A couple weeks back I wrote a blogpost about playing waltzes on clawhammer banjo (here), something that I've noticed a lot of players shy away from at jams. I've got a bit more to say on that subject, so coming at you from New Hampshire (where I reside with my in-laws during the holidays), I bring you "Clawhammer waltzes, part 2." The main purpose of this post is to discuss the "swing rhythm" types of waltzes frequently encountered in Old Time Music - its my opinion that these waltzes, rather than their tamer non-swinging counterparts are the ones that truly tongue-tie most clawhammer players. So lets dive in!
As I said in my last post on waltzes (once again, here) I use the term "Waltz" to describe any tune in triple time (i.e. time signatures like 3/4 or 9/8 where beats are corralled into groups of three). In that post I used "the First Noel" as an example of a seasonally-appropriate waltz that would hopefully be familiar to most people reading. Though Christmas has passed, humor me by listening to that example one more time:
Example 1 - "The First Noel" played with straight rhythm on clawhammer banjo. Note that a tab of this tune is available in my last waltz post (here).
Now listen to a second version of that tune, with a little more "swing" in it and see if you can spot the difference:
Example 2 - "The First Noel" played with swing rhythm on clawhammer banjo.
Hear that loping rhythm? Thats what I call "swing rhythm," which is in contrast to the "straight rhythm" you can hear in Example 1. So whats going on here? To get an answer let's first check out a bit of the tab I included last week:
Figure 1 - The opening line of "the First Noel" played on clawhammer banjo. The above tab is meant to be played in double D tuning (aDADE).
You could refer to the tab shown in Figure 1 to play either version of the tune (i.e. Example 1 or 2), and indeed sheet music for many waltzes shows them written in straight rhythm, though they may be played with swing rhythm in practice. To extract swing rhythm out of the tab above, just keep the on-beat notes (those with numbers above them in the tab) where they are, but move the "and-beat" notes (those with "+"s above them) back in time a bit. In other words, while the beat is normally counted as follows: "1 and 2 and 3 and," you could get swing rhythm in the tune by counting this way: "1....and 2....and 3....and," with the ellipses indicating slight pauses. Most players can fall right into this rhythm with just a bit of practice - for fun, try swinging the one of the basic waltz rhythms I introduced in my last waltz post (again, here):
Figure 2 - The "Bum-ditty-ditty" rhythm I introduced as a basic waltz rhythm. This example is written in "straight rhythm" but can be played in "swing rhythm" by simply delaying the thumb pulls a bit.
But, this approach is a wishy-washy: how would one explicityl indicate swing rhythm in tab? To figure this out, we need to figure out how long the "pauses" in the "one.....and two....and three....and" rhythm we discussed above are. It turns out these pauses are actually just long enough to fit an extra note into. To illustrate what I'm talking about listen to this (admittedly silly) example of "the First Noel" where I've inserted an extra chromatic note into a couple of phrases to fill some space in the tune:
Example 3 - The opening phrase of "the First Noel" with a couple of chromatic notes added in.
If you were to cut the middle note out of the triplet slurs in Example 3, you'd end up with the same type of rhythm you heard in Example 2. It turns out that the best way to write out a swing rhythm waltz in tab form is to subdivide the beats into groups of three rather than groups of two; I've chosen to indicate this in tab by putting two "+" marks after each beat. Here's a swing rhythm version of Figure 1 (which corresponds to what I play in Example 2):
Figure 3 - A swing rhythm version of the opening phrase from "the First Noel" (a swing rhythm version of Figure 1 and an explicit rendering of what's played in Example 2).
And for good measure, here's the "bum-ditty-ditty" rhythm from Figure 2 written in swing rhythm:
Figure 4 - A swing rhythm version of the "bum-ditty-ditty" rhythm shown in Figure 2.
(maybe call it a bum-diiiiiiity-diiiiiity rhythm? : )
So, rather than counting swing rhythm waltzes as "One....and two....and three...and" we can count them as follows: "one and and, two and and, three and and." It's just that the first "and" after the beat is typically left empty while notes may be played on the second "and." To inject a bit of music theory, these types of tunes could be written in a time signature like 9/8, also a triple meter, in order to accomodate "splitting the beats into three" as I've discussed above....but I find the "1 + + 2 + + 3 + +" approach works well for tab.
So, what are the right hand concerns when playing swing rhythm waltzes? To answer that question, let's go back to the rules governing right hand stride (first introduced here) and try to figure out how these swing rhythm waltzes fit in: ---------------------------- Rules governing right hand stride: Rule 1 for maintaining right hand stride: The index finger of the right hand moves towards the strings on every beat; the thumb never plays notes on the beat. Rule 2 for maintaining right hand stride: The index finger is never used to play notes between 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 an "and" 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, or by plucking the string with the left hand. Rule 2b) if the note on an "and" 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 an "and" 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 an "and" beat is on a higher string than the preceding note, this note should be played by plucking the string with the left hand. --------------------------- In my last post on waltzes (final time, I promise: here) I mentioned that all of these rules governing right hand stride could easily be applied to walzes as well....however, I was focusing on "straight rhythm" waltzes in that post. Do the rules governing right hand stride hold up to swing rhythm waltz playing? Well, if you're only playing on one of the "and" beats after each beat, as would be the case for the "swing rhythm" playing we've been talking about here, no editing needed - these rules work just fine. However, sometimes swing rhythm waltzes require you to play notes on both "and" beats following a numbered beat. This can present some problems for clawhammer players. Using the same finger/thumb twice in a row would break right hand stride, so we'll avoid discussing those possibilities for now. If you have to play notes on two consecutive "and" beats, there are a couple of ways to do this without breaking stride. First, if all the notes are available on the same string, you can figure out a series of hammer-on's and pull-off's to allow you to play them from a single pluck with the striking finger. This is the approach I took to add the chromatic runs into "the First Noel" in Example 3:
Figure 5 - Adding chromatic runs into "the First Noel" using strings of hammer-ons and pull-offs.
This is the approach I used to play Example 3.
If the notes you want are on different strings and can't be reached by hammer-ons or pull-offs, you can get one of them with a left hand pluck. As an example, we could put some left hand plucks in to add to the "bum-ditty-ditty" rhythm, outlined in Figure 4.
FIgure 6 - Using left hand plucks to get (I guess) a "bum-ditt-a-ty-ditt-a-ty" rhythm. Note that I decided to call them "left hand pulls" in the above example...not sure where that came from but pull=pluck.
Now that I've (hopefully) whetted your apetite for swing rhythm waltzes, I think I'll end this post here for now. As an exercise, I'd suggest running through the tab of "the FIrst Noel" (here) with both straight rhythm (as played in Example 1) and swing rhythm (as played in Example 2) to get used to the differences in feel. Next week I'll talk about rule-breaking in a waltz context and give tab and audio for "Swannanoah Waltz," a swing rhythm waltz in D, which I recently played at a local squaredance (here).
---------------------- Finally, this week (which once again, I've spent in New Hampshire) a friend I met at Clifftop took me to a Boston-area jam at Doyle's pub, where I got to play with some really fantastic musicians! Later in the week, another Clifftop buddy also hosted a fantastic jam at her house - I'm lucky to have camped next to such a friendly group on my first Clifftop excursion! To anyone reading this: Happy New Year : )
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Walking into music stores is a financially-dangerous, yet irresistable, pastime for me....which makes my banjo-testing gig (here) at Elderly instruments (here) a bit of a risky endeavor : ). While stores like Elderly (...of which there are exceedingly few....) are definitely my kryptonite, I make time to go into less banjo-centric shops as well since there's always the chance that I'll find something great. The story typcially starts like this: I'm wandering around a new city and I spy an unassuming music shop and think to myself....well I've got a few minutes to browse. In my experience, independent instrument stores (i.e. not Guitar Centers) are mostly of two types: those that cater to school band orchestra students, and those that are jam-packed with imported electric guitars. While I can have fun wasting a few minutes around any pile of instruments, I usually end up back on the street after a quick lap around the showroom.
There's also the elusive 3rd type of independent non-Elderly-caliber type of shop: the type with waaay too many instruments for the space (some of which are hidden in piles of cases) that caters to would-be treasure hunters like myself : ) I've never asked, but I have to imagine, that most of these shops started when the owner's personal instrument collection got out of hand...one look around my apartment makes me think that this fate lies in my future as well. Needless to say, I can spend hours in a shop like this. However, most non-Elderly-caliber shops, regaurdless of type, don't really know what to do when an interesting antique or custom-made acoustic instrument falls into their hands.....but every once in a while I come across one that I'm glad to provide with a fine home : ) To give an example: at a friend's wedding in Minnessota a couple years back I found a music shop that is probably best described as a "band instrument/treasure hunting" hybrid - while taking my customary lap I almost walked right past the banjo I would end up buying that day. The tag said "Bobby Flesher banjo: $399.99." Yup - that Bob Flesher (who's highly ornate banjos typcially run in the $2000-3000 range new)....don't know if he ever actually goes by "Bobby." Though the headstock shape was a design fairly unique to his work, there were no marks identifying the builder on there - if this was a "Bobby Flesher" banjo, it was likely an early model (maybe a prototype?) - it was also pretty plain-Jane in comparison to what he normally produces. I asked the shop owner a bit more about the banjo and he, I kid you not, uttered: "we're not sure what happened to the back of it" (presumably in reference to the "missing" resonator). I talked him down to $300.00 and left Minnesota with quite the souvenier - pics below.
Left - Pic of the "Bobby Flesher" banjo I bought in MN....never actually found out what happened to the back of it : ) Right - Closeup of the headstock; note the shape, which Bob Flesher still uses on many banjos. Pretty nice inlay, but be sure and peruse his site to see how far he's come....
To cap this story off: I showed the above pics to the masses on banjohangout and everyone agreed I'd likely found a Flesher (I tried emailing Bob to confirm this but never got a response). However, I was after a short-scale 12" banjo at the time so I did some bartering: first for a Ramsey, then a Reiter....which I later sold to buy a Pisgah...which I later sold to fund my Buckeye (here). In short, this banjo got me in to the custom banjo market at a time (in Grad school) where I couldn't have afforded it otherwise.
I've had some other spur of the moment instrument purchases in the past few years as well: I bought a cheap tenor banjo for $60 in an antique shop on my honeymoon and I bought an imported octave mando for $250 (in Canadian dollars) in Montreal this summer; you can hear the latter instrument here. However, I only came across my second true "diamond in the rough" find this past week while visiting my wife's family in New Hampshire. I pulled into a shop I've been to a couple times before, which has quickly become a must-drop-in "treasure hunting" favorite of mine: there are piles of funky old guitars, a wall of weird ukulele's, and cases full of possibility on the edges of the floor. In past visits I've found some interesting stuff (mostly in the banjolele department), but I've never felt compelled to pull the trigger and buy anything. However, this all changed when I saw a Bacon oval-hole mandolin hanging on the wall!
Pics of my new find - a 1924(ish) Bacon Mandolin!
Check out the grain of that back wood (which the internet tells me is likely birch).
I didn't have too much interest in mandolin until I heard some really great players at Clifftop, most of who played Gibson oval-holes. Ever since, I've tried out every one of those I've come across and had yet to find that sweet sound in the low register that these players seemed to bring out of their instruments. However, I havent spent a lot of time training myself to coax great tone out of a mandolin, which I assumed may have been part of the problem - but when I pulled that Bacon off the wall and plucked a few notes on the G string....well I kinda had to have it. I knew Bacon as a great turn of the century banjo brand (which is probably why the mandolin caught my eye), but a little online sleuthing showed that they indeed made carved-top mandolins for ~2-3 years in the 1920's. While their higher-end models, which have pretty bizarre body shapes, were probably made in house, the construction of the more conventionally-shaped "Amateur" model (above) may have been farmed out to Gretsch - no slouch of a brand in its own right!
This particular mandolin has had some upgrades: new tuners were installed (perhaps incorrectly as one side works in reverse), a new bridge was added, and the neck was replaned and refretted. These things likely decrease the "collectability" of the instrument....but I have no complaint as it plays like a dream. And the sound....I don't think I have much of an ear for mandolins, but it really sticks out. I made sure to play a couple other mandolins in the store to make sure that the room wasn't just "magically resonant" in some way - no dice....this guy had some gravitas! Perhaps it has something to do with the birch back and sides? This seemingly-peculiar wood choice was also common in the small bodied budget guitars from the 20s and 30s favored by some fingerstyle blues players - those things can have quite the bark! I talked $50 off the price (which was already quite reasonable - I actually feel a tad guilty about this). Knowing that music shops struggle to survive these days, I added $10 back to my final offer to offset the credit card fees associated with my purchase. Enough talking about the mando's sound - let's hear the thing:
Me playing "Sally in the Garden" on my new (yet old) Bacon Mandolin. "Warts and all" recording complete with background noise, excessive pick "scraping," and a melodic fumble to cap off the 2nd B part. Recorded in my In laws' living room using a Yeti microphone, Garage Band, and my own underwhelming mandolin skills : ) Hopefully I'll improve in this department in coming months.
Anyways, the inital stop-by that sparked this purchase was a momentary diversion from a Christmas shopping expidition. I didn't walk in expecting to find a Christmas present for myself but luckily Santa had other plans : ) Speaking of Christmas, I'm posting a day early to give myself time to kick back and enjoy the day with my in laws in New Hampshire. Hope that anyone reading this has a great holiday season as well, whatever you may celebrate! Between Christmas and New Years, I'm getting together with my newfound Clifftop crew (most of whom live in and around Boston) - these guys are fantastic musicians with a deep tune list....hopefully a few easy tunes come up so I can try my new toy out in a jam setting!
In today's blog post, I thought I'd talk a bit about my absolute favorite type of playing - banjo-fiddle duets. For the sake of the ears of all involved, I normally stick to banjo in these arrangements (I can play fiddle in the same way that I can also technically ice skate...in the end I get from A to B but the journey is hardly elegant). When done well, banjo fiddle duets are so fun becuase they become a fluid conversation. For example: if the fiddler is playing a pretty constant shuffle, I can either choose to echo that with heavy-handed bum-ditties or choose to contrast their playing by being a bit more notey in response; the decisions I make could, in turn, influence how the fiddler approaches the tune the next time through. In trying to find a niche for myself in a duo, I also end up taking on roles that I wouldnt normally take on when having to support a tune on my own; with another player on melody, I get to do slightly adventurous stuff like trying to invent harmonies or countermelodies on the fly (though a little of this certainly goes a long way : ). Finally, banjo fiddle duets can also turn in to a bit of a chase as well if each player is trying to grab bits of the other's melody for a certain tune.
Overall, this type of playing can become truly....well, "playful" - its not uncommon for both a fiddler and I to start laughing when a tune is finished as if we've both been in on some sort of inside joke. This happend to me most recently in my first gig with "Rock Andy," my old time duo with a local fiddler. We played "Coleman's March" together for the first time while gigging at a local food co-op. Starting the tune I had a moment of panic - she was playing that "bouncy version with a slightly different melody" common to Michigan that I hadn't yet gotten a hang of...however, we had an audience listening (well maybe thats generous...we had "shoppers hearing") so we had to continue with confidence. By the end of the tune, we had kinda merged our versions into a previously-nonexistant hybrid and had both had a blast doing so; what started as a potential train wreck ended up as my favorite tune of that whole gig. In my mind, the keys to banjo/fiddle duets (and really any sort of small group playing) are 1) listening and 2) responding, which requires flexibity in your playing. For that reason its better to have a handle on several different versions of each tune you play, and a good working knowlege of various banjo tunings for when you have to find notes in a version of a tune you've never heard before. In duets, I also try to alternate between "leading" by introducing new ideas and "following" by giving the fiddler space to introduce ideas of their own; ideally I'm neither always a musical bully nor a musical pushover : ). I also try to force myself to experiment in these contexts - though you can feel a bit exposed without a rhythm section, the whole thing is pretty low-stakes (I mean, its just music, and wrong notes stop rignging pretty quickly after all). Given my particular soft spot for banjo-fiddle duets, imagine my excitement when Adam Hurt led a class called "playing effectively with an old time fiddler" at Midwest Banjo Camp this past year! For those who don't know, Midwest Banjo Camp (midwestbanjocamp.com), an annual weekend-long banjo extravaganza that occurs only 20 minutes down the road from me in Olivet MI. In this setting, I've been fortunate enough to meet Adam along with a number of other clawhammer greats as well (..Mark Johnson, Bob Carlin, Joe Newberry, Ken Perlman, Michael J. Miles, Walt Koken, Lucas Pool....). In Adam's "playing effectively with an old time fiddler" class, the format was pretty simple - Adam brought his fiddle and went around the room playing duets with all of the ~12 people in the class. After each duet, we dissected some of the decisions that he, and each banjo player, made in the process. By the way, as much as I gush about Adam's banjo playing (for example, here and here), his fiddling is just terrific as well! You can hear a good amount of that on his last album "Fine Times at Our House" (available here); my only complaint about that Album is that it actually doesn't contain the eponymous West Virginia tune....which I just love to play:
Me playing "Fine Times at Our House" amongst other tunes on an OME Northstar as part of my side-gig as the official banjo tester for Elderly instruments. This banjo is just killer BTW.
Hopefully Adam will record "Fine times...." one day as well : )
I'd just like to pause here and make note of something: I honestly can't think of a banjo player I idolize more than Adam Hurt and yet somehow I actually get to talk to, and even play with, this guy at places like Midwest Banjo Camp and Clifftop. The fact that I would ever even get to meet Adam Hurt never occurred to me when I was trying to plunk along to his CDs 5 or 6 years ago - but now we're on a first name basis and I've seen him a couple of times in the past year alone. How many Rolling Stones fans have that experience?? I feel fortunate that in Old Time music I have found a genre where the people at the top of the food chain are so approachable! Of course, it helps that Adam in particular is a very warm and thoughtful guy who makes time for people like me; while not everyone I've met is quite as friendly as Adam, its been my experience that the Old Time community is a pretty welcoming group on balance. In Adam's class I had so much fun listening to Adam play duets with everyone else that I kind of forgot to pick a tune for my turn until after he'd switched his fiddle to crosstuning. With my choices therefore limited to the Key of A, I suggested we play either "Sandy Boys" or (as a more adventurous suggestion) the Henry Reed tune "Newcastle" (which is alternately known as "Texas"). As a native-born Texan who learned to play banjo ~30 minutes down the road from "Newcastle," my naming-allegances are a bit torn here. However, at Midwest Banjo Camp Ken Perlman told me that Alan Jabbor would be happy to know that I called it "Newcastle"...so thats what I'll go with. "Newcastle" is a crooked tune, and one that doesn't get called that often in my experience (unless I call it myself). Adam's eyes lit up at this suggestion so away we went! A couple days later I got an email from Linda, another student in the class, with a recording of Adam and I's duet attached - thank you LInda for providing me with my most prized digital posession! I've included this recording (with Adam's blessing) below:
Adam Hurt (fiddle) and I (banjo) jamming out on the Henry Reed tune "Newcastle" (aka "Texas") at Midwest Banjo Camp 2016. Played on El Hefe (El Hefe's origin story here)
I've cut out the "post tune discussion" part of the file because I didn't want to post the voices of the other people in the class on the internet without their permission. I've therefore done a dissection of my own below. In total, we go through the tune 4 times so I'll talk about what happened each of those times to further expemplify the aforementioned "banjo/fiddle conversation" phenomenon:
First time through - At my request Adam started the tune at a pretty moderate pace. It should be said that as with his banjo playing, his rhythm on fiddle is solid! I was clearly a bit nervous at first: if you listen to the second phrase of the first A part, I hit the G note that begins that phrase 3 times in a row, which is a play on the melody that I don't ever recall doing before or since...I'm guessing this "musical studder" was the result of an "oh no, what if I forget the tune in front of all these people??" moment rather than a clever bit of improv on my part : ) Luckily I didn't completely train-wreck (which I'm apt to do on contest stages...though not in Eldery videos for some reason). If you listen closely, Adam and I's versions of the tune started out a bit different, but its clear that he was listening and trying to bring a bit more of my version into his playing as the tune progressed. As an example: there's a bit of symmetry in "Newcastle" in that the A and B parts have the same ending phrase; by the end of the first round of AABB, we've therefore played this phrase 4 times. In the first run through of this phrase (i.e. the end of the first A part) Adam played a really nice triplet ornament, though it clashed a bit with what I was doing; by the end of the second B part, Adam had ditched his ending in favor of something more-closely matched what I was playing on banjo. Second time through - I got my feet back under me (if I remember correctly, I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the "audience" at this point...) and started the A part with a common trick of mine: going to the low octave. In "Newcastle" this requires me to put some arpeggios in as filler since the melody veers too low for me to get all of the A part in the low octave (...one day I'll get myself a 6 string banjo...). Adam had such a killer melody going that I didn't mind being a bit less melodic and engaging in octave-acrobatics to jump back up to the high octave (once more out of necessity) for the B part however. You can hear that Adam was still skillfully chasing my melody the second time through the tune: his default B part was alot more ornate with a bit different phrasing than what I was doing but if you listen to the second B part on this repeat, he inserts a bit of a pause to catch my phrasing. Third time through - Adam started by jumping to the low octave for the A part! Clearly he heard what I did the first time through and was trying to join me down there (he actually said as much afterwards). Meanwhile, I naturally guessed incorrectly and went back to the high octave : ) Interestingly, due to the range of the two instruments, this actually put us in the same musical octave, resulting in a really cool sound! I threw my low octave arpeggios in again in the 2nd A part (just for fun...my nerves have dissapated enough at this point to let me pull these kinds of shenanigans) and Adam continued in the low octave for the B part as well; this is likely my favorite run through of the tune. At this point you'll also hear that Adam had slowly mutated his version of "Newcastle" to one that was virtually identical to what I was playing (after only 3 repats....super impressive!). If you listen carefully, you'll hear Adam call "one more" at the end of the third time through - I believe I opened my eyes at this point and rejoined the real world. Fourth time through - I started low on the first A part hoping to finally "catch" Adam in the low register...but wouldn't you know it, he went high again! I adjusted back to the high octave for the second A part and we finished out with quite compatible B parts due to Adam's aforementioned ability to adjust on the fly. As I said, Adam is an exceptional player who can pick a lot of what I was doing quite quickly; by comparison, it takes me a bit longer to adjust to an unfamiliar version of a tune. Perhaps given a few more repeats, I could have tried to mirror some of his melodic twists a bit better in return : ). Hopefully I'll get to play with Adam again one day (maybe we can try "Fine Times at Our House" next time)! ------------------------------ That'll do it for this week! I'm posting a day early because I'm braving the snow to drive to New Hampshire and spend the holidays with my wife's family - always a great time! This year, I'm also hanging out with some friends from Boston that I met at Clifftop - freaking amazing! As of yet, no word on the results of the Banjohangout Christmas contest (blogpost on that here), though voting has ended....maybe I'll have some good news on that front next week! Finally, I got back in the studio to record a new Elderly video on a couple Dogwood banjos this past week - check Elderly's youtube channel (here) for that to show up soon!
This story may be familiar:
You're at an Old-Time jam and someone (likely a fiddler) calls a waltz. You look around at the banjo players and most of them are rolling their eyes and preparing to wait the next tune one out. When the tune starts, most of the banjo players switch to lightly-payed 2- or 3-finger roll patterns over chords until the next tune comes along. This type of thing cuts across all skill levels: I've seen some really great clawhammer players back away from playing clawhammer on waltzes in jams (to be fair, this could be a stylistic choice....). This doesn't have to be the case however! I actually think that the clawhammer technique can be adapted to play simultaneous melody and rhythm on waltzes just as effectively as it works for 4/4 tunes. Today, I'll break down the basics of playing waltzes and provide an example tab to get you started. So, lets start at the beginning... What is a Waltz? I use the term "Waltz" to describe any tune in triple time (i.e. time signatures where beats are corralled into groups of three). For comparison, most fiddle tunes that I've discussed on this blog, and most that I play, are in quadruple time (i.e. with a 4/4 time signature) and are commonly reffered to as "breakdowns, or "reels." As an aside, I think of "marches" as 4/4 tunes as well, though I beleve its convention to write them in 2/4. Either way, I count the beat of 4/4 tunes as follows "one and two and three and four and" and I indicate this beat above the tab as "1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +" (a little more discussion of the "beat" in my post on Right Hand Stride here). Waltzes are often written in 3/4 and measures can therefore counted as follows "one and two and three and." Notice that I'm still dividing main beats into two in this case; some waltzes are played in such a way that the main beats are actually best divided into thirds....I'll discuss waltzes like that in a future post. For today, I'll show tabs where the beat for each measure is indicated above the bar as "1 + 2 + 3 +." Some commonly-played waltzes at the jams I go to are "The Blackest Crow," which many people like to sing, "The Ookpik Waltz," which is a Canadian tune with an Inuit-inspired name, and "Josefin's Waltz," which has crept into the Old-Time cannon from the Swedish band "Väsen." Also - Väsen is just fantastic!! "Clawhammer-izing" the basic Waltz rhythm. Before diving in to playing waltz melodies, lets start with the rhythm. In 4/4 tunes, I tend to lean pretty heavily on the bum-ditty pattern, which I'll show below for comparison purposes:
Figure 1 - the standard "bum-ditty" pattern in 4/4
In Figure 1, we've got 2 "bum-ditty's" per measure; therefore, each bum-ditty requres 2 beats. So, how do we get "bum-ditty's" into measures with 3 beats? The most common solution to this is to play a single "bum-ditty-ditty" per measure:
Figure 2 - the "bum-ditty-ditty" pattern for playing waltzes.
So right off the bat, you can use the pattern in Figure 2 to "clawhammer" some chords behind a waltz, thereby liberating yourself from fingerpicking altogether! However, I find this particular rhythm a bit heavy handed. Here's another option (the "bum-bum-ditty"):
Figure 3 - the "bum-bum-ditty" pattern for playing waltzes.
Just a little more tasteful in my opinion : ). There is a 3rd option as well...maybe I'll call it "bum-ditty-bum?"
Figure 4 - the "bum-ditty-bum" pattern for playing waltzes.
Figure 4 is my favorite rhythmic option for most waltzes. The "bum" on the 3rd beat really drives the tune forward by emphasizing a lead-in to the next measure. I suppose you could use "bum-bum-bum," "ditty-ditty-ditty," or "ditty-ditty-bum" approaches along with various brush-free (i.e. ghost-note-containing) varations to fill space as well....I'll let you imagine those alternatives. The approaches shown in Figures 2-4 should get the point across. Once again, armed with the proper chords you can back the melody with any of these approaches. In fact, with two "bums" per measure, the approaches shown in Figures 3 and 4 can be easily altered to allow for some nice alternating bass as well.
However, we can use the ideas presented in Figures 2-4 as the basis for playing melody-heavy rhythmic arrangements as well. With a 4/4 tune, I typically take my rythmic idea (e.g. "bum-ditty") and use it to permeate the tune and create an arrangement as follows: I'll play the melody where it occurs, then revert to "bum-ditty" to fill empty beats (I've got a pretty good discussion of this process in a previous post on "Yew Piney Mountain" here). We can do the same thing with any of the ideas presented in Figures 2-4 as well, thereby creating "bum-ditty-ditty," "bum-bum-ditty," and/or "bum-ditty-bum" arrangements of waltzes that give the illusion of constant rhythm behind the melody as well. But how do we get those pesky melody notes? Time to revisit right hand stride! Right hand stride as it applies to waltzes: A couple weeks back I wrote a post about "right hand stride" (here) which was ostensibly written in regards to 4/4 tunes. I came up with some rules that govern right hand stride, presented again below. Note that I've changed all references to the "index finger" to say "striking finger" in recognition that many people strike with the middle finger rather than the index (thanks for the feedback Stew!): ---------------------------- Rule 1 for maintaining right hand stride: The striking finger of the right hand moves towards the strings on every beat; the thumb never plays notes on the beat. Rule 2 for maintaining right hand stride: The striking finger is never used to play notes between 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 an "and" 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, or by plucking the string with the left hand. Rule 2b) if the note on an "and" 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 an "and" 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 an "and" beat is on a higher string than the preceding note, this note should be played by plucking the string with the left hand. ----------------------------- If you look back at Figures 2-4 above, you'll notice that all of these rhythmic approaches actually follow the rules governing Right Hand Stride as outlined above: "bum's" and brushes are played on beat with the striking finger, and 5th string pulls with the thumb cover the notes on "and" beats. Your hand is always moving towards the strings (and, in fact, hitting them) on beats 1, 2, and 3; the approach only differs from 4/4 tunes in that there are three beats instead of four. It turns out that the rules that govern right hand stride work just as well for waltzes as they do for reels/breakdowns. To play fluid-sounding clawhammer in waltz time, one must simply keep track of which notes occur on beats, and which notes occur between beats and follow the rules posted above. Example below. Putting it all together: In a seasonally-appropriate move, I decided to use "The First Noel" as my example tune in this post. Christmas tunes are so deeply-ingrained that we are often not concious of their time signatures, but many are actually in waltz time, "The First Noel" included. I have no idea what the traditional key signature of this tune is, but it fell pretty well in D tuning (aDADE) so thats where it ended up in my hands : ). I wrote a tab, which you'll find a bit further down the page, around the "bum-ditty-bum" rhythm outlined in Figure 3 (this actually works quite well for the melody as well, which seems to occupy the 1st and 3rd beat of each measure). Before looking at the whole tab, lets check out the opening phrase of the Chorus (aka B part if you treat "The First Noel" as an AAB fiddle tune) and figure out how to deal with the melody via the rules of Right Hand Stride. To orient you, if the lyrics of the chorus go as follows (with the text edited to show where notes occur), we're playing the underlined part. Note that the first 2 notes (i.e. No-o-) are actually the lead in from the A part so they're not shown below. No-o-el, No-o-el, No-o-el, No-el, Born is the Ki-ing of I-is-rae-el Here's the tab for that line without markup to deal with right hand concerns.
FIgure 5 - The first line of the B part of "The First Noel" for Clawhammer Banjo without markup to deal with right hand concerns. To be played in aDADE.
So, lets go through Figure 5 step by step to figure out how to play each note by rules 1 and 2. Once again, I'll use the "+" terminology to discuss notes that occur between beats (i.e. notes on the "and" beats).
Measure 1, Beat 1: Striking Finger (Rule 1) Measure 1, Beat 1+: empty (just rest my thumb on the 5th string for this beat) Measure 1, Beat 2: Brush with Striking Finger (Rule 1) Measure 1, Beat 2+: thumb (Rule 2a) Measure 1, Beat 3: Striking Finger (Rule 1) Measure 1, Beat 3+: Hammer on (Rule 2b) Measure 2, Beat 1: Striking Finger (Rule 1) Measure 2, Beat 1+: empty (just rest my thumb on the 5th string for this beat) Measure 2, Beat 2: Brush with Striking Finger (Rule 1) Measure 2, Beat 2+: thumb (Rule 2a) Measure 2, Beat 3: Striking Finger (Rule 1) Measure 2, Beat 3+: Drop Thumb (Rule 2a) So we end up with the following arrangement:
FIgure 6 - The first line of the B part of "The First Noel" for Clawhammer Banjo with a hammer-on and drop-thumb added in to allow for playing "in stride." To be played in aDADE.
Not too bad huh? Here's the whole tab:
...and a Soundfile:
The First Noel - played by Jeff Norman on Buckeye #159 in aDADE.
Post about this banjohere
The above tab is pretty simple and doesn't require you to break stride once! Also, it sounds best slow, and you're likely already familiar with the melody, so hopefully its a good intro to Clawhammer Waltzes for those who have yet to try them : ) Of course, one thing I have noticed about waltzes is that many require a fair amount of "breaking the rules" when it comes to left hand stride; I'll be revisiting stride-breaking in waltzes in a future post!
Just a reminder: The banjohangout Christmas tune contest voting is live as we speak - feel free to vote for my video by clicking here (last weeks blogpost about my entry, here). Next weekend I'm off to New Hampshire to ride out the holidays and reunite with some friends from Clifftop (....super excited!!!....) - but check in if you get a chance because I'll post again every Sunday as always : )
Not long after moving to Michigan, I got hired as "background banjo" for a Christmas party and had a month or so to learn a whole slew of Christmas tunes on the banjo. I decided to go about this task by ignoring the original key of the tune (which I would have had to look up anyhow since I don't have perfect pitch) and just putting it in whichever tuning seemed to make the fingering easiest, while making some effort to pepper equal numbers of tunes in each tuning. In the end the gig went quite well - I basically played 4 long medleys (one for each of the following tunings: double D, A major, A modal, Old G) where I alternated Christmas tunes with fiddle tunes as filler.
To my delight I found that most Christmas tunes actually worked quite well as Clawhammer pieces and I was able to come up with instrumental arrangements of about 15 different of them. Skip ahead to late 2016, when Banjohangout decided to bring back their video contests by having a Christmas tune challenge! Of course I wanted to enter....but which tune to play out of my repitoire? I decided in the end to go with "Good King Wenceslas," partially because I thought it would be a bit of an usual choice for the contest, and partially because I remember how much I enjoyed playing it. Rather than playing by myself, I thought it would be a lot of fun to make a banjo duet with my buddy TJ, with whom I play every week. Typcially we play fiddle tune duets where he sticks to the melody and I vary between playing it with him and playing something else (playing up or down an octave, playing paralell 3rds or 6ths, sticking to the chords, making up some counter-melody, etc). Sometimes my harmonic experimentation sounds great...other times it doesn't...but its always interesting : ) So, I recruited TJ and we made the following video for the contest in that spirit:
Me and TJ playing "Good King Wenceslas" for the Banjohangout Christmas tune contest. TJ is playing a Banjeaurine tuned cFCFG; I'm playing my Buckeye tuned fCFCD. Recorded on an iPad with no external mic; we applied a filter to the video to make it look "old timey" : )
You may have noticed that TJ's banjo sounds higher pitched than a standard banjo though he's not using a capo; in fact the instrument he's playing is best described as a "banjeaurine" rather than a banjo. For those who are unfamiliar, a banjeaurine is basically a 5-string banjo with a shorter neck (typically like a standard neck capo 5) that was originally conceived as a higher register voice in banjo orchestras (which yes, used to be quite popular!). TJ's banjeuarine is quite old, has a slotted headstock, and sounds really cool - it has a 12" pot with a skin head and was constructed in such a way that the bridge sits way down near the tailpiece. TJ tuned it to double C capo 5 ("double F;" cFCFG). Cool pic below:
TJ's super cool slot-head banjeaurine. Note, this instrument is actually for sale (at the day of this posting at least; 12/4/16) in the Banjohangout classifieds here.
To get myself in the same key as TJ (F major), I tuned the Buckeye down from Old G tuning to Old F (fCFCD). I played a few tunes in this tuning at a squaredance I played in October (post about that here). While TJ started his melody on the open 2nd string (F) in his tuning, I started my melody on the open 3rd string (also F) in my tuning; in this way we were both able to play the whole melody of "Good King Wenceslas" in first position (i.e. on frets 0-5) with me one octave lower than him for contrast - this was how we got through the first round of the tune. But, there were 3 rounds to go....what to do next?
For rounds 2 and 3 of "Good King Wenceslas," TJ continued the melody as before, while I decided to "reference" two other Christmas tunes that I had learned for the aforementioned holiday party a couple years earlier as a kind of counter-melody: "Little Drummer Boy" and "Up on a Housetop." I had originally played "Little Drummer Boy" in D (using double D tuning: aDADE) and "Up on the Housetop" in A (using open A tuning: aEAC#E), but each of these shifted to Old G (really Old F) quite easily. However, I had to heavily alter both tunes to get them to harmonize with "Good King Wenceslas" (which is why I used the term "reference" above). I did this by figuring out the chord progression of "Good King Wenceslas" and then shifting phrases of "Little Drummer Boy" and "Up on a Housetop" up or down a few notes of the G major scale to match this chord progression. What you end up hearing in my playing is little recognizable snippets of each tune along with phrases that seem kinda close to the melody...as if someone were searching for the tune in their memory, but not quite getting it right : ). Still, this seemed like a better option that cacophany and these other tunes are bending towards "Good King Wenceslas." Kind of a fun harmony option in my opinion : ) On the last time through the tune (round 4), I played parallel thirds above my original melody; once again, TJ soldiered on with the original melody as before (which is good because 3rds sound kind of bizzare without context). Its easy to find a parallel 3rds line by simply moving 2 notes up the G major scale from the origina melody and following what the melody does from there (e.g. if the main melody jumps 2 notes up the scale, so do I). These ideas are explored a bit in my "27 variations on the walkup in Spotted Pony" post (here). Anyways, I had a lot of fun recording this and I hope you enjoyed watching it : ) Feel free to sign in to your banjohangout account and rate our video here (the video with the highest rating by Deceber 15th wins). Be sure and watch the other entries too - there's some really impressive playing in there (I especially like some of the jazzy stuff the 3-finger players do)! |
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