woensdag 28 december 2011

The workshop in progress


Listening to the master...

Jens playing Old Joe Clark on my banjo


The gitarist is Oliver Waitze, founder and owner of The New Acoustic Gallery in Solingen/Germany, specialisted in fine acoustic instruments and related parts.

Jens playing my 1975 Ome Triple X

He called it a 'super bluegrassbanjo'!

Great workshop with Jens Kruger!


On the third day of christmas Jens Kruger gave to us... a great workshop at the New Acoustic Gallery in Solingen. It was really GREAT!

woensdag 21 december 2011

Playing the fivestring (resonator) banjo: Scruggs-style


There are different ways to play a fivestring (resonater) banjo, but the basic style in bluegrass (in other music styles also) is the three-finger style or Scruggs-style (developed by Earl Scruggs, see ‘Playing a banjo with five strings’). Playing Scruggs-style means playing rolls, specific right-hand patterns. There are a lot of rolls (variations), but they all come from a few basis patterns: the forward-roll, double thumb-roll, foggy mountainbreakdown-roll, backward-roll and forward-backward-roll (see picture for some basic examples). The melodynotes in a roll are being played louder (the thumbpick is an important melodynote-picker) and the rest of the notes serve as fill-in notes; together with hammer-ons, slides and pull-offs the rolls give the banjo a smooth, rolling sound. It’s not always easy for the listener to hear the melodyline in a banjosong, even when the melodynotes have more accent.

Example of song played in Scruggs-style

maandag 28 november 2011

Playing a banjo with five strings


My acquaintance with the fivestring banjo goes back to the days when I was a kid, listening to some of my fathers country records. It’s a bit classic, but on one of these records I discovered a banjo instrumental called Foggy Mountain Breakdown. The song blew me away and I was hooked ever since...
I refer to the banjo as ‘fivestring banjo’ and not ‘bluegrass banjo’. Of course, this type of banjo is used in bluegrassmusic, but the fivestring banjo is not only a banjo for bluegrass. It’s used in different types of music, even in pop and rock music. It’s an instrument with unlimited possibilities.
There’s also another type of fivestring banjo without a resonator, called an oldtime or open back banjo. It’s used in the oldtime folkmusic.

The most common style of playing a fivestring resonator banjo is with a plastic thumbpick and two metal fingerpicks for the index- and middlefinger. It’s a so called three-fingerstyle that is known as Scruggsstyle, named after Earl Scruggs who developed this style of playing. Scruggstyle means playing rolls, a repeated pattern of notes. There are several basis rolls (patterns), but we will cover that later, in an another article.
There were other three-fingerstyle players in his time and before (Earl was first recorded in 1946) but the style of Scruggs was a innovative approach of the banjo and has influenced generations of fivestring banjoists.
The melodic style appeared somewhere in the 1950s, introduced by Bill Keith and Bobby Thompson (†). This style involves playing only melody notes, note for note fiddle tunes. This style is different from the Scruggsstyle (a roll has only a few melody notes, the rest of the notes are ‘fill-inn’ notes to add drive to the music).
A third style is the single stringstyle: this style is similar to flat-picking lead guitar, but instead of using a flat pick you alternate right hand fingers on individual strings.

vrijdag 25 november 2011

The Eastbound Cityliners at Radio Slingeland FM


Fred Hissink (banjo, harmonica's and dobro),
Marius Duurland (upright bass, guitar and vocals),
Frans van Steenveldt (mandolin, guitar and vocals),
Pauline Duurland (fiddle, accordeon and vocals).

Picture on the left, at the bottom: Harrie, the stationmanager.

Hitparade of Love (Eastbound Cityliners)

Hitparade of Love: Marius Duurland upright base/vocals, Pauline Duurland fiddle/vocals, Frans van Steenveldt guitar/vocals and Fred Hissink fivestring banjo. Played live for radio Slingeland FM.

Terry McMillan, a true harmonica wizard


Terry McMillan may be gone, but surely not forgotten. He was one of the most skilled harmonicaplayers and a beloved country musician. He played in several bands (he started out in Eddy Raven's band in Nashville, in 1973) but he was also a session musician, appearing living on stage and on numerous albums. He worked with Ray Charles, Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Reba McEntire, Randy Travis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Kenny Chesney, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young, Waylon Jennings en J. J. Cale (among others). In 1993 he played Amazing Grace at President Bill Clinton's inaugural ball.

Terry McMillan died in february 2007, at the age of 53...

zondag 20 november 2011

Harmonica fact 1: talking into your harmonica


Playing harmonica is not only a matter of blowing and drawing. Playing typical harmonica-sounds are done with syllables. Syllables are words, like ‘dadadada-dadadada’ or ‘diddle-diddle-diddle’. With syllables you change the sound of the harmonica and create very nice effects. There are numerous usable syllables, but you can also come up with some words of your own.

The sound of a train is a very nice example: use the syllable ticce-tacce (ticca for drawing and tacce for blowing). Say ticce-tacce and a rolling train will come up when you speed up. But speeding up is easier said than done... You have to train the muscles in your tongue and mouth, because most likely you’re not used to do this kind of movements all the time. Why should you? It’s not like talking or singing, it’s a different kind of movement. So you have to build up strenght and with strenght comes speed. Remember this: you only can play fast if you do your exercises in a slow way. So start with saying ticce-tacce five times in groups of four (so you have rests between the groups):

- ticce-tacce*ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce*rest
- ticce-tacce*ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce*rest
- ticce-tacce*ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce*rest
- ticce-tacce*ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce* ticce-tacce*rest

You can extend this exercise when you notice progress. Make the rows longer of try to skip the breaks. Just speed up a little, because speeding up to much will cause your words to stumble.

vrijdag 11 november 2011

A metronome: friend or enemy?


Tic-toc-tic-toc-tic-toc... It’s not a clock, but it’s clockwork indeed! It’s a metronome, always prepeared to keep you on the track. Should you, or should you not use a metronome while practicing? (for instance, let’s say rolls on a banjo...). This questions has triggered a never ending debate between musicians and the discussion is still going on.

Timing is a very important part of music. Without proper timing a song becomes ‘sloppy’ and if your timing varies within a roll or lick things can get worst. Playing in a band means that you have to watch your timing even more, even when you play occasionally or at pickingpartys. Playing with someone who’s timing is all over the place (or less worst) is very difficult (you may even loose your correct timing while playing along...).

When I start with a new student, who’s in the process of learning rolls, proper handsettings and dealing with the fact that bluegrassbanjo has to be played with two fingerpicks and a thumbpick, I never come up with a metronome. The poor student has too much to work before the ‘banjomachine’ is roling... But after a while, when the rolls are going and the student is ready for some first licks and a simple song , I start using the metronome.

Another way of playing along and perhaps a more pleasant one is using a midi-device. Midi’s are synthesized versions of songs. Band-in-a-box is a very nice tool for playing midi’s. The user can change the speed and play the songs in every key. But you can also play your midi’s with Windows Media Player. Changing speed is possible with WMP, but you cannot change the key of the song.

vrijdag 4 november 2011

All American Bluegrass Girl and Five Speed

The Hohner Marine Band: a famous harp with history


As a child I was very interested in mouthharps. I listened to countrysongs, especially to the songs with harmonica’s. For several years I wondered what type of harmonica was used in these songs. Eventually I saw a page in a countrymusicbook about Charly McCoy and a harmonica in front of him: a Marine Band! Of course this isn’t the only suitable harmonica for country, blues and other kinds of relevant music, but at that point in time I was very happy with my ‘discovery’ (there wasn’t internet at that time, back in the early eighty’s).

The Marine Band is Hohner’s best selling diatonic harmonica. Originally it was designed as a folkharp, a harp for ‘everyone’ (the first model came in 1896 and was named Marine Orchestra). But the Marine Band turned out to be a perfect bluesharmonica also and many bluesharp-icons got famous by playing a Marine Band; Hohner exported several of them to his cousins in America, who then, in turn, hocked them to aspiring musicians far and wide. The popularity grew also because the Marine Band wasn’t very expensive and easy to get, even in the rural parts of America (I imagine a Marine Band in a nice box on the counter of a drugstore...).

The Marine Band ten hole diatonic is available in different models: the classic Marine Band, the Marine Band Deluxe, the Marine Band Crossover, the Marine band Thunderbird (low key). Check the Hohner-website for more Marine Band-models.

A lot more about the history of the Marine Band: http://www.patmissin.com/ffaq/q38.html

woensdag 2 november 2011

Forced to sing and dance


The banjo’s, brought to America by the slaves were simple, but effective instruments. The body was made from a hollow gourd with an animal skin (sometimes they even used cat skin…). The neck was a stick and the strings were made form horsehair, grass or catgut.
The slaveowners allowed the slaves to play their ‘Bania’s’ and even ‘forced’ them to sing and dance. At first this seems very strange, because the slaveowners intentionally broke up families and friends as much as possible, only to disorient the slaves and make their more manageable. But they discovered that when the slaves were allowed to have music, their high mortality rate dropped dramatically and the African spirit went higher.

dinsdag 1 november 2011

The banjo: a real American instrument or not?


Some believe that the banjo is a native American instrument, but that simply isn’t so. The ‘modern’ banjo is a mixture of cultures: primary African, but there were also influences from Engeland, Scotland and Ireland. And America of course… The banjo was brought to America by the slaves who came from the western part of Africa. In this area the so called Senegambian Bania was a popular instrument; they adapted this instrument from the Arabs who had their Rebec: a gourd body topped with animal skin and three gut strings. It’s most likely that this instrument was a predecessor of the Senegambian Bania. Some further research into the history of the banjo gives rise to the idea that the earliest ancestor of the banjo derives from the orient; but there’s no hard evidence.