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A while back I played a square dance with the "Sigogglin' Stringband" and wrote a blogpost about it (here). This weekend I played the other major type of Old Time band gig, a farmer's market, and I thought I'd write about that experience today. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of stats like I did for the square dance post (sorry!) - hope this will be a worthwhile ride anyhow : )

A bit about today's gig
I'm pretty sure this is at least my 50th time playing a farmer's market (this is definitely true if I expand the definition to include fish fry's, craft fairs, and other "background music" gigs). While I've played with a variety of bands in the past, today I played as a duet with my fiddle-buddy Molly; we call this arrangement "Rock Andy" (though I prefer our full name "the Rock Andy Lunchtime Experience" : ) As usual, we got this gig by reaching out to the organization that runs the market via email - we actually sent them links to our youtube videos (here) in the email as well. The good thing about getting on the email list of a farmer's market is that they usually keep your name for next season so, assuming I'm still living in Michigan next year, hopefully this will be a recurring thing!

As a late-October outdoor gig in Michigan....well, it was cold - my hands were barely functioning when we were done! We put out a tip jar and made ~$25 on top of the $50 check that's in the mail - while gigs like this obviously don't let you quit your day job, its kinda nice to be payed anything for something I love doing anyhow : ) We also got a couple heads of garlic and hot burritos from the vendors. I played El Hefe (here) in his 5-string configuration with my new pick (here) so we were plenty loud without need for amplification. Since these gigs are fairly low pressure, I only brought one banjo and just took the time to retune when necessary.

Our set list included 15 tunes and we played for 2 hours - if you allow for 1 minute between tunes (for chatting with passers-by and retuning) this means that each tune lasted 7 minutes on average. Could be that we took longer between tunes, or that I forgot a few that we played, but, while it seems a bit long, I'd actually believe that we averaged 7 minutes a tune. I definitely enjoyed the opportunity to get into a groove and start messing with melody/harmony of tunes on the fly - Molly and I both managed to find some novel territory in tunes we've played a million times. Below is our set list with some general commentary - we grouped tunes by tuning (for my benefit) but tried to alternate tune types/feels for some interest.

Set list (with commentary):

(started in Old G tuning - gDGDE)

Maggie Meade - We started off with this G minor tune (you can see a youtube video of Molly and I playing it here) which is a bit of a head turner - nice to start strong! I don't have too many tricks with this one other than going to the low octave for the B part on occasion.

Big Scioty - We then picked this "top 40" major tune for a feel change - I actually have a lot of tricks for this one (melodic variation, octave switching, cool chords, chromatic walkdown...) and so does Molly. There's a youtube video of me playing this at Clifftop with my Canadian neighbors here (Thanks to John Reddick for posting/filming!)

Margaret Randolph Waltz - Molly found this tune on Bruce Greene's latest album. Its probably the only crooked waltz I've ever come across and I just love it! I mostly stick to the script on this tune and I was lucky enough not to trainwreck the B part : )

Seneca Square Dance - I picked this one and, though it works well slow, I probably started it a little too slow. Kinda regretted that tempo but it eventually settled somewhere nice - I still cut it a bit short, however. I will say that it is one of those G tunes that lays really nicely in Old G.

Jeff City - this is a Missouri tune I've learned since moving to the Midwest...and I just love it! Its another faster tune. I found some cool new stuff in this tune - mostly a continuation of the walk-up that starts the B part - I'd never tried that before today's gig and it seemed to harmonize pretty well with what Molly was doing too. I'll have to work on it a bit more at home.

(switched to double D tuning - aDADE)

Sally in the Garden - We liked starting with a minor tune in G so we tried it again in D. Also like "Maggie Meade," there's a youtube video of Molly and I playing "Sally in the Garden" as well (here). Both Molly and I have cool harmonies for the B part (its kinda funny when we both reach for them at the same time : ) - most of my other variation on this tune is right hand stuff. I used to play this tune a lot more dirge-like but Molly has made me put a bit more pep into it - I absolutely love it when she goes to the high octave for the A part - it really kicks it into high gear!

Jingle at the Window Tidy-o - This tune, which Molly showed me from a David Bragger album (more on that here) is a zippy major tune, which we picked to contrast with "Sally in the Garden." We went for a while on this one and rather than simply sitting in the groove I *tried* to find some harmony for the A part...didn't really work great in my opinion.

Swannanoah Waltz - Again, we picked this tune for symmetry with our G set (i.e. "Minor, major, waltz") I've given a tab for it on this blog before (here). I actually found some relative minor harmonies in the B part, which I've never tried before - sounded pretty cool! Molly had the idea for me to start with the melody while she shuffled in the background for the first A part!

Snake River Reel - We played this one pretty fast and I got a bit sloppy due to a combination of cold hands and pick dysphoria. It worked for the most part but I can't wait for my nail to grow back (just another 1/2 mm or so)!

Coleman's March - Not sure I've ever played a gig without this tune! Molly and I have made a bit of a game out of pushing the boundaries on "Coleman's March" in recent weeks - she's finding some cool harmonies and also takes a bit of "less is more" approach with background accompaniment at parts - super tasteful and not something you always hear in old time fiddle! For my part, I got to put in some of the alternate chord double-stops I worked out a few weeks back (here).

(switched to A modal - aEADE)

Rock Andy - We had to play the tune we named our band after! This is a mixolydian Snake Chapman tune that Molly showed me - I could see a lot of the vendors bobbing their head to this one so we played it for a while. We had a cool moment here where Molly and I instinctively reached for the low octave in the same instant - love it when things like that happen! I got a bit brave and put a low chromatic walk (G, G#, A) in the B part, which I'll definitely try again.

Jeff Sturgeon - I actually wanted to play "Texas/Newcastle" next but its a little too close to "Rock Andy" so I suggested this tune in the middle. While its an A major tune, I find it sits well in modal tuning, which is typically reserved for minor or mixolydian tunes - I have a few other major tunes like this as well ("Policeman" and "Chinquapin Hunting" come to mind at the moment). For those keeping score, Molly, who had been in standard tuning, switched to cross A (AEAE) from here on out. "Jeff Sturgeon" is a notey crooked tune that was just about pushing my fingers' limits at this point!

Texas/Newcastle - This is the crooked Henry Reed tune I played with Adam Hurt at banjo camp a while back (here) and one of my all time favorites. Molly always puts some great swing into this one and it sounded quite good.

(switched to A major tuning - aEAC#E)

Little Billy Wilson - Molly wanted to find an A major tune next so we settled on this 3 parter (we've actually never played it together...) After nearly 2 hours in the cold, my right hand was completely numb, and I was actually kind of surprised the right notes were coming out - but we played this tune for probably 10 minutes and found a really great groove!

Black Eyed Suzie - We ended on the 3 part version of this tune that appears on the Bigfoot album (more on that album here). Molly likes to say that I play counterpoint on this tune...I think that I just never quite learned it right : ) Strong ender with a lot of bluesiness.

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Hell, I'd buy that album : ) That's it for this week (and I'm guessing that was my last outdoor gig of the season) - thanks for reading!

About a week ago the unthinkable happened: I broke my banjo nail. As usual, I wasn't even playing when it happened - I just let it get too long and it broke when my hand slipped opening the fridge. Often when this happens, I'll just put the banjo aside for a bit until it grows back - after all, I've got a guitar, mandolin, octave mando, baritone uke, fiddle, etc. kicking around the house...little chance I'll get too bored! However, I've got a gig next weekend and, though my nail seems to be on pace to grow back by then, I thought I'd better have a plan B just in case. It's high time I figured out a decent pick option!

What makes a good banjo nail?
I thought I'd start here because its not a subject I see covered enough. Here's a picture of my nail as it currently exists (after about a week of regrowth):

If you squint you can tell that the white part of my nail doesn't actually extend past the end of my finger. This is the biggest problem at the moment - the shape is actually pretty good. I don't know if its because I've coaxed it this way over the years, but my nail kind of naturally grows into the right shape (note - this could be a chicken/egg thing...maybe I think that's the right shape because it grows that way and I'm used to it). However, if my nail doesn't extend past the end of my finger, I really can't get a crisp note. Below is a diagram of what my ideal nail looks like:

A little explanation of the above shape. I've marked 2 areas on the nail (10 o'clock and 2 o'clock) that I use when I play. I use the 10 o'clock region to hit the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd strings. The sharp corner of the 10 o'clock region is especially necessary - after my nail hits a string, it slides off that corner and rings freely. In the past, I've lost that corner to pretty terrible results (that's actually what happened after Clifftop this year). I use the 2 o'clock region for the 1st string mostly because its feels kind of awkward to try to hit it with the 10 o'clock region. The string hits the nail just about where the arrow indicates and slides off the top (12 o'clock position).

Other players have differing opinions on what makes a good nail as well as how to use it. For instance, I know that Adam Hurt uses the 2 o'clock region for every string - his tone is phenomenal, so you'd better believe I've tried this too...however, it feels kind of awkward to me and I really can't play that way without concentrating - if I get into a groove I pretty quickly shift back to my old ways. I know that Walt Koken keeps his nail pretty short (possibly even like my current nail, shown in figure 1). His unique tone is pretty staccato and I'm guessing this is part of the reason. I've read that Mike Iverson uses 2 fingers - his index for strings 3 and 4, and his middle for strings 1 and 2 (no idea what side of his nail he uses in either case) - this would actually be a pretty comfortable arrangement and I'd consider trying it too if it didn't seem like such a pain to grow and maintain a second nail.

Finally - many people play without any nail whatsoever. Watching these folks, I notice that they really put a lot of force into their downstrokes and manage to make a good sound with the fleshy part of the finger. If you can manage that, more power to you but I cant seem to make it work too well! In the end, I just had to make a pick.

Creating a fingerpick to mimic my nail.
So there are a lot of opinions out there on how to make a fingerpick for clawhammer playing. Many people (including Grandpa Jones) flip standard fingerpicks backwards, perhaps cutting them down a bit. John Balch has a creative approach to making picks out of a ping-pong ball. There are a few purpose-made clawhammer picks out there but I've read positive reviews of Fred Kelly fingerpicks (which are actually made for guitar playing) and they're pretty cheap. I bought myself a few of them at Elderly last week - here are some pictures of one on my finger:

Playing with these picks unaltered didn't feel quite right to me - likely because they don't quite match the shape of my "ideal nail" (FIgure 2) though they seem to work well for other players by all accounts. My solution was to cut one down, mostly using fingernail clippers, to match my ideal nail shape. Here's what I settled on:

The biggest improvement was definitely the "corner" at the 2 o'clock position which works a lot like my normal nail. I spent a couple hours playing on a friend's back porch yesterday with the pick. Honestly, while I still miss my nail, the pick sounded fine and after a while I was even kind of used to it. I found that a light touch gave me pretty good tone and plenty of volume. I did have to take it off for a bit and rub my finger between tunes - its possible that I should go up a size (from M to L) as my finger was getting a bit numb over time, but I erred on the side of tightness in order to avoid it falling off. Certainly tolerable for a couple of hours.

Its a relief to know that I should be all set to play my gig next weekend even if my nail doesn't grow back in time! I'll probably stash a pick in my case from here on out - even when my nail grows back, I may use the pick in big jams, where I tend to chip my nail by subconsciously hitting harder than I should for a bit of extra volume. If you've got opinions on picks, feel free to leave them in the comments - see you next week!

So last week, I did a blog post on playing jigs with clawhammer banjo (here). This week I thought I'd do a followup post presenting a different (and super-creative!) approach to playing jigs shown to me by a fellow banjohangout member who goes by the name "slc." His approach involves a surprising tweak to our "rules of right hand stride" from last week so I'll start by reviewing those rules below:
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Rule 1 for maintaining right hand stride in jigs: The index finger of the right hand moves towards the strings on every 1, 1++, 2, and 2++ beat; the thumb never​ plays notes on these beat.

Rule 2 for maintaining right hand stride in jigs: The index finger is never used to play notes on 1+ or 2+ beats; these notes should be played with the thumb of the right hand, with a left hand pluck, or by hammer-ons/pull-offs from notes played on preceding beats.

Rule 2a) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is on a lower string than the preceding note (or if the preceding beat contains a brush, cluck, or ghost note) this note should be played with the thumb of the right hand.

Rule 2b) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is at a higher fret of the same string of the preceding note, this note should be played with a hammer on.

Rule 2c) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is at a lower fret of the same string of the preceding note, this note should be played with a pull off.

Rule 2d) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is on a higher string than the preceding note, this note should be played by plucking the string with the left hand.
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Again, these rules are based on online advice from Ken Perlman and Mike Iverson, amongst others; also the rules assume that you count jigs as One-and-a, two-and-a, which I notate as 1 + +, 2 + +.

This is the current approach I've been using to play jigs and so far its going pretty well. I've been working on "the Irish Washerwoman" since last week - I've mostly worked out the B part and I've gotten fairly comfortable with the jig feel. However, the necessity of playing two down-strokes with the index finger in a row (on 1++/2++ beats and the 2/1 beats that follow) puts a speed limit on this technique - even at a reasonable pace, I can't help but feeling that my hand is doing just a bit more work than it needs to. Instinctively, it feels like there must be some way to have down-strokes on the 1/2 beats and nowhere else - enter the aforementioned "other" jig technique as shown by banjohangout user "slc."

Before I dissect this technique (hereafter the "slc-method"), let me show you an example. Note that I got his permission to talk about this on my blog via email and I actually requested that he record this tune ("Coleraine's Jig").

Banjohangout user "slc" showing his awesome jig technique with "Coleraine's Jig" in A minor.

Note that Mike Iverson actually has a tab for this tune on his site As you can see, he's playing at a pretty good speed and he looks relaxed - I'm betting he could go a lot faster - pretty great right?

So, whats going on here? Well, the technique demonstrated above is likely to scare off the clawhammer purists because it involves (gasp!) up-picks! To play jigs in the slc-method, one simply re-define's right hand stride a bit by breaking rule 1 in half:
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Rule 1a for maintaining right hand stride in jigs: The index finger of the right hand moves towards the strings on every 1 and 2 beat; the thumb never​ plays notes on these beats.

Rule 1b for maintaining right hand stride in jigs: The right hand moves away from the strings (upward) on every 1++ and 2++ beat and the middle finger is used to pluck (by up-picking) any notes on these beats; the thumb never​ plays notes on these beats.
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Again, what a hugely elegant solution - you're using both the down stroke and the resulting upstroke to get notes! Note that slc actually down picks with his middle finger, so he up-picks with his index finger (backwards from what I've done). I suppose one could up-pick and down-pick with the same finger....I've always found up-picking with a nail to feel strange - I know guitarists do this but I really don't know how they stand it.

I should mention that another clawhammer player named Steve Baughman also experiments with up-picking in an Irish context: he calls this technique "the frisco flick" and he essentially plays triplets peppered through Irish reels using the "down-pick, thumb, up-pick" pattern similar to what is used in the slc-method. Steve's playing is super clean (on clawhammer guitar too) and I would recommend checking out his youtube videos as well - I would post one here but I didn't ask Steve first.

Anyways, I've been trying out the slc-method myself and as for now it still feels a bit awkward - not sure if I'm going to convert all of my jigs yet (okay I've only really got 2 so far...) but this is a ton of fun! Thanks to slc for giving me the go-ahead here (and recording "Coleraine's" - love your playing!

(Before I get started...) This post is a few days late, for which I apologize! I wanted to make it good rather than fast and it took me a while to get the recordings/tabs together - hopefully this was worth the wait for any regular readers!

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This weekend I went to a memorial for my banjo-buddy Stew who passed away this summer. The gathering was really nice - while I mostly knew Stew in a musical context, it was great to hear about his other passions (racing cars and dirt bikes; doing after-hours renegade IT at his University) and meet his family. I also got to meet the members of the contradance band Stew played with and even join them for a few tunes on banjo. Let it be known that when my time comes I absolutely want a jam session to break out at my memorial service as well - I think Stew would have loved it.

Before playing with the contradance band, they let me look over their tune list and pick out the ones I knew for us to play together. I was grateful for this bit of courtesy since contra bands often veer Irish I'm not super familiar with that repertoire. In addition to skewing the jam towards "crossover tunes" (e.g. "Whiskey before breakfast" and the like), letting me pick tunes meant that we ended up playing mostly reels and a few waltzes; though Stew's old contra dance band had plenty of jigs on the list, they didn't get to play any (note: I did actually ask them to play a few without me but they were too polite to take me up on that). Stew once mentioned to me in an email that he had never found a great way to get clawhammer jigs up to speed - maybe a jig-less jam at his memorial would have actually been his preference : ).

However, I've been meaning to tackle jigs on this blog (and in my own playing) for a while so...today's post is all about playing jigs on clawhammer banjo. I'll start by describing problems with playing clawhammer jigs, then Ill break down right hand stride for jig playing, and finally I'll then talk a little about breaking stride in a jig context. Here we go!

The problem with playing jigs...
First off, a definition. "Jigs" are tunes in 6/8 time frequently found in the Irish repertoire, but (in my experience) absent in Appalachian Old Time music. The biggest problem with playing jigs on clawhammer banjo is that they require players to slur notes in groups of three 8th notes with the first note played strongly; I typically count each measure of a jig as "one, and, a, two, and, a..." with the bold notes denoting heavier emphasis. However, as clawhammer players, we have 2 right hand appendages available to us (the striking finger and the thumb) and figuring out when to use these for 3 notes without getting all twisted up is a bit of a conundrum. In typical 4/4 tunes, we can go with the general rules of right hand stride (outlined here), which dictate that we bring our striking finger towards the strings (...even if we end up playing a ghost note...) on every beat; off-beat notes (i.e. those indicated with "+'s" in my tabs) are played either with drop-thumb, hammer-ons, pull-offs, or left hand plucks. Of course its just fine to break stride on occaision, but it would be nice to figure out the "rules" of right hand stride in the context of a jig before trying to break it.

Right hand stride in jigs
For today's post I'll be talking about a familiar Irish jig called "the Irish Washerwoman" which, even if you're not all that familiar with Irish music, you may have heard in old Popeye cartoons like I did back in the day. Here's a tab of the A part without any markup to indicate hammer-on's, pull-off's etc.:

Figure 1 - The A part of "The Irish Washerwoman" without any markup indicating hammer-on's, pull-off's, drop thumbs, or left hand plucks. All tabs meant to be played in Old G tuning (gDGDE). Hand position: 2nd fret - index; 3rd fret - middle; 4th fret - ring; 5th fret - pinky.

Note that while jigs are typically thought of as 6 beats (and could be counted 1,2,3,4,5,6) I typically count each measure of a jig as "one, and, a, two, and, a..." with the bold notes denoting heavier emphasis. In my notation above I put "+'s" above the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th notes in a measure of un-interrupted 8th notes; in the discussion below, I''ll call these beats either 1+/2+ (indicating the first beat after a numbered beat) or 1++/2++ (indicating the second beat after a numbered beat).

The most straightforward (but perhaps least "clawhammery") way would to play this thing would be to simply play every note with the striking finger. Here's how that sounds:

Example 1 - The tab in figure 1 played using my striking (index) finger for every note.

This approach is actually okay at slow speeds - after all, I essentially did something like this to play the non-Old-Time song "Atlantic" at a relative's wedding (more on that here) - but you're never going to get a jig up to speed like this. Also, that type of playing is missing that "clawhammery groove." So how do be play faster and add in some groove? After trying to feel my way through this conundrum in jams, I finally turned to the internet for advice - as you may have guessed, you can find a lot of info about this on banjo hangout (banjohangout.org). I found a post by Ken Perlman (definitely a go-to guru for Celtic clawhammer) which suggested using an "ITIITI" approach for jigs. There's also a great youtube video by Mike Iverson advocating the same approach. Basically, Ken and Mike are suggesting that each measure of a jig could be played as follows (note that I've used "++" to refer to the second plus beat after each numbered beat):

Beat 1: index
Beat 1 +: thumb
Beat 1 ++: index
Beat 2: index
Beat 2 +: thumb
Beat 2 ++: index

I'll go ahead and modify this just a bit and say that the "1+" and "2+" beats of each measure could also be played with hammer-on's, pull-offs, or left hand plucks. Under this guidance, the rules of right hand stride for jigs become the following (text heavily borrowed from my aforementioned first post on right hand stride - again, here):

Rule 1 for maintaining right hand stride in jigs: The index finger of the right hand moves towards the strings on every 1, 1++, 2, and 2++ beat; the thumb never​ plays notes on these beat.

Rule 2 for maintaining right hand stride in jigs: The index finger is never used to play notes on 1+ or 2+ beats; these notes should be played with the thumb of the right hand, with a left hand pluck, or by hammer-ons/pull-offs from notes played on preceding beats.

Rule 2a) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is on a lower string than the preceding note (or if the preceding beat contains a brush, cluck, or ghost note) this note should be played with the thumb of the right hand.

Rule 2b) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is at a higher fret of the same string of the preceding note, this note should be played with a hammer on.

Rule 2c) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is at a lower fret of the same string of the preceding note, this note should be played with a pull off.

Rule 2d) if the note on a "1+" or "2+" beat is on a higher string than the preceding note, this note should be played by plucking the string with the left hand.

I like a lot of things about this approach, but it does have one big drawback: you end up constantly playing 2 striking finger notes in a row (e.g. between the 1++ and 2 beats). While this may put an inevitable speed limit on your playing, I really like the feel that this approach gives: the 1, 1++, 2, and 2++ beats are noticeably stronger than the 1+ and 2+ beats. I try to play so that the 1 and 2 beats are strong, the 1+ and 2+ beats are weak, and the 1++ and 2++ beats are somewhere in the middle. By using a slightly higher tough on the 3rd beat of each group, it also becomes a bit easier to get your hand back in line for the 1st beat.

So lets start applying this approach to "the Irish Washerwoman." For various reasons, I'll start with the 2nd measure. Here it is again, not marked up:

​Figure 2 - the second measure of the A part of "the Irish Washerwoman" without any markup indicating hammer-on's, pull-off's, drop thumbs, or left hand plucks.
​(Meant to be played in old G tuning - gDGDE)

The rules of right hand stride for jigs outlined above say that it should be played as follows:

​Figure 3 - the second measure of the A part of "the Irish Washerwoman" as it should be played according to the rules of right hand stride outlined above. Brackets indicate drop thumb.
​(Meant to be played in old G tuning - gDGDE)

You'll get some audio a bit further down, but I'll just say that this actually works pretty well for now. Next let's check out the first measure (again unmarked up first):

​Figure 4 - the first measure of the A part of "the Irish Washerwoman" without any markup indicating hammer-on's, pull-off's, drop thumbs, or left hand plucks.
​(Meant to be played in old G tuning - gDGDE)

The rules of right hand stride (above) would say that this phrase should be played as follows:

​Figure 5 - the first measure of the A part of "the Irish Washerwoman" as it should be played according to the rules of right hand stride outlined above. Again, I hope you like my creative method for indicating the use of a left hand pluck : )
​(Meant to be played in old G tuning - gDGDE)

However, that left hand pluck on the 3rd string (and left hand plucks in general...) feels pretty awkward to me. Banjos don't have​ to get every single melody note; I'm in favor of replacing that note with a 5th string pull as follows:

​Figure 6 - the first measure of the A part of "the Irish Washerwoman" as it should be played according to the rules of right hand stride outlined above, but with a 5th string pull replacing a left hand pluck. ​(Meant to be played in old G tuning - gDGDE)

Using this "replace left hand plucks with 5th string pulls" technique, you can play the whole A part of the "the Irish Washerwoman" in stride as follows:

​Figure 7 - The A part of "the Irish Washerwoman" played according to the rules of right hand stride, but with all potential left hand plucks replaced with 5th string pulls. Brackets indicate drop thumb. ​(Meant to be played in old G tuning - gDGDE)

Here's the audio:

Example 2 - me playing the tab shown in Figure 7 on my Buckeye.

If I really wanted to, I could use some left hand plucks to get all of the melody notes in "the Irish Washerwoman," but again, I really don't like playing that way. Also, the note on the 2+ beat of the 3rd measure is fretted and I find that plucking fretted notes with the remaining fingers of the left hand to be nearly impossible. Perhaps we could get these notes with some hammer-ons and/or shifts in left hand position...but we can also get them by breaking stride!

Breaking right hand stride in jigs:
The one relevant stride breaking move that I'll talk about here is what Adam Hurt calls a "modified Galax lick" that I've talked about previously (here). Basically, you're trying to use a single right hand stroke to strike 2 adjacent strings as follows:

Figure 8 - A poorly drawn explanation of how to accomplish a "modified galax lick" to get 2 quick striking finger notes in a row. For the figure on the left, pretend you're looking down your banjo neck from the nut to the bridge...and that every part of the banjo other than the strings and bridge has disappeared for some reason. For the figure on the right, the circled numbers represent cross-sections of strings 1-5 and the line at the bottom represents the fingerboard.

This move gives us a less-awkward way to reach the melody notes were missing (at least in my opinion). Here's what our tab of the A part of "the Irish Washerwoman" looks like afterwards:

​Figure 9 - The A part of "the Irish Washerwoman" played with a bit of right hand stride breaking. Brackets indicate drop thumb, astrices indicate that the note should be played with the index finger as the second note of a modified galax lick (shown in Figure 8).
​(Meant to be played in old G tuning - gDGDE)

Here's the audio:

Example 3 - Me playing the tab shown in Figure 9 on my Buckeye.

Well this turned into a long one : ). Next week, I've got just a bit more to say about jig playing - see you then!

While I had big plans to record another track from my album (here) this week, I kinda got sidetracked and recorded a fiddle tune called "Been to the east, been to the west" (or some variation of that) instead. I've basically been humming this tune on and off since I first heard it at Clifftop this past summer - story below:
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As I've mentioned before, Old Time music is particularly amazing because, unlike most forms of music, the professional players are so accessible. For that reason, one of the best things to do late night at Clifftop is to simply walk around and listen to jams - while I wouldnt recommend trying to butt into a jam without being invited, most people are just fine with you lurking outside the circle and listening, and you may see some of your favorite players cutting loose with their friends. Its really fun for me to know which tunes performers like to play just for fun.

One night this past Clifftop (maybe thursday?) I came across a pretty amazing jam at Rachel Eddy's tent: Rachel and Adam Hurt were on fiddle (I've gushed over Adam's fiddle playing previously here), Brad Kolodner was on banjo, Beth Hartness was on guitar, and Mark Hellenberg was on banjo uke. There was also a bass player and a low-tuned tenor banjo player (!) who's names I never caught. The grooves coming out of that tent were just incredible and, rather than continuing to wander the swamp, I planted myself there for just about an album's worth of tunes. Incidentally, there was someone there recording that jam with a fancy microphone....what ever happens to recordings like that??

There were a TON of great tunes that night, most of which I wasn't all that familiar with. But, for whatever reason, the one that really drilled itself into my head had a pretty simple melody that I've been humming ever since. Mystery fiddle tunes can be a bit tough to track down - I hoped that I'd run across it again in the wild again one day (kinda like my Brian Slattery story here). However, I did have a breadcrumb to track the tune down with: Rachel Eddy actually sang little snippets of lyrics over top of the tune and I was pretty sure she said "I've been to the east, I've been to the west" at some point. This weekend, I finally sat down to youtube and found her playing a tune called "Been to the East, Been to the west." That was such a simple search that I can't believe it took me this long to do it!. After hearing the tune again again, I just had to learn to play it!

Whenever I find a tune I really like I tend to listen to a lot of recordings to sample the breadth of ways that people play it - after hearing a few different takes on the tune (and visiting Slippery Hill) I found one strange thing about how Rachel Eddy plays it: while its typically played in G, she's shifted it to D. This presented a bit of a conundrum: I really really like Rachel's version and the tune seemed to fall pretty easily in double D (aDADE), but its a lot more useful from a jam perspective to learn tunes in their common keys. I decided to bite the bullet and learn the tune both ways: I therefore spent a bit of time this weekend figuring out both a G version (gDGDE) and D version (aDADE) of "Been to the East, Been to the West" inspired largely by the 2 youtube videos I found of Rachel Eddy playing it. Here's a recording of the G version:

"Been to the East, Been to the West" played on my Buckeye in Old G (gDGDE) tuning. Guitar accompaniment on a 12-fret Epiphone Masterbilt in standard tuning sans capo.

Something about Rachel Eddy's playing seems to suggest that I should hold a minor chord (in this case E minor, though in the D version it would be a B minor) about halfway through the B part - most of the other versions I've heard don't really have that quality (which is probably why I like her playing on this tune so much!). The chord's I came up with (and played above) are as follows:

Do I hold the E minor one beat too long? I can't decide...

Again, I learned a D version as well and initially I thought I'd re-record the whole thing in that key....then I had a different idea: rather than playing in true D, I thought I'd tune a banjo down to double G (dGDGA - basically double D tuned down 3.5 steps) and record the low-tuned banjo alongside my G tuned Buckeye creating a unison banjo/cello banjo effect. Nifty, right? I had the perfect candidate banjo: the Buckbee that I bought this past summer (here) - since it never gets played with anyone else, that banjo spends a lot of its time tuned pretty low (and sounds quite good!)...surely it can handle double G, right? Well - I guess technically it did handle that tuning okay, but the result wasn't that pretty to my ears - I'll let you judge for yourself: 

"Been to the East, Been to the West" played on my Buckeye in Old G (gDGDE) tuning and my Buckbee in double G (dGDGA - double D tuning tuned 3.5 steps low). Guitar accompaniment on a 12-fret Epiphone Masterbilt in standard tuning sans capo.

I have the medium nylgut strings on the Buckbee banjo and I'll definitely need to switch over to the thicker aquila minstrel set if I want to try tuning it that low again. The current strings were SUPER floppy in double G. They also tried as hard as they could to go out of tune every time I played the banjo (I think the screws on the friction pegs need a bit of tightening too). All in all, I still think this was a pretty good idea - just not great execution : )

I really may get minstrel strings on that banjo for that cool low sound (that banjo really loses something when tuned up to standard) and maybe even do some more "double banjo" recording?....we shall see.

Until next week!