which leads to the first tune, " Citico ." Shifting from simple saw strokes and basic shuffling to this style is tough to wrap my head around, and reading about it doesn't help — at all. In fact, the more I try to understand it, the more nebulous it seems. I need to close the websites and open my ears. While I don't yet have the feel for the bowing, I was gratified by how quickly I grasped the fingering for the tune, which Leftwich teaches in GDAD, a new tuning for me. Granted, it's not that difficult since the tune never dro...

A day after my six-year banjoversary , this is the three-month mark for my attempt to learn the downbow style of old-time fiddling as taught by Brad Leftwich . As you may remember, Christmas brought the gift of his two-disc Learn to Play Old-Time Fiddle DVD set on Homespun Tapes and his Old-Time Fiddle: Round Peak Style book and CD set. It seemed fitting to mark my banjo anniversary along with a quarterly update on my fiddle pursuits. The first DVD ( Lesson 1 ) has consumed me. Leftwich focuses the basics of downbow fiddling with long and short sawstrokes, the Nashville shuffle, and a series of beginning and ending licks to keep the rhythmic emphasis on the down stroke. These methods are taught via six tunes: "Shortnin' Bread," "Sugar Hill," "Jimmy Sutton," "Black-Eyed Susie," "Great Big Taters in Sandy Land," and "Jeff Sturgeon" (in that order). Leftwich teaches the basic melody and then how to add drones and basi...

The holidays brought a bounty of gifts to help me improve my fiddling. As you can see from the photo above, it was a Brad Leftwich Christmas. You can also see my new Snark clip-on tuner. These resources should help me level up my bowing. After working from Wayne Erbsen's Old-Time Fiddle for the Complete Ignoramus for the past year, it was time to seek new challenges. Awhile back I had borrowed Leftwich's Old-Time Fiddle: Round Peak Style from the library and deemed it a good resource, but nearly incomprehensible in terms of trying to read the tabs. However, it came with a CD with more than 80 tunes that I hope to learn by ear once I figure out the bowing "licks," which is where the Homespun DVDs come in. (By the way, you can download those 80-plus CD tracks via the eBook page at the Mel Bay site. Look for the "Downloads" tab and click on "Download Extras.") So far, the DVD lessons are proving to be just the challenge I was seeking....