I've been playing Church Street blues down up down up all this time. He plays whatever seems musically appropriate. He was asked if he plays DUDU or DDU-DDU-DU. Today I came across an old interview in which Tony Rice stated he's not a cross picker. (I'm a member/no affiliation) i've gradually been getting faster and all the notes seem correct but it just did not have the flow of the original recording. I got the tab from the banjo been Clark website. I've been working on Church Street blues regularly for about a year now. Wax on.wax off.Daniel san.Melody on.melody off.Anyway, just some thoughts. Too many people fixate on filling space instead of creating a melody and strum combination that highlights melodic phrases. Hammer on's and pulloffs and open strings allowed to ring add great spice to this style. There are many players that sound mushy or who really don't clearly define a melody or melodic phrase in their playing. Too much focus on exact full pattern or just filling space with notes and the melody tends to get lost and the playing sounds mushy. And doing this has become internalized by repetition of the basic patterns by themselves and by having learned the melody. What is really occurring is that just like banjo playing, the rolls or strums and single note combinations have been learned but the melody is dictating that part of one be played here, perhaps a full pattern there, whatever it takes to bring out a clear and strong melody. Some use and learn DDU and others learn DUDU and yet others combine the two seemingly randomly. There are countless variations for doing this, and some sound better than others. There are no patterns that are specifically followed but rather the melody, the most important part of the song, dictates what can be played when and where. After the rolls become internalized and the melodies and chords are learned to a song, it becomes a natural process to simply play rolls in combination or parts of rolls adding melody notes on the appropriate beats. Once banjo players learn the rolls, they learn to fit melodies into key places in the rolls. flatpickers do this with combinations of single note strikes followed by strums and then as skill progresses, substituting single note runs for the strums in key places. Scruggs style banjo players begin learning patterns of finger rolls filling each measure of 8 beats. One approach to this style is to think of it as a banjo player would. Norman tends to stay closer to the melody than Tony as a general rule or just adds melody like runs to fill. Nick did a great job learning and playing this tune but I would be hard pressed to sing this song from these arrangements if I didn't know the tune. The song begins with the melody, that is what identifies it from just random scale tones over a chord progression. ![]() If it sounds good and your hands feel good, then you are doing it the way that's best for you. I believe one has to be careful about following a set of dictates and not put that in place of just making music. And he would say not to play like him, but take pieces of what he does and make something of your own. He's very instinctive and deeply talented. He's not the most analytical guy, if you've heard him talk about this stuff on his DVDs. ![]() And I'm not even going into all those Lightfoot tunes Tony does so well.Īs for technique, I think Tony just plays and isn't consciously aware what direction his pick is going - and he changes it all the time. Very different and the chords are different. I mean, listen to his version of Church Street Blues and Blake's rendition. Tony likes to substitute chords in the songs written by others (as well as lyrics), so his versions are purely him. ![]() I love those two players and doing that gives it a lot of variation for the listener. I've been playing that song for a while and have chosen to hybridize the way Blake plays it and the way Rice does it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |