The first post of 2011!

Well folks, we made it! Christmas 2010 has come and gone, the New Year holiday came and went…and we’re fresh into a shiny new year. This is the first article I’ve written this year; it feels like I’ve been dragging my feet and running late, but we’re actually less than two weeks into 2011 as I write this.

Regular readers will know that I ended a special blog series on Christmas day 2010, something I called The Banjos Rule 12 Days of Christmas. I promised 12 articles…an article a day for 12 days…and I somehow managed to fulfill that promise. Today’s article is a follow up to one of those articles from the series, but this article can actually stand on it’s own as a good teaching point. By the way: want to see the article series? Lots of good stuff in it! Here is a link:

To start at the beginning of this series, click this link:
The Banjos Rule 12 Days of Christmas Event-day one

A good chance to address some tablature problems

For this last article in the series, I thought I would take some time to address a comment that friend and blog reader George Preiss left at the bottom of the article that featured part A of the Christmas carol that I adapted to Banjo: Deck The Halls. If you haven’t seen this blog post (what?! You didn’t read the entire blog series?!) then go back and check out the article and the sheet music, and read George’s comments:

Visit the Day 6 article here:
Banjo Paul teaches Deck The Halls

A classic struggle with Scruggs style picking

George’s comments provide me with a teaching opportunity that may benefit you all when it comes to learning Scruggs style songs in general as we look at Deck The Halls specifically. What I’ve noticed plenty of times, and what I’ve had many other pickers comment and complain about, is that they just can’t make the song they are trying to learn from tablature sound like the song. This is in large part due to what I call the "slop" factor of a Scruggs style lead.

What is the "slop" factor? Funny you should ask! What I mean by this is that when you roll off a song on the banjo, you are playing many extraneous notes to fill the space of time. This rapid "rolling" that we do gives the song an electric, exciting feeling, and really gets our toes tapping. It’s what draws the listener to bluegrass…the rapid, exciting roll of the banjo. To accomplish this feat of filling the entire space with a "wall of sound" means that we surround the melody notes with a lot of other strings. Let’s say, just to make up a fake example, that a measure of picking in some song only has two melody notes in it, meaning that if it was a vocal number, the singer only sings two words over this particular measure. To keep that Scrugg style roll going means that we are going to go ahead and fill that entire measure with other strings. We’re going to surround these two melody notes with a bunch of other "noise". All too often, the distinct notes that line up with melody, or the words of the song, get lost in the shuffle and buried underneath these other extraneous notes.

Learn to let it go and accept

Some people struggle more than others with all of this when it comes to being critical of their own playing. If you really sat down and listened to a bunch of recordings of bluegrass where banjo is prominently featured, even some of Earl’s recordings, if you give the songs an honest listen, you’ll come to realize that you aren’t hearing the melody of the song in every single second of the banjo lead. There are large sections of most banjo leads where your brain is filling in the melody that is supposed to be there, because you know the song. There is rhythmic, rapid rolling going on that’s exciting to hear; when you listen and enjoy and get excited by the banjo picking, you are awfully forgiving and don’t even realize it. But then when you sit down to pick and you roll off some measure that doesn’t scream the melody with a bull-horn, you think "I’m just not doing this right". Ever notice that when you play some song that you feel you do pretty well, even one that satisfies your need to hear that melody, and you screw up some part of it, that the people listening still get this great big smile on their face and congratulate you on how good you pick or what a great song that was? You think they are out of their minds and just patronizing you because clearly you screwed up a portion of it. BUT THEY AREN’T! You presented them with that "wall of sound" and it was exciting. It also might have sounded just like many other banjo songs they’ve listened to. There’s lots of hard driving rolling that they can more or less align in their minds with the words they know belong there or the melody they know belongs there.

TablEdit can be a big advantage

So back to Deck The Halls. George is having trouble with measures 6 and 7; the "fa-la-la-la-la" part of the song. This is where a tool like TablEdit is immensely useable. I haven’t spoken with George about it personally; thought I’d address his issues here for your benefit.

So the first thing I’d ask George is this: when you clicked "play" in TablEdit the first time and heard the song rolled off through your computer speakers, did you smile and think "COOL!" like I did? Further, did the "fa-la-la" part trip you up as you listened at first? I’m guessing not. Further still, even with your admitted struggles, if you push play right now and just listen to the TablEdit version, are you happy with what you hear rolled off? Well, if measures 6 and 7 are weak measures because I could have written them better, yet when you listen to the whole song via TablEdit you don’t have an issue, then your brain is compensating, just like I wrote about above. I’m guessing that because measures 6 and 7 are full of extraneous rolling and don’t just have the melody notes only, that when you sit down to pick the song, your analytical and critical brain is throwing up a red flag. You have your nose pressed up against the tree but need to pull back and view the whole forest. Let that measure go and let it flow into the greater song as a whole. Get it playable and smooth and you might not have as much of an issue with it.

If you are happy with what you hear come out of TablEdit, then my advice would be to let it go and roll with it. I bet that if you get the song playable, as written, and played it for someone, that person wouldn’t have any issues and would follow along with the song just fine.

Now, on the other hand, if your issues come from disliking the arrangement of the song, that’s a different story. You won’t like the arrangement of every piece of tablature that you pick up, and you’ll often scrap certain examples because the author just didn’t make the song sound like the song enough. I came up with this arrangement but that’s not to say it’s a great arrangment necessarily. Any section of my song can be rewritten with an entirely different focus, which you might end up liking better. So it could be that these two measure just don’t work for you. For me, I hear the melody and the flavor very clearly, but that’s not to say everyone will. The melody is definitely mixed in with some "slop", but my brain compensates and fills in and keeps me on track as I listen to it played back.

Any time you are struggling, use TablEdit or a recording

You’ll have this Deck The Halls phenomenon again and again with many other songs. What you roll off in some measure will just strike you as unrecognizable. If you can find a copy of the song written for TablEdit, click play and listen to the song as a whole. Do you have any issues as you listen to the song flow by? If not, then you have to learn to let it go when it comes to playing the song yourself. Trust that when those particular weak measures flow by in the context of the greater song as a whole, that they’ll be perfectly acceptable, as long as you are playing the song as written and can do the measures right. In lieu of TablEdit, if you have a recording of a pro performing a song, that will suffice. Listen to him or her; do you have issues with how they are playing it? Does their rendition excite you? If so, then get it learned and playable and trust that what you are playing is alright, if you are playing it like they are. And finally, if you don’t have a TablEdit version of the song, and you don’t have a recording of it, then sit down and write your own TablEdit version using whatever version you have as a guide. Transfer it in to TablEdit so that you can listen to the playback and see if you like how it sounds when it flows in the context of the song.

The song Ground Speed is a great example where I couldn’t make heads nor tails of the tablature; when I picked up Earl’s book and tried to learn that song, never having heard it before, I just couldn’t get the song to flow or even sound musical for the first 5 or 6 measures. I gave up on it and shelved it until I happend to pick up a recording of Earl doing the song. It was a real "light bulb" moment for me when I hear Earl too; suddenly, I could see exaclty what was supposed to be happening and what I was doing wrong. So yes, having a recording or a TablEdit file to play makes a world of difference.

So what are your struggles with tablature? Please share!

Did you like my arrangement of Deck The Halls? Can you perform it? Does tablature often give you fits? I’d love to know what your experiences are. I’ve talked to plenty of people who’ve said "phooey" about tablature and decided to take the learn by ear method of learning how to play. How about you? Please share! And, I’d love to feature you on my blog if you care to record yourself and send it to me. Love to hear all of my reader’s interpretations of my version of Deck The Halls.

Thanks for being here and joining me for another year of blog posts. 2011 is going to be a big one for Banjos Rule for sure, and I hope it is for you too!! Keep in touch, ask questions, say howdy, and I’ll catch you in the next blog post. Oh, and as I always say: pick ‘em if ya got ‘em! Banjo Paul out.