Archive for the ‘Instruments’ Category
Harmonica Basics
I remember going to Dairy Queen when I was only five or six years old and getting a cheap harmonica as the prize in my kid’s meal. While harmonicas are often given out as prizes and considered a basic instrument, refining the art takes a great deal of skill. As anyone who has ever tried one can attest, it may be simple to make noise, but making it sound good is another story.
The harmonica is a staple in blues and folk music and features a distinct sound. As a reed instrument, the sound from a harmonica is created by the reeds vibrating when you blow. With one little instrument, you can play a vast range of notes without painstaking tuning.
Few people have left as indelible of a mark on their craft as Earl Scruggs. The three-finger playing style was in use before Scruggs, but he is the one who perfected the art and made it the predominant style in bluegrass music. Today the style is referred to as “Scruggs style,” as homage to its originator.
Although many people are unfamiliar with Scruggs’ music, his influence is widespread. Over the course of his career, Scruggs has earned to Grammy Awards, most recently in 2002. He also earned the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2008 Grammy ceremonies.
No brand name looms larger in the bluegrass banjo world than Gibson. The company’s story goes back to the late 1800s when a young man named Orville Gibson, son of an English immigrant, moved from his native New York to the rapidly-growing industrial town of Kalamazoo, Michigan (“Yes”, said the Kalamazoo Chamber of Commerce in a 1980s publicity campaign, “There Really Is a Kalamazoo”). Although Orville worked a variety of odd jobs to support himself, he was a musician and luthier with radical ideas about instrument construction. The mandolin was the most popular fretted instrument of the day, and Orville’s vision was to apply the same principles of carving and top graduation to the mandolin that Stradivarius and his contemporaries had employed in building their legendary violins.
Orville’s creations were a dramatic departure from the round-back “tater bug” mandolin, with its flat top and its back formed out of narrow strips of bent wood. A group of Kalamazoo investors saw money to be made in marketing Orville’s designs to the mandolin-buying public and the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Company was formed in 1902. Always an enigmatic figure, Orville appears to have had limited involvement with the Gibson company after its first few years. The Gibson company refined and built on Orville’s ideas and responded to the increasing popularity of the tenor banjo by producing its first banjo in 1918—the same year that Orville died back home in New York.
After some initial stumbling in search of the right design, by the late 1920s Gibson was a dominant force in the 4-string tenor banjo market. The company also made a precious few “old-timey” 5-string banjos, primarily for the rural Southern market; it was one of these banjos that Earl Scruggs would use in the years immediately following World War II to develop a new style of picking for bluegrass music. Despite changes in ownership and a relocation from Kalamazoo to Nashville, Tennessee, Gibson banjo production has continued to the current day. Since the late 1980s, the company’s banjo output has consisted largely of reissues of its classic models of the 1920s and 1930s.
There are lots of banjo-player jokes. One goes “You can drop a shoe on the banjo and make music,” due to the “open G” tuning that is standard among bluegrass banjoists. Unlike a guitar or mandolin, which must be fretted to make a proper chord, merely strumming the open strings of a banjo (or dropping a shoe on it) will produce a G major chord. This tuning of D-B-G-D-g (from first to fifth string) provides two G notes an octave apart, two D notes an octave apart, and one B note, thus filling in the three notes of a G major triad. While the vast majority of bluegrass banjo work is performed with this tuning, alternate tunings are sometimes employed. The “drop C” tuning of D-B-G-C-g was considered the standard tuning in the classical banjo era around 1900 and is sometimes used by bluegrass players to provide a low root note when playing in the C position. Bluegrass banjo standards traditionally performed in C tuning include Home Sweet Home and Farewell Blues as recorded by Earl Scruggs.
The next most-common tuning for bluegrass banjo is open D, either D-A-F#-D-F# or D-A-F#-D-a (the fifth string can either be tuned down one fret from G to provide the third note of the D major triad, or tuned up two frets to provide the fifth note). Reuben and John Henry are traditionally played in this tuning, and Ron Block has used it to great advantage in his work with Alison Krauss and Union Station. Rare alternate tunings include G minor (D-Bb-G-D-g) as used by Ben Eldridge in his original instrumental Appalachian Rain recorded with The Seldom Scene, and D minor (aDFAD) as featured by Earl Scruggs in Nashville Blues.
The world of old-time clawhammer banjo makes use of a much greater variety of tunings including “double C” (D-C-D-Cg) and open C (E-C-D-C-g), to name just two. . . but that’s a subject for another post!
Earl Scruggs learned to play the 5-string banjo on an instrument that belonged to his older brother Junie. The banjo did not always stay in tune well, and the young virtuoso found himself having to retune mid-song. Scruggs’s musical inventiveness took it from there, and he soon adapted that mid-song tuning sound into his developing style. After recording his first tuner instrumental Earl’s Breakdown in 1951, Scruggs decided a little mechanical help would make playing a lot easier. He installed a pair of cams onto his banjo peghead that raised and lowered the second and third strings to preset pitches. The most common settings are for the second string to lower from B to A and the third string to lower from G to F#, moving the banjo from G tuning to D tuning and giving the devices the common name “D-tuners”.
Scruggs’s new innovation was soon featured in such instrumentals as Flint Hill Special, Foggy Mountain Chimes, and Randy Lynn Rag. D-tuners soon became required equipment for any aspiring bluegrass banjoist. Melodic banjo pioneer Bill Keith took things the next step with a design that incorporated conventional second- and third-string tuners and the stop-setting mechanism in one unit, making it no longer necessary to drill extra holes in the peghead. Keith tuners became the standard in the banjo world with over 30,000 sold to date and are still manufactured by Bill Keith in Woodstock, New York. Players seeking the unique feel and sound of traditional cam-type tuners now have another option available in a new product called Cheat-A-Keys, which use the cam mechanism but are easily interchangeable between banjos and don’t require alteration of the peghead.
Virginia native Eddie Adcock first came to prominence as the banjo player with the groundbreaking Washington-D.C.-based Country Gentlemen during the 1960s. His overwhelming technical ability and blending of Scruggs, single-string, and Travis style were essential ingredients in the Gentlemen’s sound, and seminal recordings such as Sunrise and Pallet on the Floor earned the Country Gentlemen the reputation of being the first progressive bluegrass band, the progenitor of “newgrass” and “jamgrass” bands such as New Grass Revival, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Chris Thile and the Punch Brothers.
Since the 1970s Adcock has been performing and recording with his wife Martha and has recently performed a series of Country Gentlemen reunion concerts with fellow alums Jimmy Gaudreau and Tom Gray. An endorser of Deering banjos, Adcock became known as the “bionic banjo player” in 2008 when he underwent deep brain stimulation surgery to correct a tremor that had developed in his right hand. Adcock not only remained conscious during the procedure at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, but actually played the banjo as surgeons worked so that the placement of the brain implant could be adjusted for maximum effectiveness. A week later, he was back on stage at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s yearly convention in Nashville.
As the parent of a beginning banjo player, I have to try especially hard not to seem overbearing. After all, I started playing the instrument when I was precisely my son’s age, and it’s tempting to help him avoid making all the same mistakes I made. But I’ve found through experience that harping on him to practice will only serve to drive him away from the banjo – something he loves for now.
I’ve also learned that it’s important to allow the child to deviate from his practice routine every now and then. At least once a week I encourage my son to throw out everything he’s learned about tenor banjos for a solid half-hour. During that time, I tell him to try whatever improvisational technique he wants. The way I see it, the best banjo players broke the rules and created their own unique style.
During my senior year of high school, I was required to complete a culminating Senior Project. The goal of the assignment was to develop a skill or passion of your choice, and then present a piece of original work to a group of your peers. I decided to combine two of my favorite activities-music and woodworking-and create my own guitar.
Like most kids in high school, I was a chronic procrastinator. A week before the project was due I still had nothing but a huge block of wood lying on my workstation. After spending several consecutive sleepless nights finishing the instrument, I finally put the last coat of finish on the morning it was due. After attaching the guitar strings, I rushed to school and arrived just minutes before my presentation was scheduled.
Despite the fact that both of my parents are right-handed, I somehow acquired the rare gene that creates southpaws. It seems that left-handed people are becoming an endangered species and, personally, I think that it is a direct result of the setup of virtually all consumer products in today’s world. Nearly everything is designed to cater to the needs of right-handed people.
As a southpaw, growing up in today’s society can be difficult. The world is ever-increasing its dependence on computers, which are obviously designed for right-handed people. Another example of this trend is in musical instruments. Although Jimi Hendrix broke the mold by playing his guitar left-handed, he is the exception to the rule. Luckily I was able to find a store online that left handed acoustic guitars when I started playing.
When kids pick up a guitar for the first time, the learning curve can be rather steep. Once children learn a basic song or two on the instrument, they are generally well on their way to a lifelong love of playing. Early on, though, before they can grasp such techniques as stringing chords together in sequence, playing the guitar can feel like work. This perception is only magnified by the development of calluses.
Before the fingers grow accustomed to pressing guitar strings tight to the fretboard, they are susceptible to some minor pain. It’s important for parents to emphasize the value of developing calluses as they will make playing a classical guitar much simpler and more enjoyable. In time, a young guitarist’s fingers will begin to look and feel like that of a manual laborer. That’s how you know you’re on the right track.