Vol_17_No_2

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Magazine Volume 17, Number 2 January/February 2013

Marcy Marxer

Bill Neaves Greg Blake Marcus Engstrom

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

January/February 2013

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CONTENTS


FEATURES

Marcy Marxer & “Girl Django” Flatpick Profile: Bill Neaves & “Margaret’s Waltz” Guitar Repair: Marcus Engstrom CD Highlight: Greg Blake & “Old Blue”

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COLUMNS Volume 17, Number 2 January/February 2013 Published bi-monthly by: High View Publications P.O. Box 2160 Pulaski, VA 24301 Phone: (540) 980-0338 Fax: (540) 980-0557 Orders: (800) 413-8296 E-mail: highview@atpick.com Web Site: http://www.atpick.com ISSN: 1089-9855 Dan Miller - Publisher and Editor Connie Miller - Administration Jackie Morris - Administration Contributing Editors: Dave McCarty Chris Thiessen

Subscription Rate ($US): US $30.00 ($60.00 with CD) Canada/Mexico $40.00 Other Foreign $43.00 All contents Copyright © 2013 by High View Publications unless otherwise indicated Reproduction of material appearing in the Flatpicking Guitar Magazine is forbidden without written permission

“Duck River” Craig Vance Bluegrass Rhythm Guitar: “Blue Monk” Joe Carr Beginner’s Page: Rodney Dillard Rhythm Dan Huckabee Kaufman’s Corner: “Temperance Reel” Steve Kaufman Taking It To The Next Level: “Bolero” John Carlini Right Hand Exercises: Consistent Attack Dan Miller Sharpening the Axe: “Black’s Fork” Jeff Troxel “Weave and Way ” Kathy Barwick “I Am A Pilgrim” Dix Bruce Range Extension and “Alan’s Bane” Mike Maddux Flatpicking Fiddle Tunes: “Griffin Hornpipe”, “The Rose Tree” & “Scottyland the Brave” Adam Granger Timing Practice Brad Davis Classic Bluegrass: “Pain In My Heart” Steve Pottier Beware of Jam Sessions Dan Crary Diaphragm Support Kacey Cubero

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Printed in the USA Cover Photo by Michael G. Stewart

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine Podcast We are now broadcasting a new Podcast every month

Interviews, fatpicking tunes, and more. Check it out: http://www.fatpick.com/podcast.html 2



The Flatpicking Essentials Series

Flatpicking Essentials Volume 1: Rhythm, Bass Runs, and Fill Licks In the “Pioneers” issue of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine Dan Miller laid out a atpicking learning method that followed the chronological developme nt of the style. This step-by-step method started with a solid foundation in the rhythm guitar styles of atpicking’s early pioneers—a style that includes a liberal use of bass runs and rhythm ll licks, combined with rhythmic strums. Volume 1 of the Eight Volume Flatpicking Essentials series teaches this rhythm style and prepares you for each future volume. If you want to learn how to add interesting bass runs and ll licks to your rhythm playing, check out this 96-page book with accompanyi ng CD. This book and CD are available in spiral bound hardcopy form, on CD-Rom, or as a digital download.

Flatpicking Essentials Volume 2: Learning to Solo—Carter Style and Beyond

Hardcopy: $24.95 Digital: $19.95

The second book in the Flatpicking Essentials series teaches you how to arrange solos for vocal tunes by teaching you how to: 1) Find the chord changes by ear. 2) Find the melody by ear. 3) Learn how to arrange a Carter Style solo. 4) Learn how to embellish the Carter Style solo using one or more of the following techniques: bass runs; hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, & bends; tremelo; double stops; crosspicking; neighbori ng notes; scale runs and ll-licks. Even if you are a beginner you can learn how to create your own interesting solos to any vocal song. You’ll never need tab again! This material will also provide you with the foundation for improvisat ion. This book and CD are available in spiral bound hardcopy form, on CD-Rom, or as a digital download.


Flatpicking Essentials Volume 3: Flatpicking Fiddle Tunes Flatpicking and ddle tunes go hand-in-hand. However, in this day and age too many beginning and intermediate level players rely too heavily on tablature when learning ddle tunes. This becomes a problem in the long run because the player eventually reaches a plateau in their progress because they don’t know how to learn new tunes that are not written out in tablature, they do not know how to create their own variations of tunes that they already know, and it becomes very hard to learn how to improvise. Flatpicking Essentials, Volume 3 helps to solve all of those problems. In this volume of the Flatpicking Essentials series you are going to learn valuable information about the structure of ddle tunes and then you are going to use that information to learn how to play ddle tunes by ear, and create your own variations, utilizing the following a series of detailed steps.


Flatpicking Essentials Volume 4:

Understanding the Fingerboard and Moving Up-The-Neck

The fourth book in the Flatpicking Essentials series teaches you how to become familiar with using the entire ngerboard of the guitar and it gives you many exercises and examples that will help you become very comfortable playing up-the-neck. With this book and CD you will learn how to explore the whole guitar neck using a very thorough study of chord shapes, scale patterns, and arpeggios. You will also learn how to comfortably move up-theneck and back down using slides, open strings, scale runs, harmonized scales, oating licks, and more. If you’ve ever sat and watched a professional players ngers dance up and down the ngerboard with great ease and wondered “I wish I could do that!” This book is for you!

Flatpicking Essentials Volume 5:


Improvisation & Style Studies

Are you having trouble learning how to improvise? To many atpickers the art of improvisation is a mystery. In the 5th Volume of the Flatpicking Essentials series you will study various exercises that will begin to teach you the process of improvisation through the use of a graduated, step-by-step method. Through the study and execution of these exercises, you will learn how to free yourself from memorized solos! This Volume also includes “style studies” which examine the contributions of the atpicking legends, such as Doc Watson, Clarence White, Tony Rice, Norman Blake, Dan Crary, Pat Flynn, and others. Learn techniques that helped dene their styles and learn how to apply those techniques to your own solos.

Flatpicking Essentials Volume 6: Improvisation Part II & Advanced Technique


Flatpicking Essentials, Volume 6 is divided into two main sections. The rst section is Part II of our study of improvisation. Volume 5 introduced readers to a step-by-step free-form improv study method that we continue here in Volume 6. The second section of this book is focused on advanced atpicking technique. We approached this topic by rst having Tim May record “advanced level” improvisations for nineteen different atpicking tunes. Tim selected the tunes and went into the studio with a list of techniques, like the use of triplets, natural and false harmonics, note bending, quoting, alternate tuning, syncopation, twin guitar, minor key tunes, hybrid picking, advanced crosspicking, string skipping, etc. There are a ton of absolutely awesome atpicking arrangements by Tim May in this book, with explanations of each technique.


Flatpicking Essentials Volume 7: Advanced Rhythm & Chord Studies Flatpicking Essentials, Volume 7 is a 170 page book, with 67 audio tracks, that will show you how to add texture, variety, and movement to your rhythm accompaniment in the context of playing bluegrass, ddle tune music, folk music, acoustic rock, Western swing, big band swing, and jazz. The best part of this book is that it doesn’t just present you with arrangements to memorize. It teaches you how you can create and execute your own accompaniment arrangement s in a variety of musical styles. Don’t rely on the arrangements of others, learn a straight-forward and gradual approach to designing your own rhythm accompaniment.

Hardcopy: $29.95 Digital: $24.95 Flatpicking Guitar Magazine


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Flatpicking Essentials

EDITOR'S PAGE Welcome to 2013! As we enter another year I’d like to encourage everyone to do their best to stick to all of your atpicking New Year’s resolutions and keep playing, keep jamming, keep woodshedding, keep performing, and keep on improving! I want to thank everyone who attended one of my workshops in 2012. It was a very busy year for me. I taught 81 workshops, taught at 2 music camps, and set up the Flatpicking Guitar Magazine booth at 20 music festivals. I was pretty much on the road non-stop this year and the best part about that is that I had the opportunity to meet so many of our subscribers. Thanks to all of you who participated in the workshops and/or camps and to those of you who visited the Flatpicking Guitar Magazine booth. I enjoyed meeting all of you and I look forward to doing it again in 2013! 2013 is going to be a very exciting year for Flatpicking Guitar Magazine . I have some really awesome cover story artists lined up and a nice topic for this year’s special issue. We will also be publishing our 100th issue this year, which is exciting for me.

I wish all of you a very happy and healthy New Year! Keep Pickin’!

Come Along on The Jam Cruise! I invite everyone to join me on the 2013 Cruise2Jam 5-day and 4-night jam cruise leaving from Long Beach, California, and going to to Catalina Island, to Mexico, and back to Long Beach. We start off with a Tim May and Dan Miller workshop and jam on Sunday, January 27th on the Queen Mary in Long Beach that is open to anyone (even if you are not going on the cruise), and then we leave on the Carnival cruise ship on the 28th! There will be jamming and workshops for bluegrass, folk, blues, old-time gospel, and more! Please see the ad on page 50 of this issue for more information.

Flatpicking Guitar Workshops My co-authors and band mates Tim May and Brad Davis and I will be continuing to travel around the country and teach guitar and mandolin workshops throughout the year. For our complete schedule, please see: http://www.atpick.com/workshops. We’d love to see you at one of these workshops. If you would like to host a workshop in your town in 2013, please contact me: dan@atpick.com.

(800) 413-8296 www.flatpickingmercantile.com 4



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t r a w e t S . G l e a h c i M y b o t o h P

Marcy Marxer We are just a few issues away from publishing the hundredth issue of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine. That means that we’ve have featured nearly 100 flatpicking acoustic guitar players on the cover of this magazine over the last sixteen and a half years. Few of our cover story artists have been as successful in the world of acoustic music as this issue’s cover story artist, Marcy Marxer. She has won two Grammy awards (and had 14 Grammy nominations) and has won an Emmy award. She has a signature model Martin guitar named after her. She has won literally hundreds of awards from The Parent’s Choice Foundation, American Library Association, John Lennon Songwriting Contest, Washington Area Music Association and many, many more. She has been actively touring for over 25 years (including being 6

a featured artist at places like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), has recorded on dozens of albums, and has released numerous highly successful instructional products. She has worked in the studio with musicians like Tom Paxton, Si Kahn, Riders in the Sky, Pete Seeger, Mike Seeger, Patsy Montana and many more. She is also a sought after workshop and camp instructor. This woman has done it all, and then some! Although we have featured Marcy and/or Marcy’s arrangements of tunes in Flatpicking Guitar Magazine four times over the past sixteen years, I felt that featuring Marcy on the cover was long overdue. She is probably one of the most versatile acoustic guitar players on the

by Dan Miller

planet because she can easily sit in with the best bluegrass, Irish, old-time, folk, swing, Western swing, and jazz players and not miss a lick. I have always enjoyed speaking with Marcy because every time I talk with her I learn something. I learn more about her impressive background and I learn more about playing the guitar. My hope is that you learn as much reading this article as I did conducting the interview! Marcy Marxer started playing the guitar at the age of ve. But, with the help of her grandmother, she actually started playing music at a younger age. Marcy’s maternal grandmother, Florence Kohnke, was a barrelhouse blues and honky tonk piano player, who was also highly skilled at the hammered dulcimer. When Marcy was very young, her grandmother would set Marcy up on her lap, put the hammer dulcimer



mallets in her little hands, grab Marcy by those hands, and begin to play tunes on the hammered dulcimer. Marcy said, “Playing the hammered dulcimer is all about learning to play patterns. My grandmother started teaching me those patterns before I could actually play by myself.” Due to the difculty in traveling with the instrument, Marcy does not perform with the hammered dulcimer very often, but she still plays it to this day. Florence Kohnke played professionally at Henry Ford dances, at local bars, and for family parties. When Marcy was young she spent a lot of time at her grandmother’s home playing everything from “Red Wing” and “Mississippi Sawyer” to “Take Me Out To the Ball Game,” “Bicycle Built For Two,” and “When You and I Were Young.” Many of the tunes that Florence taught Marcy she had learned from her own mother, who was a ddle player. Marcy said, “My great grandmother played for dances in Chicago. She was considered a ‘wild woman’ because she would drive from Detroit to Chicago by herself to play the dances there.” Marcy’s mother was a singer and her aunt was a guitar player, so their family gatherings in and around Detroit were always full of music and song. When asked why she chose to play the guitar, Marcy said, “I’ve just always loved it. My aunt lived across the street and I remember going over to her house and standing next to her bed while she sat there and played the guitar. I wanted a guitar when I was even younger than ve, but the rule in the family was that you could not have a guitar until you were as tall as the guitar. When I was ve I was nally as tall as a ¾ size guitar.” After being shown a few chords, Marcy learned repertoire by sitting in the middle of the family music circle and paying attention to what others were doing. She said, “If you couldn’t keep up, no one cared. They would put us kids in the center of the circle and see how long we maintained interest. All the other kids would eventually get up and leave, but I never did. I sat there and played as long as the others were playing.” Marcy also learned a lot of repertoire when she visited her grandmother’s home. Marcy’s grandmother lived close by and her parents would often leave her with her grandmother when they needed to go out. Marcy remembers, “I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s home. She didn’t play the guitar, but she would buy me guitar books and point to different tunes in the Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

books and say, ‘I really like that song. You don’t have to learn it. But I think we would have fun playing that one.’ She was really good at gearing music to anyone who would come along. There was no one beneath her. She could play anything and she had a lot of patience. She would always look for common ground and then have as much fun as she could have playing those tunes. She passed that along to me. That is why I’ve never understood these jams where some people are not welcome.” In addition to teaching Marcy tunes at home, her grandmother would also take her out to local clubs to hear other musicians. Marcy recalls, “Back in those days kids could go into clubs and there were clubs around town where my mother and grandmother were invited on stage to play and sing with the other musicians. These were friendly hometown type clubs where they welcomed anyone who had some talent to get up and perform. The rst time I ever saw a atpicker was at one of these clubs. This person was a tall, relaxed, low-voiced black man who played jazz. He mostly played chords, but every once in a w hile he would lean back, close his eyes, and take a solo. I used to love watching him play his chords. He played some chords that I had never seen. I would watch him, try to remember the shapes and patterns that he was using and then go home and work them out. I didn’t know the names of any of the chords, but I started to use them.”


After Marcy witnessed the jazz player in the club taking solos, she was inspired to try and gure out melodies on her guitar. She was nine or ten at the time. She said that she didn’t witness or hear her rst southern atpicker until she was in her early teens when a fellow, who she only remembers as “Mack,” came up to Michigan from the south to work in one of the car factories. Listening to Mack inspired Marcy to continue to work out solos on hymns, TV tunes, and ddle music. She said, “The rst ddle tune that I gured out was ‘Red Wing.’ I liked to learn patterns and play them over and over and then learn how to improvise with the patterns.” Marcy’s father was a minister and her parents were involved in the civil rights movement when Marcy was a teenager. She said, “Because of my parents’ involvement with the civil rights movement, I spent a lot of time in black churches. The community and the music were incredible. I started learning civil rights songs and listening to artists like Pete Seeger and Tom Paxton. I realized that music could help build community and accomplish things. I saw how people were inuenced by that music.” Just before she started high school, Marcy’s family moved to Flint, Michigan, and Marcy became involved in the open jams that were held every Frida y night at Wright’s Music. She said, “Wright’s Music would host jams and shows. A lot of southerners who had come up north seeking

Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer in 1983 7

Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer jobs had brought their music with them. I remember meeting a guy named John Coffee who was a phenomenal guitar player. He was the rst person who was about my age who was really good at atpicking.” In addition to learning how to atpick by watching John, Marcy said that by hanging out at Wright’s Music she also found her rst ddle tune book that had guitar tablature. She recalls, “I had never seen tablature before and when I was in about ninth grade I found this green-colored ddle tune book at Wright’s Music. I started learning tunes out of that book about the same time that I heard my rst Dan Crary recording. That was mind blowing! I also started listening to Doc and Norman and wearing their records out in order to gure out what they were doing. I absolutely love anything played on the guitar. It is such a soulful sound. So, every minute I spent with those records was joyful!” Although Marcy continued to build repertoire during her high school years she said, “I still didn’t realize that people could play music for a living. I hadn’t met anyone that made a living by playing music in any folk music genre until I was well into high school. In school I was only interested in two things, acting in school plays and playing my guitar.” Marcy must have done well in the school plays because she was offered a scholarship to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, California. She graduated high school in 8

1974 and moved to California to study the dramatic arts in the fall of that year. While she was attending the school in Pasadena, Marcy was invited to participate in a talent show. The individuals who participated were asked to display a talent other than acting. Marcy decided to play her guitar and sing in the show. Evidently the school faculty was impressed with her performance. She remembers, “After the talent show I was called into the ofce and they suggested that I might want to pursue my musical talent.” Unfortunately, Marcy was only able to attend the dramatic arts school for two years. The economy had taken a downturn and back home in Michigan her father had lost his position at the church. She said, “Since the house belonged to the church, my father was out of a job and my family didn’t have a home. So, I went back home and got a job working on the assembly line at the Chevrolet factory in Flint.” Although she was disappointed that she was not able to continue following her dreams, Marcy said that she was proud of the fact that she was able to “step up to the plate” and take care of her family. She said, “That gave me a lot of self condence.” Because she was working six days a week from 4 pm to 2 am at the factory, Marcy didn’t have a lot of time available to play music with other people. But she did do a lot of woodshedding during that period of time. She said, “I worked in the

factory for about two years. During that time I was really focused on playing the guitar when I was at home during the day. I was listening to recordings of all kinds of music and expanding my repertoire and working on my technique.” About the time that the economy started to improve, Marcy had developed carpal tunnel syndrome from using the air guns at work. She decided to leave the factory job and let her hands rest for about six months. She said, “I still wanted to play music, so I played guitar until my hands started to hurt, then I’d pick up another instrument, or write songs.” In order to earn money, Marcy auditioned for a job at a local bar and was hired to play a solo gig for four hours in the evening. When I learned about this gig my comment to Marcy was, “People at a bar were content listening to a solo guitarist for four hours?” Marcy’s response was, “People in the Midwest are very polite.” Back during her senior year in high school Marcy had discovered Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Michigan, and had started hanging out there whenever she could. In about 1979 she met some other women who played traditional acoustic music and they formed a four-piece oldtime “southern-style” string band called the Bosom Buddies. The four women—playing guitar, ddle, banjo, and mandolin—started playing four sets a night in bars in the Lansing area. Marcy said, “There was a lot of music happening there in Lansing at the time. There were parties where you could go and play bluegrass, folk, old-time, blues. Everyone was friendly and would share stuff. My musical world really opened up.” About the time that the Bosom Buddies were “just getting solid,” a folk singer from Canada, Stan Rogers, heard the band play. Stan loved the music so much that he booked them to play in a series of folk festivals in Canada. He also shared all of his booking contacts in the United States and Canada with the band and said, “Tell them I sent you.” Marcy said, “After we played the Canadian dates and appeared on Prairie Home Companion, we became a hot commodity. The stars lined up for us and we were booked at festivals everywhere from San Diego to Philadelphia. We went from playing in local bars to playing nationally in just a few short months.” Marcy has never forgotten Stan Rogers’ generosity. She said, “When a person like Stan helps you out like that, it makes you want to turn around a pay it forward by



helping out some young person. There is a lot of joy in passing a good thing along.” For about three years the Bosom Buddies played festivals in the United States and Canada and filled in dates between the festival gigs by playing at various dance halls, campgrounds, and small town events. Marcy said, “We played every gig that came along.” Playing at big folk festivals in North America gave Marcy the opportunity to meet a lot of great musicians. During the rst Canadian tour many of the same performers were at all the festivals and would share transportation. Marcy had the opportunity to meet and get to know people like Dan Crary, Norman and Nancy Blake, James Bryan, Mike Seeger, Robin and Linda Williams, Alice Gerrard, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, the Green Grass Cloggers, and many more. At a festival in Toronto, in 1980, she also met and became very close to Cathy Fink. Marcy recalls, “One night Cathy and I were in a great jam session. After everyone had stopped playing, we wanted to continue, so we found a secluded spot, sat on the oor, and kept picking. Little did we know that we were right outside of Elizabeth Cotton’s door. After we had been picking for a while Elizabeth came out of her room and said, ‘I prayed to the Lord to make you children a little less happy, but it looks like he ain’t gonna do it.’ That was how I met Elizabeth Cotton.” At a party later that same weekend Marcy thought she would try to smooth things over with Elizabeth by bringing her a glass of wine. Mike Seeger was sitting with Elizabeth and knew that Elizabeth was a teetotaler. He tried to warn Marcy as Marcy moved in to hand Elizabeth the glass of wine, but Marcy didn’t get the message. After offering Elizabeth the glass of wine Marcy got a long lecture on the evils of alcohol. So, her plan to get on Elizabeth’s good side had backred. That incident aside, Marcy said that she always loved the Canadian festivals because they mixed bluegrass, folk, old-time, and blues so the shows there featured a little bit of everything. When asked about the learning opportunities that were available during late-night jams at the festivals, Marcy said, “I had no problem walking up to anyone and asking them to show me something. Being a young girl guitar player was unusual and there was a cooperative atmosphere, so everyone was very willing to teach Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

me. I learned a lot from Mike Seeger. He not only taught me about fingerpicking and atpicking, but he had a wonderful historical perspective. He was a wealth of information.” About three years into the run with the Bosom Buddies, the band’s ddle player fell in love with a guy from Ireland. The band had a benet concert to raise money to send her to Ireland. Then after she was gone, they realized that they didn’t have a band anymore. In 1982, Marcy decided to move to the Washington, D. C. area so that she could perform with Cathy Fink. She said, “The Washington, D.C. area had a great music scene and there were a lot of job opportunities. We started playing at schools in the afternoon and clubs in the evenings. We even had a gig where we would go to the Smithsonian three days a week and demonstrate some of the instruments that they kept in their vault. By that time Cathy and I had played a lot of music together and


had a common repertoire, so it was easy to put shows together.” In addition to playing music in a duo with Cathy, they also performed in a Western swing band with Pete Kennedy and Mike Stein called Rhythm Ranch. In 1988 Marcy and Cathy also teamed up with fellow female bluegrass stars Sally Van Meter (Dobro), Laurie Lewis (ddle), and Molly Mason (bass) and formed a highly regarded all-women bluegrass “super group” called Blue Rose. The band released a self-titled CD on Sugar Hill Records in 1989. One of the highlights of Marcy’s time with the Bosom Buddies was getting to meet and play music with Patsy Montana. Patsy was the rst female artist in history to have a million-selling single (with her song “I Want To Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart”). The Bosom Buddies band had been hired to back up Patsy during a show. Marcy said, “We did the best we could to back her up, but at the time we didn’t know that much

Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer and Barbara Lamb 9

Marcy Marxer with the Four Bitchin’ Babes: Marcy, Dierdre Flint, Debi Smith, Sally Fingerette about Western swing. After the show I told her, ‘I can’t believe we got to play with you!’ Patsy’s response was, ‘Yeah, I bet you thought I was dead!’ I told her that I hoped that we could play with her again and she said, ‘You can do it next weekend!’” Marcy asked Patsy how she could learn more about Western style guitar, so that she could better play behind Patsy’s singing. Patsy told her to get the Marty Robbins Gunghter Ballads and Trail Songs album and learn the guitar licks. Patsy told her, “You learn those guitar licks and then play them on my songs.” The great session man Grady Martin was the guitar player on that Marty Robbins album. During a nearly 50-year career, Martin had backed up such names as Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Johnny Burnette, Arlo Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Bing Crosby, Burl Ives, Loretta Lynn, Red Foley, Roy Orbison, Marty Robbins, Lefty Frizzell, Joan Baez, Johnny Horton, Jerry Reed, Willie Nelson, and many others. Marcy and Cathy toured with Patsy Montana, off and on, up through Patsy Montana’s death in 1996. They also appeared on Montana’s last recording, an album released by Flying Fish Records. Marcy and Cathy were responsible for Patsy Montana getting booked at a number of folk festivals and thus introducing her music to a crowd that would otherwise not have known her. Marcy said, “Patsy mostly toured in California and in Europe. She 10

usually played for an older crowd. When we introduced her to the folk scene, everyone loved her. She couldn’t believe that the younger people were into her music.” Our rst feature article on Marcy was published in 2001 and at that time she and Cathy were producing a lot of projects that catered to children. Their rst Grammy award was for their children’s album Bon Appetite in 2003. Today Marcy said that they “wear their hats in the worlds of kid’s music, folk music, and traditional music.” She said, “It gives us a bunch of options.” In addition to performing live and producing CDs (Cathy and Marcy have released 12 CDs in the past 20 years), Marcy also records music for documentary lms and television. She has recorded for MSNBC, PBS, and National Geographic. She said, “Washington, D. C. is a big documentary town. I will usually write the music and play the instruments and Cathy will do the engineer work. Although, Cathy will play if I need a banjo on a track.” Recently Marcy and Cathy participated on a Pete Seeger project titled Pete Seeger: Pete Remembers Woody. This is a two-disc set that includes both music and spoken word tracks. A description of the disc reads as follows: “Interspersed with Pete’s recollections of Woody are versions of some of Guthrie’s most famous songs performed by idealistic links in the topical music chain like Arlo Guthrie (dueting with Pete on one of the few Woody-Seeger co-writes,

“66 Highway Blues”), the Work of the Weavers (“This Land is Your Land,” “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh! “), CD producer David Bernz, whose own threepart “Woody’s Ghost” serves to bookend and provide an intermission between the two CDs, and Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, who added music to Woody’s lyrics for “Howdy Little Newlycome.” The Vanaver Caravan, the 40-year-old troupe of musicians and dancers, performs the Depression plaint “Do Re Mi,” “Union Maid,” “Pastures of Plenty,” and “Peace Pin Boogie,” while members of Hope Machine tackle “I Ain’t Got No Home” and “I’ve Got to Know.” Woody himself, with another of his running buddies, Cisco Houston, is heard on a 1940s recording of “New York Town.” Fink’s banjo-playing on various traditional tunes helps tie together the masterful sequencing of spoken stories and related songs.” This was not the rst time that Cathy and Marcy had worked with the iconic Seeger. In around 2004 they had produced a tribute recording to Ella Jenkins for the Smithsonian Institute titled cELLAbration: A Tribute to Ella Jenkins. They won a Grammy for that CD in 2005. Marcy said, “Any day that I get to work in the studio with Pete Seeger is a good day. He is unbelievable. We met him at festivals years ago and have been friends ever since. He took us under his wing and has been a mentor in music and other areas, like political awareness. He plays such great accompaniment on banjo and guitar. He knows how to put beautiful licks and phrases in all the right places. He has been a huge inuence.” Over the years Marcy has probably been one of the busiest acoustic guitar players in the country, and that does not look like it will be slowing down any time soon. In addition to all of the work that she does with Cathy Fink, Marcy has also joined the band Four Bitchin’ Babes, is recording a series of instructional videos for True Fire, has just released a new solo CD, and is getting ready to go on a tour of China, Malaysia, New Guinea, and Vanuatu for the Department of State. The Four Bitchin’ Babes was the brainchild of folk singer/songwriter Christine Lavin and was formed in 1990. The original group consisted of Christine Lavin, Patty Larkin, Megon McDonough, and Sally Fingerett. Soon after the band came together Patty Larkin got a record deal and was replaced by Julie Gold. The Babes have gone through various personnel



changes and have had many “special guests” over the years (including Cheryl Wheeler, Janis Ian, and Mary Travers). The only original member still with the band is Sally Fingerett. Another longtime member, Debi Smith, has been with the band since 1993. The current band consists of Sally Fingerett, Debi Smith, Marcy Marxer, and Deirdre Flint. The band’s show is described as follows: “Playing their own guitars, bass, piano, Irish bodhran, mandolin, and ukulele, this hilarious renegade sorority of gal pals use their elegant wit, sophisticated (never blue) stand-up humor, and enough bling to hypnotize the rst ve rows of any theatre, creating an evening of wildly fun and raucous delight!” Most of the Four Bitchin’ Babes shows are booked in theaters and they typically play to theater crowds. Marcy said, “We are usually booked as musical theater and so our crowd is not the type of crowd that usually comes to a folk music show. We do our best to nudge them towards an appreciation of folk music.” Marcy started touring with the band in September of 2012. You can learn more about the Four Bitchin’ Babes by visiting their website, www. fourbitchinbabes.com. Another great project that Marcy has presented, through True Fire on line guitar lessons (http://truere.com/) is a 174-minute course titled Swingin’ Rhythm Handbook . This course is divided up into 85 short video segments that introduce the student to swing style rhythm. Marcy starts with simple swing chords, techniques, and progressions and gradually builds in complexity. If you are new to swing style rhythm, I highly recommend the course. Marcy provides an easy and comfortable way to learn the chords and get them into your memory, your ears, and under your ngers. Right now just the one swing rhythm course is offered, but Marcy plans on lming and presenting a series that will continue to build on the information that is presented in the rst course. In addition to the swing rhythm series, Marcy has also developed a ukulele series for True Fire. The first lesson in this series, Uke for Guitar Players, provides 175 minutes of instruction in 92 segments. Marcy said, “Guitar players pick up a ukulele and think that they can’t play it, but it is not Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

that tough.” Marcy is known as an expert educator. I have worked with a number of her instructional courses over the years and she has a knack for breaking everything down so that it is understandable and easily attainable. The next item that is recent news of Marcy Marxer is the release of her solo CD, Things Are Coming My Way. Regarding this new solo project, Marcy said, “Cathy has been pushing me to record a solo CD for years. This recording includes songs that I have loved to perform, but they never t on any of our duo projects. Since I’m now out touring with the Bitchin’ Babes, I thought it would be good to have a solo project to present to the crowd since all of the other band members bring their solo projects out. I’ve talked about it for a long time, this was a good excuse to go ahead and do it.” The record provides a great mix of musical styles and really highlights Marcy’s talent as a singer and instrumentalist. On the CD that accompanies this issue we have included a cut from Marcy’s CD. This one, titled “Girl Django,” was written and sung by Cathy Fink, with some awesome guitar work from Marcy. Although I started out this article telling you that Marcy Marxer is one of the most successful acoustic guitar players


in the country and listed some of her accomplishments to prove it, Marcy denes success in a different way. She said, “I felt like I was a success the rst time I went to the store and was able to buy chicken and rice and not have to count pennies to pay for it.” While she feels that any of the awards or accomplishments that she has achieved are indeed an honor, she doesn’t get big headed about them. She said, “All of those things simply inspire me to work harder, dig deeper, and do better. It is a real honor for me to just have people come out and buy a ticket to one of our shows.” When asked what advice she had for atpickers, Marcy said, “Listen to everyone. But, never judge yourself or your playing by other people. If others are better than you, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to compare yourself with anyone else in order to improve. Just ask yourself what it will take for you to do it better next time, and then work at it. If atpicking the guitar has touched your heart and it makes you happy, then you are a success.”

t r a w e t S . G l e a h c i M y b o t o h P

Marcy Marxer with a few Tools of the Trade 11

Girl Django

Audio CD Track 3

Arranged by Marcy Marxer

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Ó Ó


Duck River by Craig Vance

After four decades of playing the guitar, there are still some ddle tunes I have not been exposed to. This one came to me from Alex Finazzo, a West Coast picker. It’s a great tune done using the drop-D tuning. I couldn’t nd much info about this other than the fact that it also goes by two other titles (neither of which was familiar to me), “The Big Mule” and “Old Dubuque.” Nevertheless, the tune falls into the traditional old-time category.

Well, I hope this one is new and fresh to all of you. It’s pretty easy to play, so have fun with it.

www.Flatpick.com



Tim Stafford “Endless Line” 800-413-8296

13

Duck River

Audio CD Track 4

Arranged by Craig Vance

Drop D Tuning

# 4 # & 4.

D

G

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14



œ

Bluegrass Rhythm Guitar

œ œ œ œ œ#œ œ H.O.

by Joe Carr

0 0

1

2

0

2

0

3

“Blue Monk”

This topic for the column this issue is a little break from the normal rhythm column. “Blue Monk” is a standard tune written by jazz pianist Thelonius Monk. This recording comes from my 1980 Ridge Runner guitar album, Otter Nonsense. Alan Munde listened to a lot of classic jazz as we rode across the country in the Country Gazette van and there I was introduced to the unique and sometimes harmonically inventive music of Mister Monk.

Although originally played in the key of Bb, this quirky blues works well on the guitar in the key of E. The recording features only me on the acoustic guitar until the last note when we engaged a harmonizer to raise the pitch of the note one octave. Don’t ask me why. The harmonizer was a new studio toy at the time and hey, boys love toys. Much of the melody occurs in two voices played on separate strings as in measure 1. I accomplished this by playing

the 6th string with a atpick held between my thumb and rst nger. Simultaneously I played the notes on the 3rd string with my middle nger as many electric guitarists do. The stretch in measure 8 may be a challenge. Have fun!

And also. . .

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•Instantly access any tune •Set your CD player to “Repeat” and learn new tunes •Challenge yourself! Set your CD to “Shufe” and try to play rhythm (or lead!) with whatever comes up •Not dangerous, illegal, discriminatory or fattening Back in the dark ages, our ve-cassette set allowed pickers to hear all 508 tunes in Granger’s Fiddle Tunes for Guitar . Our 21st-Century CD sets are even better. Each CD contains about 75 tunes. The title is announced, then the tune is played once at a moderate tempo, with rhythm on the left track and lead on the right. The 7-CD set comes in a black plastic box, and includes separate indexes for each disc.

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www.granger-music.com 1 • 800 • 575 • 4402 granger publications • box 270115 • vadnais heights, mn 55127 Flatpicking Guitar Magazine


15

Blue Monk

Audio CD Track 5

E

T A B

A

E

2 1

2

3

3

2

4

5

3

2

3

B7

0 1 2 2 0

4 0

0

Arranged by Joe Carr

4

4

A

2

E

0 3

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1

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4 3

4

2

2 0

E

B7

E 3

5

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3 3

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0 2 0 1 2 2 0

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B7

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B7

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B7

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4 4 4

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Blue Monk (con’t) A

E

B7

E 3

17

2 2

3 3

4 4

5 5

5 5

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B7

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21

0 1 9

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2

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0 1

2 2

0 1

3 5

2 4

0 1

1 2

2 0

The late, great Charles Sawtelle with his Thompson Dreadnought (circa 1986)

In the tradition of the great guitars of the 1930’ s www.pkthompsonguitars.com Flatpicking Guitar Magazine


17

Gcdgcdgcdgcd

Beginner’s Page

gcdgcdgcdgcd by Dan Huckabee

Move Over Lester Flatt G-Run, There’s a New Lick in Town! No contest: the number one bluegrass guitar lick of all time is “The Lester Flatt G-Run.” But I’m going to nominate “The Rodney Dillard A-to-D Run” for number two. One thing I’m sure of: it’s a blast to play (and it will get your listeners’ attention)! Other well-known rhythm guitarists—including Charlie Waller of the Country Gentlemen—have played variations on this lick.

Rather than just isolate the lick, I’ve chosen to use it in the chord progression from the Dillard’s classic tune, “I’ll Never See My Home Again.” In this lesson you will learn more than just Rodney’s cool run. You will also learn the unique strum pattern that he uses in this tune. I’d recommend you get a hold of the record if you don’t already have it, and that will help even further. This is yet another lick where correct pick direction (and strum direction), is critical. As always, my intention is for you

to eventually be able to throw it into other songs, so that it will become a working part of your style and bag of tricks. In this issue we are giving away an entire free guitar course for download. It consists of 10 songs in tab and audio. So be sure and check it out if you’re interested in guitar breaks for singing songs. It’s in the Musician’s Workshop ad in the back. Call us toll free at 800 5453 6125 if you have any questions regarding your learning.

DocFest: A Musical Tribute to Doc Watson and his musical partners Merle Watson and Jack Lawrence featuring Many of Today’s Top Pickers Call 800-413-8296 www.flatpickingmercantile.com

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine & SimpleFolk Productions Present:

J o sh

An dy

C hr i s

Williams, Falco & Eldridge Live at the Station Inn “Guitarmageddon” In this one-hour DVD Flatpicking Guitar Magazine and SimpleFolk Productions present three of today's top young flatpicking guitarists performing together in a live concert setting at the “World Famous” Station Inn in Nashville, Tennessee. Josh Williams, Andy Falco, and Chris Eldridge perform in a trio setting, as duo pairs, as solo performers, and with a full bluegrass band (with guests Cody Kilby and Mike Bub). Guitar players will appreciate the left and right hand close-ups that are prevalent throughout this DVD.

18



Rodney Dillard Style Rhythm

Audio CD Tracks 7 & 8

Transcribed by Dan Dan Huckabee Huckabee D

A

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2 3 2

T A B

# &# 5

2 3 2

2 3 2

2 3 2

2 3 2

2 3 2

œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ

0 2 2 2

0

0 2 2 2

0 2 2 2

0 2 2 2

0

0 0

œœ œ œ

œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ nœ #œ œ œ œ œ œ

0 2 2 2

0 2 2 2

0 2 2 2

2 3 2 3

2 3 2

2 3 2

2 3 2

0 0

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2 3 2

4

A

2 3 2

2 3 2

0 2

D

0

2 3 2

2 3 2

2 3 2

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0

0 2 2 2

0 2 2 2

0

D

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J

0

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J

2

0

0

2

4

4

0 2 2 2

0

# &#

2

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13

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0

2 3 2

2

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2 3 2

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9

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2 3 2

2 3 2

2 3 2 0

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2


19

Kaufman’s Corner

by Steve Kaufman

Temperance Reel Hi Friends and welcome back to my world. The holidays are past us and it’s time for woodshedding. Time to get those new arrangements down and jam tunes learned for the upcoming festival season. I’ve stepped up the level of my article a little this time thinking that you all have been with us quite a while and not as “beginnery” as you once were. This arrangement of “Temperance “Temperance Reel” (also called “Teetotaler’s Reel”) has some really nice weaves, pull-offs, and triplets. First, when I play in the key of G, I primarily stay in 2nd position. The rst nger plays all the 2nd frets, second nger the 3rd frets, and so on. This way I stay in an easier position to catch all the 4th fret notes that come about. Because I’ve just told you this, I didn’t mark the ngerings for the left hand. The arrangement starts off with a hammer-on triplet. This is an impact lick. It sets the tone for the way you’re going to

play the rest of the piece. Hit it hard and hit it clear. The next place to watch is the end of measure 3. In measure 2 you will w ill nd a 1st fret note that brings you back to 1st position. Stay there until you hit the 2nd fret slide at the end of measure 3. This will get you back to 2nd position at the end of the run. Watch the arrows and played as marked. When you do the pull-off in the middle of measure 4, you will use the second and rst ngers. First Ending: Here is a sixteenth note pull-off, which is almost like a triplet but the A-to-G notes are hit in the time of one eighth note. To practice this type of lick you play the A to the F# as eighth notes over and an d over to get the time of it: DUDUDUDU = AF#AF#AF#AF#AF#. Then ick off the A to a G without stopping the right hand or changing its timing. Practice the pull-offs in the second ending the same way.

FGM Records Presents:

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Let me know how it treats you. Bye for now, Steve Kaufman

Sentenced to Life With the Blues This is a long awaited recording from one of the top young atpickers in Nashville, the Infamous Stringduster’s Andy Falco, and includes some of Nashville’s most outstanding bluegrass performers in support, including Josh Williams, Cody Kilby, Adam Steffey, Luke Bulla, Jason Carter, Andy Hall, Noam Pikelney, Jim Van Cleve, Andy Leftwich, Alecia Nugent, Rob Ickes, Tim Dishman, and more.

Measure 10: The two up-swings in a row set the timing for this type lick. The same comes about in measure 12. This is similar to the British trumpet blast (Du DA du DA). Measure 14: This would be the same run as measure 12. It’s the theme of the B section but instead of the trumpet blast, I’ve stuck in a Texas-style lick that would replace several B to E notes as found in measure 12. You’ll hear this lick in the B part of “Blackberry Blossom” as well. Try it out. Something new you also may want to try out is something I’ve just started adding in on my web site. These are one- and twomeasure runs that you might nd useful when upping the level of your breaks. Look for “Flatpicking Lick Tricks” in my “Video – Audio Downloads” at www.atpik.com. Check them out and see if they help. More licks are uploaded all the time. I hope you all the best to you and yours for the upcoming new year and hope that you enjoy this wonderful old time song done the modern SK way.

Now on iTunes Come to the Gold Gol d Award Award Winning Acoustic Kamps Old Time and Traditional Week: June 9-15, 2013 Bluegrass Week: Week: June 16-22, 2013 www.atpik.com www.palacetheater.com

Call 800-413-8296 to Order

20



Temperance Reel

Audio CD Track 10 & 11

Arranged by Steve Kaufman

A Triplet Challenge

œ œ œ # œ œ œ œ œ 4 œ œ . œ œœœœœœœœ œ œ & 4 œ œ œ œœœ .. G

3

0

2

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G

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Em

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D7

G

G

4

0

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D7

0

2

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G

# & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ .. Em

1

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3

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10

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(C) 2013 Steve Kaufman Enterprises Enterprises Inc 800-FLATPIK www.flatpik.com Flatpicking Guitar Magazine


21

Temperance Reel (con’t)

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ #œ œ nœ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ # œ & D

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# & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Em

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New from AcuTab - Ron Block guitar DVD! Longtime guitarist with Alison Krauss & Union Station, Ron Block, covers his approach to rhythm, atpicking, nger picking and soloing in this 2-DVD set. The 3 1/2 hour program is available on disc or via download, with a PDF tab booklet. Songs taught (rhythm and lead) include: Now That I’ve Found You When You Say Nothing At All The Lucky One Oh Atlanta

Secrets Faraway Land A Living Prayer Restless

Also available from AcuTab: Available on 2 DVDs or via download for $50 (USD) more details and video trailer at www.acutab.com AcuTab Publications • www.acutab.com

22

• 540-776-6822



Taking It To The Next Level: Bolero by John Carlini Ravel for Flatpickers! Maurice Ravel 1875-1937 Master composer/orchestrator, Ravel was born in the Basque region of France near the Spanish border. His music deeply reects that Spanish inuence, and probably the piece that demonstrates it the most is the exotic, hypnotic “Bolero.” It is also Ravel’s most famous composition and has been played and interpreted by numerous instrumental and orchestral combinations. The piece is characterized by several themes that repeat many times against a constant rhythmic gure as the orchestration changes and the dynamic builds to a climax. If you have never heard “Bolero,” I suggest that you nd a copy online, get in a

comfortable position, close your eyes, and let it take you away for 15 or 20 minutes. It is truly a remarkable and singular listening experience! I wanted to share some information from a professional and knowledgeable source, so I contacted my friend and Music Director of the Discovery Orchestra, conductor, George Marriner Maull, and asked him for some comments. “The score has always ‘sent’ me. It just puts me in one of my best possible states. The one anecdote that I recall is that Ravel himself was purported to have said, ‘Bolero is a piece for orchestra without music.’ Can’t say if he was being self-deprecatingly humble or whether he actually meant to disparage his own work. But I have loved it from the rst time I encountered it. I do remember that my teacher in the

Philadelphia Orchestra hated to play it. I guess from his vantage point in the viola section he wondered how many times he could play beats 2 and 3 pizzicato before he lost his mind altogether. But to me—and I have only conducted the piece twice (once at Carnegie Hall, which was a real thrill)—I just love it and always enjoy listening to it.” Wow! Thank you George Marriner Maull for those comments from the real world of orchestral music. Now back to our world of atpicking acoustic guitar. We too can play and enjoy this great music. I mentioned that there are two themes. The rst theme is the subject of this column. Listen to the audio as you watch the music and then jump in and play the phrases as you get accustomed to the timing. It is learning that phrase timing that is the difcult part. The rhythm is the essential heartbeat of the piece. You need a partner guitarist to perform it successfully. Once you start playing the rhythm part it may remind you of George’s comment about “losing his mind altogether!” btw: George also mentioned that he loved hearing Bolero played on the guitar. Next time we will explore the 2nd theme of Bolero. Think Basque blues! Have a great time with Bolero! Please visit John’s web site (www. johncarlini.com) to sign up for the latest performance and teaching info and acoustic music news. John is now giving live oneon-one lessons on guitar and 5-string banjo using Skype technology. More info is available on the web site.



23

Bolero

Audio CD Track 12

Arranged by John Carlini

q = 100

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Play figure with repeat as Intro...then play 2-bar figure 9 X's. End with low C. 24



Right Hand Exercise: Consistent Attack by Dan Miller Over the course of the last couple of years Tim May and I have been on the road teaching atpicking guitar workshops. The workshop that we have taught the most is titled “Improving Speed, Accuracy, and Tone.” We have taught this workshop to well over 1000 people in the last couple of years and in each workshop we take time to watch every person who attends the workshop play their instrument and we watch what they are doing and offer suggestions. Having the opportunity to watch so many atpickers play, we have noticed a few common problems. I would like to address one of those problems in this article and offer an exercise that might help . Before I talk about the issue that is the focus of this article, I would like to rst mention the three problems that we see most often. The rst is pick direction. The foundation of good timing and note accuracy is correct alternating pick direction. When your pick direction gets turned around, your timing can suffer and your right hand can get tangled up, which leads to ubbed notes. I recommend that everyone work very hard to develop good alternating pick direction habits. I do not feel as though you always need to play with strick down-updown alternating pick direction, however, I do feel that you need to get real solid with alternating pick direction as a foundation before moving on to try any variation or alteration of that pattern. The second problem that we encounter is weak attack. When atpicking your pick should not glide over the string or slide off the string, it should push the string out of the way. The pick should push into the string and the string should bend as if you were drawing a bow. Then the string should pop off of the edge of the pick as the pick pushes through the string. This kind of attack gives you the best tone, the best volume, and the clearest and most focused note. In our workshops, we work on this technique and we demonstrate it in our Improving Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

Technique DVD. In our workshop, when we show folks how to attack in this manner, their tone, note focus, and volume improve immediately and everyone in the room can hear it. The third common problem that we encounter, and the topic of this article, is consistency of attack on all six strings. What “consistency of attack” means is that, in general, you should have the same exact attack on every string. Your pick should attack each string from the same angle, same position, and with the same technique. Where players go wrong is that they do not adjust their right hand position so that their attack is consistent. For instance, if they play a note on the G string it might be strong and solid, but if they then have to play the next note on the D string, and then the next note on the A string, they will sometimes be reaching up with the pick to hit that note on the A string because they fail to slightly move the entire right hand so that the attack on the A string is exactly the same as the attack on the G string. When you don’t adjust your entire right hand, your pick angle of attack will change and the attack will not be consistent. In order to better understand consistent attack, pick up your guitar and play a note on the open low E string. Next, play the open note on the A string, then the D string, then the G string, then the B string, then the high E string. If you do this slowly, you should notice that your right hand is moving slightly before you strike each string so that you hit each string from the exact same position and angle of attack relative to each string. This movement is usually initiated at the elbow so that your hand and entire arm is moving like a recording arm moving across a record album on a record turntable. While the actually pushing of the pick through the string will come from a combination of elbow, wrist, and nger joint action. The placement of the right hand directly over each string usually comes from


the movement of the whole arm in small increments from the elbow. If you execute playing each string in succession slowly, the right hand adjustments will usually occur naturally. However, problems can arise when you start to play fast. Sometimes you want to try and cheat that right hand placement and try to “throw the ball before you’ve caught it,” so to speak. This especially happens when you are moving up the strings and then have to come back. In other words, if you have to play a note on the A string, then the D string, then the G string, then play the next note on the D string and then the A string again. Your mind knows that you are moving up and then coming back, so your right hand doesn’t move enough. The hand tries to just quickly catch that note on the G string by reaching for it and it will end up being weak or ubbed. Almost every time I record myself and I hear a weak note, I’ll go back and analyze why that note was weak, and 8 times out of 10 it is a consistent attack problem. If you notice the same thing in your playing, try the right hand exercise that I’ve put together on the next page. Play through the entire exercise as written at a slow tempo and then try to gradually speed it up. If you notice that you don’t have consistent volume, tone, and note clarity on each and every note as you speed up, slow back down and focus on moving your right hand so that your attack is consistent across all of the strings. When you can achieve that consistency, try speeding it up again and focus on maintaining a consistent attack on every string. You may nd that this exercise is not too tough at a slow tempo, however, when you try to play it really fast, things start to fall apart. Give it a try and see what happens. The exercise is a great right hand coordination drill. You can use it as a nice warm up because I’ve included a number of right hand moves that are challenging at higher tempos. Always start slow, pay attention to good technique and then gradually build up speed. When you reach that tempo where things start to fall apart, gure out why they are falling apart, work repeatedly on the phrase that is giving you trouble and then go back to the beginning and try again. Good luck with this exercises. If you have any particular problem, feel free to contact me: dan@atpick.com.

25

Sharpening the Axe by Jef Troxel Black’s Fork In the last issue I gave an example of a horizontal exercise in one of the less-used atpicking keys, A major. If you’ll go back and review that exercise you’ll have an easier time navigating your way through today’s tune. “Black’s Fork” was written and recorded by Matt Flinner, a great mandolin player. I had the pleasure of teaching with Matt at a ddle camp last summer and this tune came to mind when I was looking for something in the key of A. It was written for mandolin and lays well on that instrument, but it also works for guitar. I had to rearrange a few notes here and there to make it work, but the essence of the tune is intact.


I included left-hand ngerings above the notes in the music to give you an idea of how I would play it, but feel free to substitute your own preferences. Whenever possible, try to make the notes ring together to bring out a nice chordal sound in the melody. I’ve also indicated a number of slurs to smooth out the line, but again, this is largely a matter of taste and your preferences may differ. One of the things I love about this tune is that it has some interesting phrasing as well as three distinct sections. Music is easier to learn when it’s already in your ears so listen to it several times before starting to learn it so you have a strong sense of the song and its form. I also recommend you nd


a copy of Matt’s recording to hear it from the source. Watch the tab and ngerings closely for position shifts as the tune moves horizontally along the ngerboard. This is a great little tune that doesn’t get played enough. It’ll also be a good workout for you in the key of A. I hope a few of you will send me your recordings when you get it down. I hope you enjoy this tune, and I’ll catch you next time.

27

Black’s Fork

Audio CD Track 14

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Arranged by Jeff Troxel

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The Guitar Player’s Practical Guide to Scales & Arpeggios by Tim May & Dan Miller This new 160 page book (with 136 audio tracks on 2 CDs) by Dan Miller and Tim May not only teaches you how to learn scales in a way that is easy, fun, interesting, and informative, it also shows you how to practically apply scales when learning new melodies, embellish ing those melodies to create your own solos and variations, and in exploring improvisations. The scale study method in this book uses six phrases as follows: 1) Scale pattern study and practice 2) Melody recognition practice 3) Improvisation practice 4) Scale mode practice 5) Scale interval practice 6) Ear training practice

The book is broken down into four sections (“The Big Four”): straight scales, folded scales (scale patterns), harmonized scales, and crosspicking arpeggios. By presenting scale and arpeggio knowledge in these six phases and four categories, the authors are able to clearly demonstrate how a knowledge of scales and arpeggios can be easily and practically employed.



29

Weave and Way by Kathy Barwick “Weave and Way” “Weave and Way” is a grand tune that makes a great atpicking tune. It came to the atpicking world via Norman Blake, who suggested that it’s a traditional Scottish tune. It has that very attractive chord change from the I chord to the at VII (here, G to F). It also provides a nice opportunity for – wait for it – crosspicking! For a nice presentation see Steve Palazzo’s “Beginner’s Page” version in FGM Volume 7, Number 3, page 13 (with a similar drone approach in the B part as well!). Steve’s version makes a nice introduction into the tune; my version takes it a bit further, incorporating crosspicking, syncopation, and anticipation into the tune. I present two entirely different A parts. The rst eight bars place the melody in the lower register, with the basic theme presented in the first four bars. The syncopation starts in beat 4 of measure 5, where I both anticipate and syncopate the melody by starting it a beat early (the 3 count in measure 5). I then further syncopate the melody by repeating that F note but not till the “1&” beat in measure 6. The off-beats are “weak” beats. This nicely illustrates two kinds of syncopation: a melody note falling in an unexpected place (the 4-count of the previous measure) or on a weak beat (the 1&). Starting at the end of measure 9, I’ve put the melody up an octave. Here, I’m employing my usual trick where I play out of a partial chord and crosspick or otherwise move through adjacent chords to nd the melody. This passage starts in a “D shape” F chord (see Figure 3) and then moves to an “A shape” (Figure 4) C chord, nally landing in an “F shape” (Figure 5) G chord. In this section, the melody is on the B string. Notice how changing the crosspicking pattern varies the timing of the melody. The forward roll at the end of measure 9 leads to a backward (reverse) roll, then a forward roll in measure 10. The melody notes in the pattern (the F, then the E notes on the 2nd string) fall smack dab on the strong beats; here, beats 1 and 3. No syncopation there. Measure 12 however 30

goes forward then backward. This maneuver moves the rst melody note (the F) back to the 2 beat. On the 3&, I popped back to the 2nd string, putting E note on the 3&, a weak beat. This also illustrates two kinds of syncopation I mentioned earlier: a melody note falling in an unexpected place (the 2 count) or on a weak beat (the 3&). Also, notice that in measures 10, 12, 13, and 14 there are notes (or an “x”) in parentheses. These are notes that might have been played due to their position in the right-hand pattern that is being employed at the moment. It’s important to realize that the right hand crosspicking pattern is the thing. The notes are mufed either because 1) I missed it with the pick; 2) I didn’t intend to play the note but lightly hit it anyway, or 3) my left hand was moving to the next chord shape while my pick was still playing the pattern. I keep the pattern going, whether or not I want to play all the notes in the pattern. This helps to keep the rhythm in the right hand. Don’t worry about any muffed notes. They blend right in, and serve to complete the musical concept contained within the pattern. In measure 14, the forward-reverse roll is completed. The F note lands a full beat late, on the 2 beat, with the E landing on the 3rd beat, where it would be expected. In these three presentations of this melody fragment, we have moved those melody notes around by changing the right-hand pattern. So what about all this pattern stuff? Well, you can take a very simple melody (here, a 3-note descending line) and make it interesting and surprising by making such small changes. You don’t have to think about where to put that melody note. You just let varying crosspicking patterns do it for you. Syncopation surprises us by putting those notes where we don’t expect them, keeping our interest. In the B part, I use a technique where I play out of a left-hand position and strum over two strings. Here, I nd the melody on the 3rd string and use the D note on the 2nd string as a nice drone over the passage. You can see where I set the 2nd string drone note up in measures 17 and 25. Hold the 2nd and 3rd fret notes down with your rst and

second ngers, and use your ring nger to fret the 4th fret when needed. To play this properly, you need a very loose grip on your pick, so loose that it ops a little. You want to glide over the strings, rather than push through them. Pretend that you’re playing rhythm, but just on those two strings. More anticipation happens when I start the F chord a beat early in the end of measures 9 and 11. Finally, there are many notes that could be hammered-on or pulled-off. Measures 3 and 7 show a hammer-on/pull-off passage that could be picked instead. Similarly, measures 23 and 17 start with identical passages; M23 is picked, M27 uses the hammer-on/pull-off. It doesn’t make any difference which way you do this. In many cases, your choice will be made pursuant to the tempo at which you’re playing the song. Faster tempos generally should encourage your left hand to take some of the burden off the right. Don’t however let that fool your right hand into deviating from a strict DUDUDUDU pick direction approach. (The only time to do that is when using the DDU crosspicking pattern, which we’re not using in this arrangement.) That’s it for this time! Enjoy “Weave and Way,” and see if you can’t incorporate some of these strategies into other tunes. See you next time! Kathy Barwick has played guitar since the late 1960s, when she learned folk-style finge rpi cki ng. Kat hy also plays ban jo, resophonic guitar, mandolin and acoustic bass, and has performed over the years with bluegrass and Irish bands. A founding member of The All Girl Boys, Kathy now plays guitar and dobro in the duo Barwick & Siegfried, and resophonic guitar and mandolin with The Mike Justis Band. Kathy’s critically-acclaimed solo recording “In My Life” was released in 2011 on the FGM label.



Flatpick Profle:

Bill Neaves by Dan Miller

There comes a point in time in every serious musician’s life when he or she has to decide whether or not they are going to make playing music their main career choice. A lot of factors weigh into this decision. A career in music can be creatively fullling, but it can often be accompanied by a lot of travel and time away from home and family, uncertain or inconsistent income, no insurance or retirement benets, and a lack of job security. Many very ne musicians opt to keep their music as a hobby and pursue more stable jobs that allow them to stay at home and attend to the needs of their family. In my travels around the country I often run into phenomenal “unknown” players who made the decision to stay home rather than run the roads and become nationally known. Bill Neaves of Missoula, Montana, is one of these players. I met Bill when I was in Missoula last summer teaching a workshop at Greg Boyd’s House of Fine Instruments. I had heard about Bill from a number of Montana atpickers, but had yet to have

the opportunity to meet him. Once I heard him play, I decided that he was someone Flatpicking Guitar Magazine readers needed to know about. He is a ne atpicker and good atpicking teacher. If you like to travel to Montana, I suggest that you take an extra day before or after that y shing trip and get a atpicking lesson from Bill. Bill grew up in Hamilton, Montana, and started to play the mandolin when he was seven years old because it was sizeappropriate. His father was a bluegrass banjo player and was a member of the Montana Old-Time Fiddlers Association. By the time Bill was ten he was playing the fiddle and entering fiddle contests. After only six months of practice, he won the Montana state fiddle contest in the junior-junior division. He continued to win that contest, in various divisions, for seven years in a row. He was a contest ddler between the ages of ten and seventeen and placed as high as sixth at the national ddle championships in Weiser, Idaho.

At the age of thirteen Bill got interested in playing the guitar and began his exploration of that instrument by picking out all of the tunes that he knew how to play on the ddle. He said, “My dad had a tape of Dan Crary atpicking a few tunes and I thought that was cool, so I wanted to learn how to do it.” Bill worked up enough tunes to enter a local atpicking contest. He said, “When I was a kid I was a contest player and so I would enter contests on the ddle, mandolin, and guitar.”

Orrin Star’s

Flatpicking Guitar Primer What The Tab Won’t Tell You

A comprehensive introduction to bluegrass lead guitar p laying by one of America’s top atpicking teachers, this video brings to light vit al, yet often overlooked, subtleties that are at the heart of this exciting style—those things that the tablature won’t tell you. Among them: • how to think like a ddler and get the “dance pulse” into your playing • the central role of strums in lead playing (as applied to Carter-style and Blake-style) • right hand fundamentals like: how to properly alternate your pick, how to modify your right hand technique when strumming, performing double-stops, and rest strokes • the role of double-stops and harmonized leads • using lyrics & singing styles to guide your solos Starting with a simple scale and then progressing through eight cool arrangements of classic tunes, this 2-hour video doesn’t just spoon feed you solos—it provides a systematic guide to the thi nking behind and within the style.

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When Bill was about fteen he went to Missoula to buy his father a Christmas present. He wanted to get him a cassette tape with bluegrass on it. He said, “I went to a shopping mall and looked at the acoustic section in a record store. I didn’t know much about bluegrass. I didn’t know names of bands or musicians at all, but I saw a tape with the tune ‘Jerusalem Ridge’ on it. I was familiar with that song, so that is the tape I bought.” Not knowing what it was, Bill had purchased a copy of Tony Rice’s Church Street Blues album. He said, “I listened to it one day and thought, ‘This is incredible.’ That was my rst taste of bluegrass guitar and it was the rst album that really inspired me.” Bill encountered his next big musical inspiration when he was a sophomore in college at the University of Montana in Missoula. While in the school’s media outlet, where students could check out books and music for free, he came across Bela Fleck’s Deviation album. He said, “I had not heard of these people. It was my rst exposure to newgrass. I thought, ‘This is what I want to do!’ The expressive improvisational approach blew my mind. I got into newgrass and started exploring

Sam Bush, David Grisman, Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck, Mark O’Connor, and Tony Rice music. That music then led me back to listening to Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, and the Stanley Brothers.” In 1989 Bill attended the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop and points to his time at the camp as something that took his playing to the next level in a signicant way. He said, “At the camp I studied with Jim Nunally and Nina Gerber and I had a chance to pick with Wayne Henderson. I learned a lot about rhythm guitar playing from Jim and working with Nina gave me a much better understanding of the ngerboard.” In 1990, at the age of twenty, Bill moved to Missoula and joined a progressive bluegrass band called Pinegrass. He said, “At rst I played mandolin with Pinegrass. We played traditional bluegrass standards, but also played Dawg music. It was my rst experience getting my chops together in a band context.” He stayed with Pinegrass playing the mandolin, and occasionally subbing on fiddle and guitar, for about fourteen years. He took a hiatus from the band in about 2005 and then later rejoined in the guitar spot, a position he still maintains

to this day. The band currently plays an eclectic mix of acoustic music including original tunes, bluegrass, newgrass, Dawg, swing, Irish, country, and folk. While still playing mandolin with Pinegrass, Bill also started his own band, Long Overdue, in 1998. He played the guitar in that band and his wife at that time was also a band member. That band only lasted a few years due to the logistical challenge of nding childcare when the band had a gig. The band recorded a CD that received good airplay and positive reviews, but they did not travel or tour. Bill said, “We had our rst child when I was 21 and so my rst priority was to my wife and kids.” He added that the importance of that short-lived band to his music career was that it brought his focus onto the guitar and helped raise his level of musicianship. In addition to playing in acoustic bands, Bill also played the Telecaster in a country rock band ve nights a week while he was in college, from 1989 through 1990. He said, “Back when I was still a teenager I got a hold of a couple of outlaw country records and started listening to that. Playing the telecaster in the country

Old-Time Gospel Crosspicking

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Learn 30 great crosspicking solos on some of the bestloved Old-Time gospel songs! CD & book with melodies, TAB, chords, etc. Full instruction in the crosspicking style. Useful tips on how to transpose songs to different keys for singers. CD has EVERY solo at both slow and reg. speeds. FREE downloadable Old Time Gospel Lyrics book!

Old-Time Gospel Crosspicking Guitar Solos book/ CD set by Dix Bruce. $24.99 plus shipping. Also: Christmas Crosspicking Solos for Guitar set 31 solos on the most popular and best-loved traditional Christmas songs. $22.99 plus shipping. Order both sets for special price. Details online.

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rock band challenged me to think outside of the atpicking guitar box. It was a good experience.” Bill graduated from college in 1993 with a degree in psychology and child development and started working for a local foster and adoptive youth organization. He worked full time in group care, foster care, and adoption until 2005 when he took a hiatus from his job as director of a foster program. From 2005 to 2007 he played music and taught lessons full time. He said, “I loved teaching music, but I missed working with families and kids, so in August of 2007 I got a new position working at Youth Homes in family development. I negotiated to work four days a week so that I could still work one day a week in my teaching studio.” When teaching students Bill addresses basic right and left hand technique and likes to help his students develop a good knowledge of the fretboard. But his main focus with new students is teaching solid rhythm. Bill said, “Jim Nunally instilled in me a huge respect for rhythm playing. Getting bluegrass rhythm dialed in is not easy.”

When teaching rhythm Bill likes to emphasize how to get the bluegrass drive. He said, “Many students equate drive to playing hard, loud, and fast. But that is not what it is about.” In developing rhythmic drive Bill shows students how to emphasize the picked bass note versus the strum and shows them how to attack the strings when they strum in order to provide drive to their rhythm. He said, “When you strum there should be a percussive puff of air that slams out of the guitar. It is executed like the cracking of a whip.” Once the student learns how to have drive, Bill then shows them how to employ it. He said, “There are a lot of bluegrass songs that are not necessarily hard driving, but they can still have elements of drive that are placed at the right time.” Bill shows students how to apply various rhythm styles and how to change rhythmic technique when backing a vocalist versus a banjo, ddle, or mandolin. He said, “You switch rhythm technique depending on the song and the instrument or

vocalist that you are backing. It comes down to knowing how to listen and respond.” Regarding his development as a rhythm player, Bill said, “In my earlier years I did not focus on rhythm. After I started playing in bands I realized that if there is not a solid-core rhythm, the lead players can be limited. Many times what the lead player plays is contingent on the rhythm. I know that when I play with a good rhythm guitar player, I can play better lead.” Bill also teaches repertoire to his atpicking students, but does not like to teach tunes just for the sake of building repertoire. “When I teach a student a new tune,” he says, “I like them to learn something more about playing the guitar than just a new tune or arrangement.” Bill also likes to present a practical approach to learning guitar theory. “I took a couple of years’ worth of music theory as electives in college,” he recalled. “When I take students down the theory rabbit hole, I like to teach them just what they really need to know for

The Guitar Player's Guide to Developing

Speed, Accuracy, & Tone by Brad Davis & Dan Miller Learn How To Improve:

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In this book (with accompanying audio CD), by Brad Davis & Dan Miller, the authors have designed a step-by-step program that will help you improve your right and left hand mechanics and efciency, increase your volume and speed, allow your notes to ring out more accurately with clarity and rich tone, and improve the overall smoothness and uidity of your solos. This program is designed to help players of all levels. Even though he is a seasons professional, Brad Davis uses the exercises that are presented in this book to warm up for all of his shows and studio sessions and he has taught this method to his private students and workshops attendees (beginner to advanced) with tremendous results. Available in spiral bound hardcopy or as a digital download.

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practical application. I like to give students the right tools at the right time.” With beginning-to-intermediate students, Bill likes to focus on major scales and he teaches how the notes of the scale relate to each other. “If they know the scale, then they will also know the altered notes that are not in the scale.” He likes to teach the fretboard through a modied CAGED system and makes sure that his students know chord formulas so that they can gure out their own chord shapes without having to look at chord diagrams. His main teaching goal is to “teach myself out of a job by preparing the students to be able to eventually teach themselves.” One of Bill’s early mandolin students, Chad Fadely, started studying with Bill when he was fifteen. Chad, now 37, is the mandolin player in Pinegrass and also performs with Bill in a duo. Bill said, “Over the years Chad and I have had a lot of gigs and done a lot of playing together.” Chad currently works at Greg Boyd’s House of

Fine Instruments in Missoula, Montana. In addition to teaching local students in his studio one day a week and every other weekend, Bill also conducts intensive mentoring teaching sessions for students who travel from outside of the local area. These are four-to-six hour sessions. “When I teach the intensives I try to meet the student where they are and take them to the next level.” Most people nd out about Bill’s playing through the video clips that Greg Boyd has posted on his web site in order to feature the guitars that he has for sale in the shop. You can check these out at http:// gregboyd.com/Sound_Clips.html. Bill currently owns and plays two John Walker custom guitars. They are both slopeshoulder, short-scale guitars with red spruce tops. One has mahogany back and sides and the other has rosewood back and sides. For this issue’s audio and tune transcription, Bill has provided an arrangement of “Margaret’s Waltz.”

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Tune List Disc 1 1. Arkansas Traveler 2. Bill Cheatham 3. Billy in the Lowground 4. Blackberry Blossom 5. Cuckoo’s Nest 6. Fisher’s Hornpipe

Tune List Disc 2 1. Old Joe Clark 2. Red-Haired Boy 3. St. Anne’s Reel 4. Temperance Reel 5. Turkey in the Straw 6. Whiskey Before Breakfast

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Maragret’s Waltz (con’t)

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Flatpicking Essentials Volume 4: Understanding the Fingerboard & Moving Up The Neck The fourth book in the Flatpicking Essentials series teaches you how to become familiar with using the entire ngerboard of the guitar and it gives you many exercises and examples that will help you become very comfortable playing up-the-neck. With this book and CD you will learn how to explore the whole guitar neck using a very thorough study of chord shapes, scale patterns, and arpeggios. You will also learn how to comfortably move up-the-neck and back To Order: down using slides, open strings, scale runs, harmonized scales, oating licks, and more. 800-413-8296 If you’ve ever sat and watched a professional players fingers dance up and down the www.flatpickdigital.com ngerboard with great ease and wondered “I www.flatpickingmercantile.com wish I could do that!” This book is for you!

38



Guitar Repair

Marcus Engstrom by Dan Miller

With the economic down-turn that the world has experienced over the past ve years, many guitar players are opting to repair and restore older instruments instead of buying new ones. The only problem with that option is that it is often times hard to nd a repairman who you can trust to do good work. During the past two years I have traveled to Montana several times and every time I go there I’ve heard great things about a builder and repairman named Marcus Engstrom. In 2011 I bought a Fender Stratocaster that Marcus had done some work on and I was very pleased with the result, so I thought I’d let our readers know about Marcus. Marcus Engstrom was born and raised in Sweden. When he was thirteen he began learning how to play the guitar and decided that he wanted to build one. When he was fteen he built an electric guitar in wood shop class at school. When he was sixteen he entered a vocational high school and trained to be a machinist, his father’s occupation. When he graduated from machinist school, Marcus then moved to Norway to attend a musical instrument building school. The school offered classes in building all kinds of musical instruments, from woodwind, to brass, to pianos and organs, and strings. Marcus entered the school’s four-year classical guitar building program. Although his focus was classical guitar, Marcus also learned how to build and repair other styles of guitars while he attended the school in Norway. He built 23 guitars during the four years he attended the school, including classical, electric, archtop, attop, and bass. He said, “I wanted to learn everything.” While he was attending the school, Marcus also worked in a metal shop to help pay for his tuition. At the metal shop he had access to milling machines, metal lathes, and welding equipment and spent time designing and building tools and jigs that helped with guitar making. He earned extra income by building and selling tools Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

and jigs to other students at the school he attended. Marcus was enrolled at the school in Norway from 1999 through 2003. After nishing the course work at the school, he had to travel to Germany and take a test to become a licensed instrument builder and repairman. The test was actually conducted in C. F. Martin’s home town of Markneukirchen. The test lasted three weeks and required each student taking the test to build a guitar and have it judged by a panel. Additionally, the students were required to pass written exams on guitar building theory, guitar woods, guitar nishes, etc. Marcus passed the test and was rewarded a Journeyman Certicate. In January of 2003—about six months before completing his studies in Norway—Marcus had attended the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) convention in Los Angeles with members of the school. Marcus’ dream was to move to the United States after graduation and work building and repairing guitars. At the NAMM convention he met Dan Roberts of the Santa Cruz Guitar Company and asked if he could come to the United States for a three-month apprenticeship after he passed his test in Germany. (See Flatpicking Guitar Magazine , Volume 16, Number 5 for an article about Dan Roberts.) Dan agreed and so in August of 2003, Marcus traveled to Montana and began his three-month apprenticeship. During that time he studied high end guitar repair from Dan. During his three-month apprenticeship with Dan, Marcus started a relationship with Dan’s daughter, Jody. After his three-month tourist visa expired, Marcus had to go back to Sweden, but he maintained contact with Jody and she eventually moved to Sweden to be with him. The two were married in Sweden in 2005 and they moved back to the United States in January of 2006. As soon as Marcus moved back to the United States, he started working for the


Santa Cruz Guitar Company doing warranty repairs and building archtop guitars. Then, in 2008, he decided that he wanted to branch out on his own and started his own repair business in the basement of the Music Villa in Bozeman, Montana. He spent two years working out of the store repairing acoustic and electric instruments. After working out of the store for two years, Marcus decided to build his own shop at his home. He has been working out of his home shop since 2009. Although Marcus has built about fty guitars over the years, he said that the majority of the work he does is repair work on high-end instruments. He is the only authorized Martin repairman in the state of Montana and one of the few in the whole Montana/Idaho/Wyoming/Dakotas region of the country. As a result, he repairs a lot of both new and old Martin guitars. Regarding his decision to focus on repairs, Marcus said, “I really enjoy repairing guitars. There are a lot of great builders in this area of the country because the Gibson shop is here. Some of the people who spent time working at Gibson are now building on their own. People like Dan Roberts, John Walker, Bruce Webber, and Kevin Kopp are all great builders. Those guys focus on building and so I focus on repairing.” Even though much of Marcus’ work is on guitars that are owned by guitar players in Montana, he said that he also has players 39

from all over the United States and Europe sending him guitars to repair. He said the work he does most frequently are fret jobs and neck resets. For fret replacement work, Marcus loves to use the Titanium Gold EVO frets. He said, “Nickel frets are so soft that they wear out in about two years. The stainless steel frets are so hard that they ruin my tools, and they still wear out after a while. The titanium frets are easier to work with. The EVO gold frets are nickel silver with titanium it and extremely durable. The material is not quite as hard on my tools, but the frets last a very long time. The titanium frets are also not as brittle and harsh sounding as the stainless steel frets. I think they give the guitar a warmer tone than stainless.” John Lowell (see Flatpicking Guitar Mag azine , Volume 13, Number 2) had Marcus put the titanium frets on his guitar and he loves them. After Dan Roberts put the titanium frets on Andy Falco’s Collings guitar, Andy raved about them to me. He said that he used to wear out nickel frets in less than a year, but after months of daily use the titanium frets show no wear at all. This past summer, I had Dan Roberts put the titanium frets on my Rockbridge guitar and I have notice the same result. I’ve been playing for hours every day for months and the frets show no wear. In addition to working on acoustic guitars, Marcus also repairs and does set up work on electric guitars. When I was in Bozeman in 2010 I bought a “Road Worn” Fender Stratocaster at the Music Villa. The

guitar was owned by one of the guys who worked at the store and was being sold on consignment. Marcus had remilled the fret board (from a 7 1/4 to a 12 inch radius), and replaced the factory frets with jumbo frets. It has a really great feel to it. Another way Marcus likes to trick out the Fender guitars that come out of the factory in Mexico is by replacing the tremolo block with a Callaham steel tremolo block. He said, “With the Callaham block there is no play in the tremolo arm and I notice an overall improvement in the tone of the guitar once the Callaham block is installed.” Marcus also installs B string benders in Fender Telecasters. While his B-bender is based on the Parsons-White design, Marcus uses ball-bearings to achieve a very smooth and consistent pull. If you have an acoustic or electric guitar that is in need of repair, or if you want to think about upgrading your current instrument by “tricking it out,” Marcus is easy to work with and does a great job. You might want to check him out if you are shopping for a good repair guy. You can nd out more about Marcus at his website, www. engstromguitars.com.

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine Podcast

Bryan McDowell: The Contestant

Bryan McDowell is perhaps the most successful all-around contest player of all-time. During the past two years he has won an unprecedented number of contests on a variety of instruments. Anyone who has not heard Bryan play and is curious about this young talent, should check out Bryan’s new CD.

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We are now broadcasting a new Podcast every month

Interviews, fatpicking tunes, and more. Check it out: http://www.atpick.com/ podcast.html

The Bluegrass Guitar Style of

Charles Sawtelle In addition to the tablature and standard notation of 27 Sawtelle solos, this book also includes: A detailed Sawtelle biography, An in-depth interview with Charles, A section on Charles’ rhythm style, Charles Sawtelle Discography, The rst ever Slade biography, Notes on each solo transcription, and Dozens of photographs. A must for all Sawtelle and Hot Rize fans!

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Now Available as a digital PDF Download at www.flatpickdigital.com! 40



“I Am A Pilgrim” Key of D by Dix Bruce

When I get together with other guitarists and jam in the atpicking/bluegrass style, we tend to play out of the keys of C and G. If we need to be in other keys like A, D, Bb, or Eb, we will more than likely slap on the trusty ol’ capo, move it up and down the ngerboard, and still play out of the keys of C and G. I’m not sure why so many of us do this. It may be just out of habit, or that the keys of C and G are laid out so logically on the guitar for atpicking and bluegrass music. Or it may be that we have our rhythm licks and backup runs so ingrained in C and G that we’re hesitant to venture into less-familiar territories. Every once in a while I’ll nd myself in a musical situation where I need to play in, say, the key of open D or open A, without a capo. When I do that I’m always pleasantly surprised at the different tones that present themselves as well as new places to play familiar notes. The timbers are so different from the usual that they remind me of what I missing by not playing in these “other” keys. A case in point is the song “I am a Pilgrim.” I have played it for over 40 years, always in the key of G, possibly because that’s where I sing the song. Recently I’ve been recording with singer and mandolinist Julie Cline. Julie’s voice is pitched about a fourth or fth above mine. So, if I sing something in the key of G, she’s likely to sing the same song in the key of C or D. Julie sings “I am a Pilgrim” in the key of D. When we played it for the rst time I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity for me to learn something new and play the song out of the unfamiliar key of D as opposed to very familiar and comfortable key of G capoed up in the stratosphere. It did take me a while (and a few mistakes) to settle in and gure out where all the notes were located but the result was very pleasing. I’m suddenly playing “I am a Pilgrim” differently, after 40 years! I found all sorts of new things to try, new ways to play old things, and new sounds everywhere. Here’s one of the solos I came up with in the key of D. Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

I owe a lot of the sound of my original key of G version of “I Am a Pilgrim” to Clarence White’s recording with The Kentucky Colonels on their most excellent LP Appalachian Swing. I brought a lot of that sensibility to the new key of D solos. I don’t think it sounds much like Clarence’s version overall, but here and there I hear echoes of that original inspiration. “I Am a Pilgrim” is one of those songs that starts out on the V chord, which is an A chord in the key of D. Experiment with changing the A into an A7, or dominant seven, chord. I use several slides throughout the solo and you’ll see the rst in the second full measure. When you’re counting measures don’t start with the pickup (lyrics “I am a”). Measure 1 begins with the lyric “pilgrim.” In measure 3 I slide up to a 5th string, 5th fret D and follow it with an open 4rth string D. There are other slides in measures 4, 7, 11, and 13, and a double-stop slide in measure 9. In the spaces after the longer notes of the melody, after lyrics like “pilgrim,” “stranger,” and “through” are sung, I use a modied G-type run to ll in. You’ll see it for the rst time in the third full measure and again in measures 7 and 15. Most of the passages in the solo should be playable by advanced beginners and intermediate flatpickers. Probably the most difcult part is the aforementioned double-stop slide in measure 9. Follow the suggested fretting finger numbers, play it slowly, and you’ll be okay. There’s a hammer-on double-stop in measure 10 and 11. This is one of those licks that I modied from Clarence’s original. I just love it! I nd it difcult to play “I Am a Pilgrim” without it, no matter what key I’m in! Once you can play the solo as written in the key of D—yeah I know, I say that in every column don’t I? — try to move it from the key of D down one string to the key of open A. Move the whole arrangement, all the notes, down in pitch by one string. Your rst notes will be played on the open E string. You’ll have to adjust a few of the


notes to accommodate the new chords and the new key, but if you keep your fretting hand poised in the chord you’re playing, most of the work will be done for you and the notes will be automatically fretted. You will run out of real estate on the low end. What can you do? Move the notes up an octave or improvise something else. This type of transposition might be challenging at rst but once you get the hang of it, you can easily move solos, phrases, licks and patterns across the strings between keys like G and C, D and A, C and F, even E and A. It’s a wonderful and useful skill to develop. Good luck in all of those new keys! Dix’s latest book/CD set is All-Time Favorite Parking Lot Picker’s Mandolin Solos. Recent publications include The Parking Lot Picker’s Songbook series and Gypsy Swing & Hot Club Rhythm, Vol. I & II for guitar and mandolin. His most recent guitar book/CD sets are Oldtime Gospel Crosspicking Guitar and Christmas Crosspicking Solos for Guitar. Visit Dix’s website (www.musixnow.com) for information on new releases and tons of free music, tablature, and MP3s to download and learn.

www.atpickingmercantile.com 800-413-8296 41

I Am A Pilgrim

Audio CD Tracks 20-21

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Arrangement © 2012 by Dix Bruce • www.musixnow.com 42



Music Theory:

Mastering the Fingerboard Technical Studies for Flatpickers by Michel A. Maddux

Range Extension and “Alan’s Bane” It can seem formidable to move up and down the neck. The exercises I provide in this article are examples of extending the range beyond rst position using the common techniques of slides and an open string. Exercise 1 uses a slide. From 2nd position, play the B (the A string, 2nd fret), then slide up to the 7th position in time and continue the phrase. Exercise 2 shows the use of an open string to move down from 7th to 1st position. The exercise begins in 7th position. In measure 3 you play the open G and D strings while simultaneously moving the left hand back into 1st position to complete the phrase.

In Exercise 3, the slide and open strings are both used. Slide up to 6th position in the rst measure, then back down to 5th position. When you sound the open G string, move the left hand into 3rd position to complete the phrase. Exercise 4 in the key of D is a way to move from eighth position back to rst position while playing through a long D phrase. This phrase also uses the open D string to move the hand position at the end of measure 4 and the rst two notes of measure 5. The nal exercise is a phrase that I like to use in the key of G. Sound the open B string and you have time to move into 7th position to play the phrase. About the Tune – Alan’s Bane I composed this etude to demonstrate

some of these types of range extensions in a song. The rst phrase is in 1st and 3ird positions. The second phrase (second 8 measures) uses exercise 3 for a variation. In the B section exercise 1 is used to slide up to the 7th position where the melody is completed. Have fun with this song and let me know how you are doing! Have fun, and keep on pickin’! Mike’s guitar music can be heard regularly in the Rocky Mountain West. Contact information on recordings, books, and correspondence can be found at http:// www.madduxband.com and at http:// reverbnation.com/mikemaddux. Search Facebook and YouTube for the latest clips and news.

New Standards for Flatpicking Guitar Original Flatpicking Guitar Tunes Performed in Duo by Many of Today’s Top Pickers Call 800-413-8296 www.flatpickingmercantile.com

Flatpick Jam The Complete Package! On this DVD-Rom disc you will nd all of the Flatpick Jam (play-along) tracks for the 48 tunes that appear on all of the Volumes of Brad Davis’ Flatpick Jam series. Additionally, in the “Flatpick Jam Tabs” folder on this disc, you will nd a folder for each tune that includes transcriptions provided by Brad (the numbered transcriptions), plus any arrangement of that particular tune that has appeared in Flatpicking Guitar Magazine during our rst 10 years of publication. This means that you will get anywhere from 4 to 10 different variations of every tune tabbed out. Additionally, the audio tracks that are companions to those FGM arrangements are also included. This is the ultimate Flatpick Jam package and a must have resource for anyone who wants to build their atpicking repertoire, learn variations, and study different arrangements of all of the standard jam session tunes. And you are able to practice all of your arrangements at four different tempos by jamming along with Brad Davis!

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43

PICKIN’ FIDDLE TUNES by Adam Granger

photo here

Clan Granger Gaes Home In November, my wife, Renee, and I took a ten-day trip to Scot, , . l ti -i f st er et d s et er a o o i n et d r a o n n l a o s u e n n a s o t oi i s a n land to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary and to take the honeymoon t Y g f e d n a a r si t o e a ni e n e t t , e S h n t u n t s t o e a r t t i m e s r m h we had neither the time nor the money to take when we were married. l n A a i o r e v t u r re le ig ht fo d e m n t E a q e e d p a h e o h r a f d t e a I had hoped to get a Granger tartan necktie, but the Granger tartan is very e s e e c g r h G B e tt ts e oly ie hgi hT sit rht reh tse r e c i e k p rare, having been redesigned by James Granger in the ’70s, and not being n n NI A T il ec ee niS ia hts n .to ret hit T.e dn x A a f si b w d t m e e a one of your more common tartans at any rate. It doesn’t matter, because I . D s s .t o s d a t , d et u te n i a e o e e b A o y s n f r o b h d i a  l n b u u i only wear ties to court and to funerals, and I’d hate to drag the family colors r a n t a a t l t E n t p a y c d h a y p i o h l h s e s i t m s d t a R t b i gi mi a a a o a n to either venue. a a s t t s c b c w a i e E E We spent several days in Edinburgh, then rented a car and drove up to the Isle of Skye—ironically named, since one can never see the Sky , - n t : p - , e . - s e u a e d n h p . y t n i l e k u r a a o s i g u p y e l o there. The only difculties we encountered were understanding the brogue, t p e c t r - u r l s s n m t c t b S t e e e n , a h w s n p ” e t h r h w n g o c n I R n which sounds a little bit like someone throwing up in their mouth, and the a w g c h d t , o w i t t o e t d a n e . i n n y E a r d d f o e h a p n s t d k a n u o o s u w e s m p r - e driving: funny that a country that old hasn’t learned which side of the road n R N n i u e n t a o r a s r t e r t e o e h l e “ e t e t s t a w o O N k t t n n b n l u m p to drive on. The Scottish people are wonderful and friendly and we had a I a o f t s w o t u a o r F n i s o t a d s y r d l n i G s m o n y d -  s u a h a n u h p n o p magical time. t l t n o e o e E i u h t n e w , i t p p u h s i k o t t h w B n T s l a s a a g d n d h r i To commemorate our trip, I offer here three Scottish and quasi s k w . e t e i t u n r s c c u e e h g o g n a w i o t o h r T i n s  a h d P d e s t Scottish tunes and songs. The rst two— Grifn Hornpipe and The Rose Tree —are, generally, British Isles tunes, with owner - Spice theme tune. ship co-claimed by England and Ireland as well as ScotGrifn Hornpipe is set between the rst and fth land. They’re both standard-form D tunes, and lay very frets. As such, it can be fretted out of the rst or secnaturally on the guitar. ond position (with the second position being the second The third— Scotland the Brave— is strictly Scot- through fth frets). I it unconsciously between the potish in origin and pedigree. It is such a popular tune sitions, an approach of which I am a staunch advocate. that it was voted second only to Flower of Scotland as The Rose Tree is very quarter-note heavy, so Scotland’s unofcial national anthem. You may not there’ll be lots of downstrokes here. The B part does go recognize the title, but you will undoubtedly recognize up the neck, but the aforementioned downstroke/quarthe melody. In addition to its free-standing ubiquitous- ter note nature of the tune makes this easy. Those 5th-, ness, the rst strain of Scotland the Brave, slightly re- 7th- and 9th-fret notes could be played with any of a worked, forms the rst half of the rst half of the Old variety of ngerings.

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the B string, we could strum a D chord on the D, G and B strings, which constitute a I-V-I power chord. The effect of these strums is that of military drums rat-atatting in the downbeats of each measure. Yet another shining example of the wondrous versatility of the guitar: It’s a breath mint. No, it’s a candy mint!

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All right, friends, there you have the columnal interpretation of my trip to Scotland. The older I get, the less I like traveling, but if ya gotta go somewhere, Scotland is tops in my book. We went off-season; the weather was extraordinary, for November (or for any time, really); the scenery was spectacular; and, the people were gracious and funny and sometimes-hard-to-understand and just very, well, Scottish. But I’m still sorry I didn’t track down a Granger tartan necktie. While in Scotland, Adam and his wife, Renee drove eight hundred miles in a rented Kia See’d. They stayed two nights at a hotel in Edinburgh, one in a B and B in Balloch, one in a Hotel in Fort William, three in a hotel in Portree, and two in a different hotel in Edinburgh. Adam tried climbing up the 280-step monument to S ir Walter Scott, but the circular starcase became too conned that he had to stop twenty steps from the top. Adam’s favorite location was Neist Point, on the Isle of Skye.



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By Brad Davis Timing Practice Recently Dan Miller and I were touring the mid-west conducting a series of workshops that we titled “Improving Your Rhythm & Timing, and Developing a Groove.” During the two-hour workshops we worked on timing exercises, we presented and demonstrated a variety of right hand rhythm patterns and techniques, talked about bass runs and passing chords and got into a few more advanced techniques such as “pushing” and “stabbing.” During the rst part of the class we worked with the timing exercises that I presented in this magazine last year, back in Volume 16, Number 4. After working through those basic exercises, we proceeded to work through harder and more complex rhythm ideas. What I realized in going through all of this material in the workshop is that the things that I practice everyday where not the more complex or more advanced techniques, but the very simple timing exercises. Timing can be a very subtle thing. There are a lot of players who have a good sense of time. In my experience, however, there are far less that have a really great sense of time. In order to maintain my “timing chops,” I work every day on my timing and I accomplish that by working with very simple exercises and a drum machine. Speaking with other professional players who I admire, I nd that they do the same thing. It is like the professional basketball

player who still practices his free throws and lay ups everyday. I recently taught at a workshop in Nashville with Kenny Smith and we discussed rhythm. Kenny indicated to me that he still spends a lot of time practicing just rhythm. During my workshops with Dan Miller, Dan told a story about talking with David Grier about practice and David said, “I wish I had more time to practice.” Dan asked, “If you were to sit down and practice, what is it that you would practice.” David said, “I’d work on my timing.” Whenever I get spare time to practice, I do the exact same thing. I feel like timing is something that is the most important thing to practice everyday. When you practice you need to develop the ability to keep an awareness of time in your brain at all times, no matter what happens. If you sit down and deliberately practice with a metronome in your home, you may feel as though you are really nailing your timing. And you may be really nailing it. But, can you continue to nail it when you are on stage and the sound isn’t great, or there is some other distraction? Can you nail it when you are nervous, or tired, or excited? Can you nail it when you are playing a slow song? Can you stay with it when you are playing a really tough phrase in a tune? Can you stay with it while playing a really simple phrase? These are instances when your mind can loose track of the time and you start to rush or drag. The ability to really stay in the pocket all the time is tough when your brain becomes

distracted. In order to train yourself to be able to stay in the pocket, you have to have the ability to always have part of your brain aware of timing all of the time, no matter what happens in the jam, in the studio, or up on stage during a show. The way I work to maintain that is to practice simple timing exercises everyday. I make sure that I spend time shooting my free throws. The tab below shows a very simple timing exercise. It is the rst line of the exercises that I provided back in Volume 16, Number 4. In that issue I demonstrated how to play 4 quarter notes per measure along with a timing device—playing a note every time that the device clicked. Most of you would probably nd that exercise to be very simple. What I’d like you to do is get out your timing device (metronome or drum machine) and try this exercise at 60 beats per minute. I like 60 bpm because it is slow enough that there is a fair amount of space between the notes and so it is a little bit challenging to hit right on top of the beat each time. Set the volume of your timing device so that when you hit your note it will cancel out the sound of the timing device. That way you’ll know that if you hear the sound of the click, you are not right on top of the beat.

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After you get a feel for that, I’d like you to then try to play your note in between the clicks. In other words, play nothing on the clicks and try to hit your note exactly between them. This is a little more challenging if you are not used to it. Next keep the same tempo, but cut the time in half by playing right on top of every other click. Then double time it by playing both a note on every click and a note in between every click. First try this exercise with all down strokes, then try it with alternating down-up strokes. Try it with all down strokes rest strokes and try it using swing strokes on the down stroke. Once you get comfortable playing down strokes on every click and up strokes in between every click, next try to practice an accenting exercise. If we count time as “1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and” and play down strokes on the numbers and up strokes on the “ands”, rst try to accent every “1” beat by playing it harder and louder than all the others. Then try to accent another down beat every time, say the “3” beat. Then move it to another down beat, say the “2”, and then try it on the “4”. Next try to accent an “and” beat, say the “and’ of the “2.” Then try another “and” beat, etc. Then try other combinations. Try accenting the “1” and the “and” of the “3” for example. Then try to mix that up by changing to other beats, using accents on a variety of down beats and off beats. During this exercise you continue to play the alternating pick pattern and play a string on every down swing and every up swing, but you are accenting some notes by playing them harder than others. As you play it might help to count to yourself, or count out loud.

Next, try leaving some beats out, but continued to move your right hand up and down as you practice. For instance, try a pattern like this:

Kaufman University Coming Near You!

www.flatpik.com Steve Kaufman

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Three Time National Guitar Champ The World’s Guitar and Mandolin Teacher A Decade of Gold Awards for the Best Camps and Conferences

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Practice that for a while and then invent new patterns. A cool thing to do to help you get the feel of any given pattern is program your drum machine to play the pattern that you have invented. There are some great drum machine apps for the smart phone. Play along with the drum machine pattern until you get the rhythm in your head, then go back and practice the same exercise with a drum machine pattern that just gives you clicks on the down beats. Then turn the timing device off and continue the pattern. I recommend that whenever you practice timing, you work for a while with the timing device, but then turn it off and try to hear the time in your head without the device. Eventually you need to internalize the time without relying on the timing device, so it is good to practice that every day. If you will focus on timing with simple exercises like these every day, your awareness of time will improve, your awareness of the beat and groove will improve, and you will be able to maintain time no matter what happens on stage or in the jam. Good luck!

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Classic Bluegrass by Steve Pottier

“Pain in My Heart” Earl Scruggs’ banjo playing on the Flatt & Scruggs song “Pain in My Heart” inspired me to work up a guitar break for it. I especially liked his opening slide to G followed by the hammer to the D note. What the heck?!? That’s just the melody! Maybe that’s why I liked it. Okay, so I’m following Roland White’s advice on making up a new break (“composing”) to a song. Start with the melody, add slides or hammers or little runs to make it stand out for you, and soon you have your own individual version of the song. I would add that it’s OK to steal parts from the best (like Earl). So rst the melody (see Ex. 1). If you listen to the song a few times, you will notice some oddities in the chord progression, namely, Lester adds an extra beat between phrases that Earl leaves out in his solos. This is a not uncommon practice, probably to keep the instrumentals more to the point. Interestingly, the ddle leaves the extra measure in. This can be confusing, especially in a jam. The best recommendation I have for that situation is to make sure that the soloist plays in a way that is very clear about where he is in the melody. Alternately, before the song starts tell every one “no pauses in the breaks” or “play with pauses, just like the vocal.” This break has no pauses (like the way Earl played it). Ex. 1 is the melody as Lester sings it, at least to a rst approximation. As I start composing a break, I’m looking to incorporate most of the notes. I’m looking to nd ways to play them that will be strong on the guitar, and preferably simple and/or easy to play. I start with Earl’s slide, followed by a double hammer (a la “Foggy Mt. Breakdown”) but he quickly leaves me behind with banjo-ness so I resort to a slide on the rst two strings with my rst nger, and a backslide on the 3rd string as I try to imitate what Lester does with his voice. As I reach the D chord, I’m playing an “inside” D: skip the 1st string, the second nger is on the 3rd fret of 2nd string, rst nger is on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string, and the ring nger is on the melody note, 4th fret of the Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

4th string. Whenever I go to D in this song this is the position I’m playing of thinking of. The next part of the melody could easily be played out of this position, but the notes felt thin or weak to me. Moving up on the 3rd string put me in a sweet spot on my guitar, which is the middle of the neck, and it gives me much stronger notes with much more tone (a win-win). This is an ideal place to use it, as the ngering is uncomplicated and it’s not a rapid passage. Slide up with the third nger, then again up to the 9th fret. Back down to the 7th fret with the rst


nger, and down to the 5th fret with rst nger, setting up for the third nger to slide on the 4th string. The second half of the song begins the same way, but ends with an eighth note run, a transposition of something Clarence White used (I believe he got it from Joe Maphis). The melody notes are still there, just a little more hidden. Leave your rst nger on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string as you do this.

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Pain In My Heart Melody

Arranged by Steve Pottier

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Ó Ó January/February 2013

Audio CD Tracks 29-30

Pain In My Heart

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Arranged by Steve Pottier

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53

Beware of Jam Sessions by Dan Crary Difcult Flatpicking Truths: #1 Beware of Jam Sessions Ok, Ok, I know I’ll get mail on this one, but we might as well begin our occasional series on “difficult truths” with a real doozey. Here it is: jam sessions may be bad for your playing. Side effects may include tendonitis, imprecise striking of strings, reduced musical sensibilities, inability to carry a tune, headaches, anger because you didn’t play well, and the odd sense that maybe the Force has moved on elsewhere. A jam session is where you can play badly and nobody will notice the difference. And not only sloppy playing, there’s all that kicking back, noodling around, stupidly fast tempos, showing off, goong around, drinking beer, yucking it up, and generally getting in practice playing badly. Now I hear

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somebody saying, “Aw, Dan, don’t be such a grouch… you just described a really great party!” But I persist: jam session fun often comes at a price: 1) your playing gets worse, 2) you miss an opportunity to advance your playing, and 3) you participate in one of the darker sides of bluegrass culture. First, your playing goes to hell. When I was in graduate school about 30 years ago I had a chance to play a walk-on gig with some of my great music friends from Kansas City. Every Saturday night we would gather with no rehearsal, and play three sets, just going from one tune and song to the next. It was fun. The money was modest, but I thought it was a good chance to keep in practice while in school and not gigging. I loved these guys and the music, but to my dismay playing in that undisciplined way was, for me, a downer: I had the eerie feeling when it ended that I was a worse player than a few hours before, not because they were playing badly, but because I was. So here’s the deal: if you’re at all serious about wanting to be a better player a jam session can be dangerous. First, the discipline you’ve worked up in a workshop or lessons or before a performance is easy to let go of and not so easy to get back. It’s a scary fact: you can get in practice playing badly… the rut can get deeper. Second, you miss an opportunity to advance your playing. The best practice you’ll ever do to advance your playing is not that repetitious, behind-closeddoors, solitary exercise we mistakenly call “practice.” The best practice is a performance where you play something you have worked to polish and perfect something in order to play it for people. If you’re in goong-off mode at a jam, you’re not doing anything like this. But wait, you object, you can’t put on a performance at a jam; it’s against the rules. But no, you can follow the rules of the jam, taking turns, etc, but when it’s your turn to play, you can play as though you are in Carnegie Hall and

putting your best foot forward. Having said that, I’m showing my hand a bit: below, I will admit that jamming is something you actually should do, but before that, before I be nice again, I have to mention one other danger. A third problem with jam sessions is that for some of us, they have become a retreat where we hide out from our own weaknesses as a player. In the 90s our band California played a concert with two or three other major bluegrass bands of the period. It was to be a stage full of great players in a nice theater, and the ticket price was modest. Problem was, the promoter was afraid the local musicians wouldn’t come, because “they only want to jam,” he said. So he tried to woo these folks out of this folly by renting an extra room, and organizing a jam before the show for these locals, free. Sure enough, the local pickers came, jammed (some of the famous professionals went out and joined in), ate and drank the guy’s refreshments, and when it got to show time, put up their instruments and went home, thank you very much. ‘Got two things to say about this. First, if you want to play a little and be satised with that, that’s a beautiful thing. It beats watching TV or playing video games, and we would never take that blessing in your life away from you. No kidding, it’s your guitar and you can play what you want to. But the second thing is if you do want to improve, to see real progress in your guitar playing, don’t be afraid to listen to and see players who are better than you are. In particular, bluegrass music was never only a jam music, it was originally a concert phenomenon, performed by virtuoso players whose job it was to blow an audience’s mind with great music. Want to be a better player? Then budget for tickets, go to concerts, let yourself be inspired by great playing, and blow out the cobwebs with rst-rate live music. It’s an old cliché: you hear a great player and joke that you want to go home and break your guitar. No, no, don’t even say



that stuff: be grateful for great live music, because its very presence in your ears, its ability to sink in and make you think and feel your own music differently, will inspire you to reach further and play better, and you’ll need to have your guitar in one piece when that kicks in. OK, so now I can admit that there is an important place in your guitar playing for jamming. Of course, all the above catastrophes really can and do adhere to jam sessions. But they can also be avoided, while you gain the benets. First and foremost, the benet of people peaceably sharing music is hugely important in this warped and troubled world. It is a foil to much of the stuff that makes us crazy in our lives, and the chance to share music with friends is priceless. Far be it from me to throw cold water on a nice “pickin’ party” where we yuck it up and quaff an ale. Secondly, a jam is an occasion for you to actually do the things you have worked on as you learn. Even though it’s a jam, you don’t have to play badly. It’s your turn in a jam to play a break instead of playing undisciplined, to gather up all your resources and play with precision, clarity, dynamics, nesse, and all those things you’ve strived to get into your playing. Third, jam sessions have implicit rules about who plays when and how and for how long. An important thing especially

for young people is to learn the skill of observing patterns in behavior, to pick up on the implicit rules that guide a jam just like they do many social situations. Fourth, another jam session rule is to always “steal” ideas from other players. Chet Atkins famously said that it’s not stealing, it’s just research. Watch closely what a good player does, and take it home. Get him or her to show you, or take a notebook and write it down. More on this at a later time, but it’s amazing how much guitar music, how many licks or runs, you can take home by describing them to yourself in words. And you’ll notice something wonderful about such “stolen” ideas: when you get them home they may not be exactly what the other player played, but they will sound different, powerful, livelier. When one musician learns something from another, the force really moves. Oh, and one more thing to conclude this rant: go buy a ticket to a live concert where a great musician will knock your socks off, inspire you to move on up. A little live music is a serum that injects a mixture of humility and ambition, a jolt that comes out as motivation. “Today I will play better than yesterday, and not as well as tomorrow.”

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Diaphragm Support By Kacey Cubero

Here are a few timeless exercises to help you get in touch with, and increase the amount of control you have in your diaphragm. These will help you build stamina and strength. Exercise 1: Keep your lips relaxed and together. Tongue is also relaxed. Take a nice deep breath. Inhale deep. Shoulders should not raise and abdomen should expand. On the exhale make a sort of motor sound, vibrating your tongue and lips (listen to track 31 on the audio CD). Try holding it steady with no variation for four seconds. Think of this exercise as comparable to completing a phrase in a song. Any fluctuation or interruption would mean a lack of, or break in diaphragmatic support.

Exercise 2: Now let’s try holding exercise one for eight seconds (track 32). Once you take in a good inhale, exhale your breath steadily so that there is no uctuation in the execution of the exhale and/or exercise. What you are trying to do is hold this constant for eight seconds. If, for example, you nd that you are cutting the end short, you are probably running out of breath and have exhaled all of your breath support too early on the exhale. Therefore, keep in mind that the exhale should run steady from beginning to end in it’s entirety. Once you have this down, you can try a few more seconds and so on... You never really need to go past twenty seconds. You will also notice as you work your way up, that you are more able to complete your phrasing with less effort and you will have

more breath to incorporate frills and stylistic gestures as you sing. Exercise 3: If you do this exercise correctly, you should feel a tickle or even an itch at the tip of your nose and lips. We are looking to bring the breath up to, and resonating through, the nasal and head cavity. Mouth should be closed and lips and tongue are relaxed. Take in a deep breath and on the exhale, make a hmmmm sound (track 33). As if, you are saying “hmmmm, I wonder what we are having for dinner tonight” or “hmmmm, that’s interesting.” This exercise is helpful in getting you into healthy breathing habits and connecting the dots from inhalation, exhalation and diaphragmatic support.

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57

CD Highlight

Greg Blake with Jeff Scroggins & Colorado by Dan Miller

For the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to travel the country and set up the Flatpicking Guitar Magazine booth at a lot of music festivals. I’ve been averaging about 20 festivals a year for the past two years. I love going to festivals because not only do I have the opportunity to meet a large number of atpicking guitar players, but I also get to hear a lot of great music. In 2012 one of the bands that caught my ear was Jeff Scroggins and Colorado. Scroggins, a national banjo champion, has put together a talented group of musicians and singers and the festival crowds are absolutely loving their music and stage show. The current band consists of Jeff Scroggins on banjo, his very talented son Tristan on mandolin, Annie Savage on ddle and vocals, K. C. Groves on bass and vocals, and Greg Blake on guitar and vocals. Each member of the band expertly lls their role. They know how to play and sing hard driving bluegrass, they know how to rip through complex original instrumentals, and they can also lay back and play the pretty stuff. Their singing is top notch and their song selection is fairly traditional, with just the right amount of a progressive sound thrown in to keep it fresh and interesting. After I saw the band play for the second time this year, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I spoke with the band’s guitar player, Greg Blake, and told him how much I liked his guitar picking. Greg’s modest response was, “I’m mostly a singer. My guitar playing is pretty simple.” While some of Greg’s lead guitar work was not the most complex hot and ashy stuff I’d ever heard, the fact is that I love old school, straight-forward, sparse lead guitar playing. My feeling is that too many lead guitar players in bluegrass bands these days feel as they have to get up there and ll every moment of their solo with hot licks and reworks. For me, that kind of playing can get very old. I would much rather hear a tasteful, well-executed, soulful, simple, melody-based solo that ts the feel and groove of the song, than a bunch of hot fast licks any day. What I heard out of Greg’s guitar was very refreshing. He played the melody, he was tasteful, and he left some breathing 58

room. On the complex tunes, he had the ability to play complex stuff, but in the simpler tunes, he laid back. It was good guitar playing. Greg gave me the band’s CD, Jeff Scroggins and Colorado , and as I drove away from the Santa Fe festival I put it in the CD player and heard more of that same great guitar picking. If you are frustrated with your playing because you feel like you are not the “hottest” guitar player in your town, I recommend that you take a listen to someone like Greg Blake. What Greg does on the guitar is awesome, the fans love it, and he proves that you don’t have to be a hot and ashy guitar player to be great. A West Virginia native, Greg got his rst guitar when he was seven years old. He was not from a musical family, but was inspired to learn how to play the guitar by watching television shows like The Johnny Cash Show and Hee Haw. At rst Greg was interested in learning how to play the guitar so that he could accompany his singing and what he liked to sing was country music. By the time he was about ten, however, he had purchased record albums by Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, and the Osborne Brothers from a bargain record bin. He said, “Once I heard those records I was hooked on bluegrass.” About the same time he became a bluegrass music enthusiast, Greg met a couple of brothers who lived in South Charleston who knew how to play bluegrass. “Leonard and Charles McKenzie lived in my neighborhood and, at one time, their father and uncle were in a local bluegrass

band,” Greg recalls. “Charles was my age and Leonard was a couple of years older. Once I met those guys, we started jamming a lot. They also had a bunch of bluegrass music on reel-to-reel tapes and old LPs. It was through those recordings that I was rst exposed to Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Larry Sparks, George Shufer, and this new young guy named Tony Rice.” Although he had originally picked up the guitar so that he could accompany his singing, by the time he was about eleven—and inspired by the playing of Norman Blake, Doc Watson, and Larry Sparks—Greg started to learn how to play lead. He said, “I would sit and listen to the records and try to duplicate what those guys were playing. Other than that, I was just picking with Leonard and Charles. I would even go over to their house early and help them get their chores done so that we could pick the rest of the day.” In about 1980, when Greg was old enough to drive, he attended his first bluegrass event, the Vandalia Gathering. Now in its 37th year, the Vandalia Gathering, in Charleston, West Virginia, is presented by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History and brings together the nest of traditional Appalachian musicians for a weekend of picking. Greg remembers, “This was my rst exposure to a large gathering of acoustic musicians. I walked around and got into some of the jam circles and had a great time.” In 1982 Greg moved to Overland Park, Kansas, to attend Kansas City College and Bible School. As soon as he arrived in Kansas, he started to investigate the bluegrass music scene and became involved in local jams that were hosted by area bluegrass clubs. “I attended jams, went to Missouri and Kansas festivals, and enjoyed the whole mid-west bluegrass scene.” Greg eventually became good friends w ith Todd Davis, a banjo player about his age, and an older ddle player named Ed Sellers. Ed played for one of the popular local bands, The Bluegrass Missourians. In about 1991, Ed invited Greg to sit in at one of the band’s practice sessions. Greg didn’t know it at the time, but the invitation to sit in with the



Greg Blake band at the practice session turned out to be a veiled audition. At the time the band was a four-piece ensemble (guitar, bass, ddle, and banjo). The band’s rhythm guitar player was interested in switching over to mandolin and so the guitar spot was opening up. After the practice session Greg was offered the job. Greg stayed with The Bluegrass Missourians for fteen years. During that time the band played throughout Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Arkansas. While with the Missourians Greg was nominated nine times for the “Guitar Player of the Year” award for the Midwest division of the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America (SPBGMA). He won that award ve consecutive years (1998 through 2002). He also won the Kansas State atpicking contest in 1995. In addition to working with the band, Greg served as a preacher at a local Overland Park church, taught at the Bible College, and worked on his Master’s degree in Divinity. Greg’s work in ministry was bi-vocational: he worked in ministry and held down another job. He said, “I was working about 75 to 80 hours a week, plus playing music. In 2007 the opportunity for a ministry job with full-time support opened up in Colorado, so I moved my family to the bedroom community of Conifer, Colorado—about 30 miles southwest of Denver. My house is up at about 9000 feet and I am now the pastor of a non-denominational community church.” In addition to preaching at the community church Greg hosts a weekly oldtime gospel radio program and facilitates a “bluegrass gospel church” from which he is affectionately referred to as “The Flat Pickin’ Preacher.” Greg said, “For the Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

bluegrass gospel church we invite pickers to bring their instruments and come play old hymns and gospel songs. We play and sing for a while, then I give a short message and then we open it up for jamming.” After moving to Colorado, Greg also put together a bluegrass band called Mountain Holler. In 2009 Jeff Scroggins moved to Colorado and Greg met him at the wedding of a mutual friend. They had a chance to jam for several hours at the reception and hit it off musically. At the time Jeff was playing with the Blue Canyon Boys, but was interested in putting his own band together. Jeff asked Greg if he would be interested in being part of the band. The band launched in 2011 with Jeff Scroggins on banjo, Tristan Scroggins on mandolin, Greg on guitar, Annie Savage on ddle, and Sebie Denson on bass. The group recorded their CD in the fall of 2011 and it was released in the early spring of 2012. Greg said, “We recorded the whole CD in two days. We poured through our collective repertoires and came up with the twelve tunes that are on the disc.” The CD contains a good mix of traditional sounding bluegrass vocal tunes and hot instrumentals. Greg has a strong lead bluegrass singing voice and Sebie and Annie sing tight harmony. It is good solid bluegrass singing. All of the instrumentalists are top notch and create interesting and engaging solos on each and every tune. The CD from, start to nish, is a very pleasant listening experience. It is the kind of CD that keeps returning to my CD player as I’m traveling down the road. The song selection draws from the bluegrass repertoire, but without just recycling the same old tunes. Although many of the songs will be familiar to the acoustic music enthusiast, most of the tunes are more obscure than those played by your average regional bluegrass bands—which is refreshing. Of the 12 tunes on the recording, three are instrumentals. One is written by Jeff Scroggins, one written by Tristan Scroggins, and the third, “Sweet Dixie,” is written by banjo great Bill Emerson. Of the nine vocals, Greg sings lead on seven, with Annie Savage singing lead on “Different Drum” and Sebie Denson singing lead on “Come Home, Elijah.” As mentioned previously, Greg’s guitar solos are tasteful and t the feel of the song. When the tune is a fast, furious, and complex, he is able to provide a solo that ts the feel and groove of the tune. When the tune is simple and the melody sparse,


he provides a solo that is congruent with the tune. While many guitar players that I hear in bluegrass seem to want to try to ll every solo with complexity and ash, Greg is content laying back and simplifying when the song calls for it. To me, this is the mark of a great player. His solos don’t scream, “Hey, look at me!” His solos appropriately support the band and the song. Supporting the band is Greg’s main focus. When asked about teaching others to play the guitar, Greg said that he doesn’t have a lot of time to teach private lessons, but he has taught a number of workshops. He likes teaching rhythm to all levels of players and lead playing to intermediatelevel players. When he teaches workshops he likes to emphasize the role that the guitarist plays in the bluegrass ensemble. The focus of his guitar playing is helping enhance to overall band sound by playing solid rhythm and inserting tasty lls, runs, and passing chords. After listening to the band play, I would say that Greg’s strength lies in his ability to help improve the overall band sound. Although Greg has competed in a few contests over the years, the band approach has always been his focus. After hearing Greg play at the SPBGMA convention one year, Bob Redford (the director of the Walnut Valley Festival in Wineld, Kansas) suggested that Greg come to Wineld and compete in the National Flatpicking Guitar Championship. Greg did enter Winfield one year, but did not make the top ve cut. After the contest was over, Redford talked with Greg and told him, “Don’t feel bad, you are a band guy.” Greg took that as a compliment. I recommend that if you are at a festival this year and you see that Jeff Scroggins and Colorado are on the bill, you leave the camper and make a trip up the stage to catch the show. You will be glad you did. Since recording the CD, KC Groves has joined the band on bass and adds her vocal talents to the singing mix. Greg said, “I sing lead on about 75% of the songs, but all three of us can sing all of the parts, so it gives us a vast selection when it comes to vocal arranging.” This band has the right mix of vocal and instrumental talent and festival promoters and venue owners have been taking notice. I recommend that if you want to hear some great bluegrass music you check out this band’s CD. You can nd out more about Jeff Scroggins and Colorado by visiting their website, www.jeffscrogginsandcolorado. com. 59

Old Blue

Audio CD Track 34

Arranged by Greg Blake Transcribed by Dan Miller

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CLASSIFIEDS Flatpicking Essentials Instructional Series Ever feel like you’ve hit a wall in your practice or reached a plateau that you can’t get beyond? We can help you! The EightVolume Flatpicking Essentials Instruction Method, developed by Flatpicking Guitar Magaz ine editor Dan Miller, provides you with over 1000 pages of information taught in a specic step-by-step sequence so that your atpicking knowledge and skill sets are complete, with no holes, or gaps. Starting with Volume One (Rhythm, Bass Runs, and Fill Licks), this series teaches you how to develop in an easy to follow graduated method. This course is available as spiral bound books with CD, or as digital downloads. For more information visit www.atpickingmercantile.com or www. atpickdigital.com.

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Guitars, Strings, and Accesories: DAN LASHBROOK ACOUSTIC GUITAR SET UP Custom Bridge Pins, Nuts, and Saddles. Neck Re-sets, Fret Jobs, Crack Repairs. Specializing in helping you get the best performance out of your guitar. Occasional high performance guitars for sale. [email protected] Call 828-649-1607

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EUPHONON COMPANY STRINGS First quality major manufacturer strings in bulk at fantastic savings. Same strings you buy in music stores, without the expensive packaging. Acoustic guitar sets: extra-light, light, or medium: 80/20 Bronze $32.50/ dozen, $20.00/half dozen; Phosphor Bronze $34.50/dozen, $21.00/half dozen. Post paid. Call for price larger quantities. Twelve string, electric guitar, banjo, mandolin, dulcimer, special gauges available. Request String Catalog. Euphonon also offers guitar repair and building supplies. Request Luthier’s Catalog. EUPHONON CO. PO Box 100F Orford NH 03777. 1-(888) 5174678. www.hotworship.com/euphonon

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Flatpicking the Blues Book/DVD/CD Course by Brad Davis

Call 800-413-8296 to Order

In this course, Brad Davis shows you how to approach playing the blues using both theoretical and practical methods. You will learn how to play blues style rhythm, learn blues scales at several positions on the neck, and learn how to apply those “blues notes” in a free-form improvisational style over the twelve-bar blues progression. This section increases your knowledge of the guitar ngerboard as it relates to the blues and provides you with a method for increasing your improvisational skills. Brad then examines common blues phrasing, technique, and standard blues licks and demonstrates how to apply them. He also shows examples of licks played in the style of great blues guitarists and even demonstrates how Bill Monroe’s blues licks on the mandolin can be incorporated on the guitar. This course also includes blues ear training. In addition to teaching you how to play straight blues, Brad also demonstrates and teaches how you might take tunes that you may already know from the standard atpicking repertoire and spice them up with blues licks. If you are tired of playing atpicked ddle tunes and bluegrass songs the same old way you will greatly appreciate Brad’s instruction on how you can add excitement and interest to songs that you already play by adding a blues avor.

Visit the Website for More Information and Blues Guitar Lessons www.flatpick.com/blues 64





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April 25-28, 2013

Rhonda Vincent & The Rage

The Charlie Daniels Band

Tift Merritt

Featuring: Richard Watson

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Peter Rowan Band

Donna The Buffalo

Jim Lauderdale

Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out

Matraca Berg • The Black Lillies • Sam Bush Chatham County Line • The Charlie • Daniels Band • Dehlia Low • Della Mae • Donna The Buffalo • Enter The Haggis • The Greencards • David Holt • The Honeycutters • Eilen Jewell • The Kruger Brothers • Pokey LaFarge • Jim Lauderdale • Tift Merritt • Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out • Mountain Heart • Michael Martin Murphey • Nitty Gritty Dirt Band • The Quebe Sisters Band • Red Molly • Peter Rowan Band • Scythian • Chris Smither • Bryan Sutton • Patrick Sweany • Rhonda Vincent & The Rage • The Waybacks • Pete and Joan Wernick • And many more! See the complete lineup at www.merlefest.org. •

Matraca Berg

Mountain Heart

The Kruger Brothers

Sam Bush

Pokey LaFarge

Wayne Henderson

Michael Martin Murphey

www.MerleFest.org facebook.com/merlefest 66

MerleFest and WCC are 100% Tobacco Free.

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