Blog – Page 50

Are You Ready For Drop Thumb?

The Trial of Drop Thumb

In the world of clawhammer banjo, there are a few topics that, strangely enough, stir up heated debate.

And near – or perhaps at – the top of that list is the subject of drop thumb. There are two interrelated questions here that tend to stoke people’s rhetorical fire:

1. Should drop thumb be considered an advanced technique?

2. Should drop thumb be taught to an aspiring clawhammerist early on or later in their learning journey?

So let’s try to analyze the evidence dispassionately, free from bias or preconception, and see what l0gical conclusions we might arrive at…

Drop Thumb?!

First, let’s make sure we all know what we’re talking about.

Drop thumb in the context of clawhammer banjo simply refers to plucking any string beside the 5th string with your thumb. In this case, you’re “dropping” your thumb to a string that’s below the 5th string. So if you play a note on strings 1-4 with your thumb, you’ve dropped your thumb.

So let’s first perform a rational analysis of the drop thumb technique in order to determine its relative technical difficulty.

Something Old or Something New?

Now, the basic clawhammer motion involves striking an inside string (or strings) with the picking finger, and then striking the 5th string with the thumb. So, in order to play clawhammer at all, you already must be capable of plucking the 5th string with the thumb. More specifically, you can pluck the 5th string after you’ve struck a note on any of strings 1-4 with your picking finger (covered in lesson 2 of the 8 Essential Steps To Clawhammer series).

Let’s then consider what you must do when dropping the thumb in a few common scenarios.

First, we’ll take the case of dropping the thumb to the 2nd string after you’ve struck the 1st string with your picking finger (be it the index or middle). As I said above, you already know how to strike the 5th string with the thumb after striking the 1st with your picking finger. So the only difference between the maneuver that you already know how to perform and the drop thumb to the 2nd string is the distance between your striking finger and thumb.

In essence, the only thing you must change from the technique you’ve already learned is simply the distance between your thumb and finger. But wait!

You actually don’t have to learn this, because you can already do it!

How is that? You already do it when you pluck the 5th string after striking the 4th string with your picking finger. The distance between strings 4 and 5 is the same is the distance between strings 1 and 2! To illustrate:

The shape of the hand is the same when plucking the 5th with the thumb after striking the 4th string, and when plucking the 2nd (i.e. dropping the thumb) with the thumb after striking the first. The only difference are the specific strings that are struck.

Likewise, the distance between the finger and thumb when dropping the thumb to the 3rd string after playing the 1st is no different than the distance between plucking the 5th with the thumb after striking the 3rd string. And so on.

So the fundamental technique for drop thumb (changing the distance between thumb and striking finger) is one that you already know.

The only real difference between striking the 5th and striking an inside string is that you have to be slightly more precise when coming down to pluck with the thumb in order to avoid the other strings (since there are no strings to avoid when coming down to pluck the 5th string with the thumb).

Drop Thumb In Context

Anyone who learns the basic clawhammer stroke must start from scratch. And, as anyone who has done this knows, the clawhammer stroke itself is quite counterintuitive and awkward in the beginning.

Yet, with persistence, you got it. And going from zero prior downpicking experience to playing the clawhammer stroke is a far greater learning chasm to cross than the slight alteration in thumb accuracy needed to drop the thumb to the inside string.

In other words, if you’ve learned the clawhammer stroke, you’ve already tackled a learning feat more challenging than drop thumb.

So, in summation, there are some marginal adjustments that must be made to the stroke you already know to make drop thumb work, but, the difference between that minor adjustment and going from never having played to learning the clawhammer stroke is huge.

THE VERDICT

Drop Thumb should not receive any special treatment, as it is no more advanced technically than the other foundational elements of clawhammer banjo.

So if it’s indeed true that drop thumb is no more advanced a technique than any other aspect of banjo playing, then why is it that it has the reputation of being so?

Drop Thumb and The “Beginner’s Mind”

To answer this question, we need to introduce a bit of Zen Philosophy into this discussion, specifically the concept of “Shoshin”, or beginner’s mind. Bear with me.

In the beginning stages of learning about a new subject, or learning a new skill, everything feels awkward and unfamiliar. This comes as no surprise, and so you expect things to be hard at first. As our familiarity and expertise grows, however, things start getting a bit easier.

In the case of learning to play an instrument, as some of those technical elements move from the realm of conscious incompetence to unconscious competence, things start getting a lot easier. And more enjoyable.

But what happens when you’ve reached that point of hard-won ease, and suddenly you’re once again confronted with all the beginner’s awkwardness all over again?

It feels worse than it did originally, because you feel like you should be past that stage. Moreover, because the other technical elements now feel easy by comparison, you mistakenly label the new awkward thing as intrinsically MORE difficult. Because that’s how it feels.

It’s seems a natural part of human nature, once you’ve reached a certain level of competence in an endeavor, to stay at that level and not push forward. Pushing forward requires conquering new challenges that require you to return to those early feelings of awkwardness. Feelings you expected to have in the beginning, but don’t expect to have now.

And this is exactly what happens to folks who don’t learn drop thumb early on. In my experience, the main difference between those who say drop thumb is difficult and those who don’t understand the fuss is when they tried to learn it.

Those who tried learning it early on found it no more challenging than all the other stuff they’d been doing. Those who tried learning it later on found that drop thumb, compared to the other techniques of banjo playing they’d now mastered, felt really awkward (of course it did!), naturally leading them to the conclusion that it was an especially challenging technique.

Apparently the Zen Masters recognized this phenomenon long ago. Not only recognized it, but realized what a significant impediment it can be to continual growth and progress. Keeping a beginner’s mindset, no matter where you are on the timeline of mastery, is key to ensuring that you don’t stagnate and plateau, which is the larger lesson here.

Personally, I’ve found it to be a valuable concept, and one I remind myself of often. I don’t ever plan to stop learning and growing, but committing to this process requires confronting new challenges virtually every day. Challenges that may make me feel inept, and that tempt me to simply return to playing the things I already know and do well.

But maintaining the beginner’s mind reframes that struggle entirely – what could be viewed as a personal failing is instead seen as critical to your growth. It is transformed from something demoralizing and resisted to necessary and welcomed.

So, concluding with the final summation:

1. The best time to learn drop thumb (provided it’s something you’d like to learn) is early on in your learning journey.

2. Maintaining the beginner’s mind is a key component to continual growth and progress.

If you’re ready get started learning how to drop thumb right away (the easy way!), then sign up for Breakthrough Banjo and get crackin’!

Clawhammer Tune and Tab of the Week: “Sugar in the Gourd”

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.

Met her on the road, she danced on a board

Danced to a tune called Sugar in the Gourd,

Sugar in the gourd honey can’t get it out,

Only way to get the sugar gotta roll the gourd about

Ah, if only every romance began this way, maybe we wouldn’t have such an abysmal divorce rate.

But alas….

While the precise reason(s) why one would put sugar in a gourd remain somewhat unclear (and some potential explanations on the more…ahem…adult side), what is certain is that the tune named for the aforementioned act is an irresistible jam classic, and well deserving of a prominent place in your 5-string downpicking repertory.

This is definitely a ‘clear out the kitchen chairs and stomp your feet kind of tune’, so don’t be afraid to make it swing.

Sugar in the Gourd

gDGBD tuning, Brainjo level 3

Notes on the tab:

Notes in parentheses are “skip” notes. To learn more about these, check out my video lesson on the subject.

For more on reading tabs in general, check out this complete guide to reading banjo tabs.

A Breakthrough Banjo Update: The Learn To Play Clawhammer By Ear course (and now the “12 Days of Banjo” course) is now available as a free bonus when signing up for Breakthrough Banjo. Learn more about it here.

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

View the Brainjo Course Catalog

The Immutable Laws of Brainjo: The Art and Science of Effective Practice (Episode 11)

The Laws of Brainjo, Episode 11

How To Build An Improvisational Brain

In the last installment, I introduced the concept of the Timeline of Mastery, the learning sequence through which anyone must pass as they develop expertise in a subject.

The gold standard for this type of thing is the timeline of language learning. It’s the most reliable and efficient model for human learning ever created. And, fortunately for us, the many similarities between language and music means there’s tremendous insight to be pulled from this model for our own learning purposes.

When it comes to language, the ultimate destination, the marker of mastery, is fluency. One way to define fluency is the ability to take ideas in mental space (“thoughts”) and translate them into speech, in a manner that both seems and feels instantaneous.

Fluency can also be described as “improvisational speech”: the ability to take the building blocks of language and connect them in combinations that allow for the expression of ideas that are novel, personal, and specific to a situation.

And this is also about as perfect a definition for fluency on a musical instrument as I can imagine. The fluent musician is able to take musical ideas in mental space and translate those — seemingly instantaneously — into the sounds of an instrument.

With the language learning model as our guide to improvisational fluency with music, what then would be considered the prerequisites for linguistic fluency? What are the neural networks that must be created to support this skill?

Improvisational Networks

The neural networks required for improvisational speech are:

1. A sufficient vocabulary of words, stored as sonic representations, so that mental concepts can be communicated accurately.

2. Knowledge of the rules of language (grammar), so that the words are assembled in ways that others can understand.

3. The ability to emit all the words in that vocabulary via the coordinated contraction of the muscles of articulation.

In the brain, we know that all of this involves the sophisticated and mind-blowingly complex communication amongst billions of neurons distributed across multiple, dynamic neural networks.

Generally, these networks can be represented as follows:

If we wish to create similar neural machinery inside our noggins – machinery that will ultimate support musical fluency — then we’d be wise to pay attention to how these networks are built.

How then do you build a really big vocabulary of words?

By reading, and by listening to others whom you think are good communicators. Much of this happens just by living around other fluent humans.

How do you build a big vocabulary of musical ideas?

Once again, by listening A LOT, especially to the people whose music you enjoy most.

How do you learn the rules of language?

Again, much to your grammar teacher’s dismay, you also did this by listening. You listened, and the master pattern recognizer/decoder inside your skull figured it all out.

Likewise, here again, through copious listening, you’ve already developed a sophisticated grasp of the rules of language, or music theory (regardless of whether you’re consciously aware of or can formally articulate it). In some cases, formal study can enhance that understanding further, expanding the scope of what you can express on your instrument (just as knowing the rules of grammar can, in some cases, make you a better writer)

How do you learn to emit the sounds of language through the muscles of articulation?

By practicing, in logical sequence, the articulation of the sounds of language, beginning with the most basic and simple to produce phonemes (the aahs and oohs of those first cooing sounds of a 3 month old) and moving to ones of increasing complexity, followed by syllables, words, and phrases.

How do you learn to connect music in the mind to movement of the limbs?

Here we have the meat of the learning process for music, the stuff we do when we say we’re “practicing,” and, not coincidentally, largely the focus of this particular series on the Art and Science of practice. And this corresponds to the third network in the summary table below:

A mature network of this nature, the kind that can support the type of fluency described earlier, is one that can map musical ideas onto the motor networks that then send the appropriate output to the muscles of the arms — output that produces the coordinated contractions that result in those musical ideas coming out through the banjo.

Brainjo Law #13 : Musical fluency and improvisation is predicated on the ability to map musical ideas (and the neural networks that represent them) onto motor programs.

Musical, and improvisational, fluency ultimately requires two primary components:

1. The ability to conjure pleasing musical ideas in ones mind.

2. The ability to realize those ideas in realtime on the instrument.

So if developing the neural networks that support fluency primarily involves copious listening and the development of instrument-specific motor skill of increasing complexity, is there still a role in all of this for written music in the learning process?

Find out in Episode 12: Is It Safe To Use Tab?

Back to the “Laws of Brainjo” Table of Contents

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

View the Brainjo Course Catalog

Clawhammer Tune and Tab of the Week: “Sailor’s Hornpipe”

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.

The banjo world has lost another of its heroes.

On Friday, October 23rd, 3 finger playing legend Bill Keith lost his battle to cancer.

To those who are unfamiliar, Bill Keith was an icon in the world of bluegrass banjo. A former member of Bill Monroe’s genre-defining “Bluegrass Boys” (here’s a nice piece from the NY Times).

He’s also considered the father of the “melodic” style of 3-finger banjo playing (also known as “Keith” style), and his playing has surely inspired and influenced countless pickers.

Myself included.

Years ago while still in early throes of bluegrass (aka “Scruggs style”) banjo learning, I spent a good bit of time listening to Bill Keith, trying to figure out how he navigated around the fretboard to create such wonderful music.

Scruggs style banjo is characterized by the continuous rolling sound of the 3 fingers. Much like the up and down motion of the clawhammer stroke, maintaining that alternating pattern with the 3 fingers is pivotal to creating the driving pulse that is perhaps the single most defining feature of the bluegrass sound.

And, also like with clawhammer banjo, trying to play all the notes of a fiddle tune while maintaining that drive presents a challenge. Prior to Keith, most bluegrass players — Earl Scruggs included — would simply leave those notes out, and leave their playing to the other instruments

Not Bill. By applying his sharp analytical mind and creativity to the challenge, he figured out ways to play all those notes without sacrificing the rolls, and in so doing gave birth to what would become known as “melodic” style of 3-finger banjo.

This week’s tune, Sailor’s Hornpipe, is recognized by most as the theme song to the “Popeye the Sailorman” cartoons. And given my own voracious appetite for Popeye cartoons at a young age, it’s quite possible that this was the first “fiddle tune” I could sing from start to finish.

So when I first heard Keith’s rendition years ago, it was an ideal vehicle through which I could fully appreciate his special way of adapting fiddle tunes to the banjo. And I was hooked.

He was appealing to a banjo aesthetic I didn’t even realize I possessed, and may have even helped to shape it.

The arrangement I play here is most certainly “melodic” in its approach, as I’ve tried to capture as many of the melody notes from the tune as possible.

But the 2nd measure in particular contains a special nod to Bill. The measure opens with a B, played on the open 2nd string.

The next note needed is the D, which is higher in pitch than the preceding note. The natural inclination here would be grab that note on the 3rd fret of the 2nd string, or the open 1st string. Like this:

The fretboard logic we’ve internalized tells us that notes higher in pitch will either be found by going up the neck or to an adjacent string tuned to a higher pitch (one reason why the high pitched 5th string gives those with prior stringed instrument experience such fits).

But, if you’re desire is to keep the thumb, middle, and index fingers rolling (i.e. no finger plays two notes in a row), then there are times it makes sense to play that higher note on a string that’s tuned to a LOWER pitch. In this case, we get that D note on the 3rd string at the 7th fret. Like this:

If you’re not used to doing such things, then you’re liable to feel some unsettling dissonance the first few times you try it, and your instincts will dutifully strike out in protest the first several times (and you may have to loop through this phrase a few times).

Yet, it’s a perfect solution to this type of problem, one that’s common to both the fingerstyle and clawhammer player who wishes to faithfully render notier tunes on the banjo. Picking patterns like this are found all throughout Keith’s playing, and are essential components in any melodic player’s library of licks.

For me, it’s these type of stylistic idiosyncracies that make the banjo such a cool instrument.

So this week’s tune and its arrangement (and the flat hat) is for Bill Keith, gone but most certainly not forgotten.

Sailor’s Hornpipe

gDGBD tuning, Brainjo level 3-4

For more on reading tabs in general, check out this complete guide to reading banjo tabs.

A Breakthrough Banjo Update: The Learn To Play Clawhammer By Ear course is now available as a free bonus when signing up for Breakthrough Banjo. Learn more about it here.

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

View the Brainjo Course Catalog

Clawhammer Tune and Tab of the Week: “Ashokan Farewell”

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.

Back in 1982, after his old time Ashokan Fiddle and dance Camp in the Catskill Mountains had just wrapped up, fiddler Jay Ungar decided to play something on his fiddle to capture the emotions he was feeling. As he describes it:

I was feeling a great sense of loss and longing for the music, the dancing and the community of people that had developed at Ashokan that summer. I was having trouble making the transition from a secluded woodland camp with a small group of people who needed little excuse to celebrate the joy of living, back to life as usual, with traffic, newscasts, telephones and impersonal relationships.

I know this feeling very well.

The tune he wrote that day would later be named Ashokan Farewell.

Little could he have known that, with such humble beginnings, this tune would later become the focal musical piece in the most watched PBS series of all time: The Civil War, by Ken Burns. Ultimately, this tune, and this series, would become inextricably and forever linked (so much so that most folks think this to be a Civil War era tune).

Little could he have known that the tune would soon be recognized throughout the world, that it would go on to inspire countless “cover” versions.

Little could he have known that it would become the most popular “fiddle tune” of its time, arguably of all time.

But that’s just what happened in this unlikely story of a tune about an old-time music camp.

Ashokan Farewell

aDADE tuning, Brainjo level 3-4

Notes on the arrangement: The original version of this tune has a lot of open space, which with clawhammer banjo we create largely by using skip notes. So you’ll find plenty of these sprinkled throughout. These are indicated by the notes in parentheses in the tab (for a detailed video all about skip notes and their many uses, go here).

Whether or not you choose to play or skip those notes is your own aesthetic decision. In my first run through of the tune in the video, I skipped them all. In the second run through, I put some of them back in, and I think you’ll notice there the sound is more distinctively that of clawhammer banjo.

All in all, it’s nice to have options.

For more on reading tabs in general, check out this complete guide to reading banjo tabs.

A Breakthrough Banjo Update: The Learn To Play Clawhammer By Ear course is now available as a free bonus when signing up for Breakthrough Banjo. Learn more about it here.

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