Blog – Page 56

Clawhammer Tune of the Week: “Miss McLeod’s Reel”

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Miss McLeod’s Reel

Did you ever see the devil, Uncle Joe?

Hop high Ladies.

Regardless of what name you choose to refer to it by, this week’s tune is a time honored chestnut if there ever was one.

First appearing in 18th Century Ireland, it has been beloved by fiddlers ever since, likely undergoing countless transformations at the hands of the folk process, replete with the addition of various and asundry turns of phrases and alterations of time signatures.

Most folks outside of the old time tradition know it as “Hop High Ladies”, which references the lyrics now typically sung along with the B part (Hop high ladies, three in a row…).

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to North Carolina to work on a new project for Brainjo Productions. It’s one that I’m really excited about, and in fact is what inspired this tune (and tuning) today. More on this soon.

For now, enjoy this wonderful tune.

Miss McLeod’s Reel

fDGCD tuning, Brainjo level 3-4

Notes on the tab: The tuning here, fDGCD, places the resultant tune in the key of F. To play it in the key of G (which is where you’ll usually find it in jams), just tune or capo up two half steps to gEADE.

The notes in parentheses are “skip notes”, meaning they aren’t sounded by the picking finger (for a full tutorial on these, go here).

About the AuthorJosh Turknett is founder and lead brain hacker at Brainjo Productions

Clawhammer Core Repertoire Series: “Shady Grove”

We all know that nothing showcases the unique sounds of the banjo quite like a modal tune. We also know that modal tunes might be best described as a “banjo player’s banjo tune” – beloved by devout fans of the instrument, but perhaps not as well appreciated by the uninitiated, for whom its archaic scale tones may be a bit too inaccessible to the unfamiliar ear.

Not Shady Grove.

For whatever reason, this old nugget of a lovesong has become a crossover classic, with its popularity extending well outside the bounds of traditional old-time banjo. In that way, it’s a great way to initiate the uninitiated, to introduce them to the idea that there are great sounds yet to be discovered outside of the monochromatic world of top-40 radio.

Or at least we can pretend this is so.

Anyhow, perhaps the best reason to learn Shady Grove is that it’s simple melody that, in modal tuning, is darn easy to play! And play it we shall.

Step 1: Know thy Melody

This step should be an easy one, as the melody for this song is dead simple.

In the video above, I’m tuned down to the key of D to better suit the gourd’s temperament and my post-pubescent vocal chords, but we’ll be playing it out of “G modal” tuning in this lesson, which means we’ll be playing it in the key of G.

To help hear the melody in this new key, I’m going to attempt to sing a verse in G for you:

Take a listen to these examples enough time to etch this melody into the banks of your memory.

Step 2: Find the Melody Notes

Speaking of G modal tuning, make sure your banjo is properly tuned to gDGCD before going note hunting. Once you’re there, see if you can find the basic melody notes of this tune on your banjo.

Here’s my version of the basic melody in audiophonic format:

And here it is represented in tabulational style:

Step 3 – Add Some Clawhammery Stuff

With that out of the way, let’s make it sound like a banjo tune. Go ahead and first follow each of the notes that occur on the downbeat (placed in bold in the tab above) and follow them with a “ditty” strum.

Add in a few choice drop thumbs and hammer-ons to syncopate the melody (by shifting it to the offbeat) to add some interest, and here’s what you get:

And here’s how it sounds:

Step 4: Embellish to Taste

The simplicity of and space within this melody affords you ample opportunity to play around with it, so don’t be afraid to stamp it with your personal style.

That’s what I did in my final arrangement you heard in the first video. Here’s what that looks like in tab:

A Word (and a video) About Syncopated Skips

Notes in the shaded box in the tab above are “skip notes.” In these instances, the picking hand continues as if it’s going to strike the string, but doesn’t actually come into contact with it (you “skip” the note). It’s a great technique for adding syncopation, and one I receive a lot of questions about, so here’s an in depth video lesson on the subject (part of the “Breakthrough Banjo” course):

And just to help you get a sense of what that sounds like in our current key of G modal, here is is played in that tuning:

Go to the Core Repertoire Series Table of Contents

Clawhammer Tune and Tab of the Week: Little Billie Wilson

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“Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” – Orson Welles

So much of the music we love, or any great art for that matter, is born out of constraints. This truism is certainly on full display in the history of traditional Appalachian folk music, where glorious sounds sprang forth time and again from the most modest of circumstances and materials.

I also think it’s on full display with clawhammer style itself.

The continuous pulsation of the picking hand is what gives clawhammer the driving, hyponotic sound we all love; but the necessity of maintaining that persistent up and down movement of the hand also imposes its own constraints and limitations, as does the fact that we’re only allowed a single finger and a thumb for the striking of notes.

Yet, I think this is the very the thing that makes it so compelling. It’s in our solution to these challenges that we’ve created a sound that cannot be replicated in any other way, a sound that would never have made it’s way into the sonic ether had we not been brave (foolish?) enough to try to make music in the face of these obstacles.

Fiddle tunes, where it’s common for melody notes to be crammed into all the available spaces, certainly force us to confront these limitations head on. Sure, for the fiddler, getting all those notes is relatively trivial, given the mechanics of a playing a bowed instrument.

But for us banjoists attempting to present fiddle tunes in the clawhammer style, we have to get a bit creative if we want to include all those melodical embellishments, especially those that fall on the offbeats.

So decisions must be made. Decisions about what notes to leave, and what notes to throw out so as to not sacrifice rhythm at the altar of melody.

With some tunes, like “Little Billie Wilson”, the gods of downpicking smile upon us. Pretty much all the notes in this melody sit quite nicely in standard A tuning, making it impossible to resist the temptation to get em all in.

It’s a peppy, sweet little tune that doubles as both a great solo clawhammer piece and a workout for your fretting fingers. Enjoy!

Little Billie Wilson

aEAC#E tuning, Brainjo level 3

For more information on how to read the tablature, check out the complete guide to reading banjo tabs.

About the AuthorJosh Turknett is founder and lead brain hacker at Brainjo Productions

The Immutable Laws of Brainjo: The Art and Science of Effective Practice (Episode 6)

The Laws of Brainjo, Episode 6

When Should You Practice?

In the last episode in the Laws of Brainjo series, we tackled the question of practice time: just how much we actually need to get better, and whether it’s possible to practice too much.

This time, we’re shifting our attention to a different but related question:

When during the course of the day should that practice take place?

What’s Your Chronotype?

In this modern, newfangled world of ours, with all manner of artificial light sources at our disposal, we’re free to set our days and nights according to whatever schedule we please. And if we wish, we can divorce our “daily” routines entirely from the rise and fall of the sun.

Yet, the time that’s passed since the invention of the incandescent bulb represents only a tiny blip in the total swath of our history on this planet.

So even though technology affords us the opportunity to escape our ecological niche, our biology remains inextricably linked to the rhythms of nature. Which means that every cell in our body, including those in our brains, still cycles through changes on a 24 hour schedule. These are our “circadian rhythms.”

Translation: we operate differently in the morning than we do in the evening, and we’re better suited towards doing certain things at certain times of day.

Last episode, we discussed the essential role that attention plays when it comes to learning new things. Attention is the means by which we signal our brain that whatever activity we’re engaged in, like banjo playing, is worth learning.

And research shows that most humans are able to maintain their sharpest focus in the late morning to early afternoon. This is the time when those attentional circuits so critical for facilitating neuroplasticity are typically at their best. Not surprisingly, given our discussion in the last episode, this is the time of day when we tend to perform best at learning new things.

But this window won’t be the same for everyone. Your ideal time for practice, the time of day when you’re at your sharpest, will in part be determined by your own personal “chronotype,” which is just a fancy way of describing whether you’re a morning person or an evening person.

As you might imagine, the larks among us are best suited for practice sessions during the early part of the day, while the owls are capable of keen attention far later into the evening.

You likely already have a pretty good idea of which chronotypic camp you fall into. But if you want to get more specific, there’s even a quiz you can take to precisely quantify your degree of morning or eveningness.

Also, if you start paying attention to the way you feel during the course of the day, the times when you feel your most alert and productive, and the times when your energy starts to wane, you’ll realize pretty quickly that this pattern remains pretty consistent from day to day.

Which brings us to Brainjo Law number 9:

Brainjo Law #9: The meat of your practice sessions should occur during the time of day when you’re at your sharpest (for most, this will be late morning to early afternoon, though this can vary further according to your chronotype).

On a related note, it turns out that our creativity peaks when we’re a little bit tired, during periods when our attention tends to wander a bit. This is your best time for free-form noodling, when your random and uninhibited meanderings around the fretboard might lead you to a serendipitous discovery or two that you can add into your bag of tricks.

A Word About Sleep

As you may know from previous articles in the Laws of Brainjo series, the whole point of our practice sessions is to provide our brain with the inputs it needs to wire up new circuits and forge new pathways. And the bulk of that rewiring and path forging occurs during sleep.

Sleep is the time for growth and restoration, both physically and mentally.

And there is some evidence that the brain, when it triages the events of the day, gives priority to the activities performed closer to sleep. So, all other things being equal, you may be able to get a little more bang for your practicing buck closer to bedtime.

So you night owls are in luck. While the logistics of society in general may not be set up in your favor, this is one instance where your contrarian chronotype works to your benefit.

For you larks, who can’t imagine mustering the requisite focus for an extended nightly practice session, even just a brief, 5 minute session to reinforce anything you’d practiced earlier in the day should allow you to still reap the benefits from this phenomenon. Here, all you’re trying to do is convey to your brain that you consider that banjo practice from earlier to be a worthwhile thing for it to work on while you snooze.

And you don’t really even need your banjo in hand for this condensed, pre-slumber practice. Simply visualizing a brief practice session before you hit the hay should be enough for our purposes here.

If you’re not too familiar with the idea of visualization, fear not! It will be the subject of the next installment in the Laws of Brainjo series. It’s a cheap, efficient, and suprisingly effective tool that definitely belongs in your practice arsenal. See you then!

Episode 7: Mind Over Matter

Back to the “Laws of Brainjo” Table of Contents

About the AuthorDr. Josh Turknett is the creator of the Brainjo Method, the first music teaching system to incorporate the science of learning and neuroplasticity and specifically target the adult learner

Clawhammer Tune of the Week: “Coal Creek March”

Click here to subscribe to the tune of the week (if you’re not already a subscriber) and get a new tune every Friday, plus tabs to all the ones to date.

I think it goes without saying that I love clawhammer banjo.

But I happen to be a huge fan of fingerstyle banjo, too. Truth be told, I love just about every sound that can come out of a banjo. There’s seemingly no end to the number of ways you can make great sounds on the 5-string.

In fact, part of the charm of our beloved instrument is just how many idiosyncratic ways of playing it that folks have dreamed up over the years.

When it comes to fingerpicking, one of my all-time favorite pieces has to be “Coal Creek March. ” The iconic version of this tune was first performed by Pete Steele, and then further popularized by Pete Seeger. To me, it’s part of a long line of flowing and hypnotic old time fingerpicked numbers that I could listen to and play all day. And I love to play this one fingerstyle myself.

However, there’s no reason the up-pickers should get all the fun! And this being the clawhammer tune of the week series, I decided I’d present this beautiful melody in downpicking style. Not just because it can be done, but because it sounds great when you do!

The tuning here is one you may not be familiar with, f#DF#AD. In other words, you’re tuned to an open D chord. It’s a great sounding tuning for the banjo, and fun to play around with.

It also lends itself to an economy of fretting hand work, given that you can make fully formed chords up and down the neck in the bar position.

The arrangement I have here, besides being rendered in clawhammer style, is also an amalgamation of various versions of this tune I’ve heard over the years, including Pete’s (Steele, that is) original, of course (for more on the history behind this tune, go here).

Coal Creek March

Brainjo level 3-4, f#DF#AD tuning

If you need any help decoding the tab, check out this “soup-to-nuts” guide to reading banjo tab.

About the AuthorJosh Turknett is founder and lead brain hacker at Brainjo Productions