A mandolin student once asked me to show him the correct tune for the Arkansas Traveler. He didn’t want a version or variation as played by a particular musician or from any particular recording, just “What is the correct tune?” I had to say I didn’t know, there wasn’t really a single ‘correct’ melody, it was more a matter of musical themes and patterns of notes which could be changed and adapted. An analogy from the world of computers would be the variety and continual evolution of the Linux operating system.
People starting to play bluegrass music often think of it as a matter of playing the correct notes, as they may have done at school when learning to play classical music by following the dots on a page of sheet music. This perception of how to learn bluegrass is reinforced by the prevalence of tablature which is now widely used to show students where to get the notes. Or to be pedantic, where they can get notes. Sometimes the student fingers a ‘wrong’ note. Ouch! Well, usually, but sometimes the unintended note sounds great. An enterprising student will start experimenting, using his/her ear as guidance for what is musical, and in the process escaping from the tyranny of tab. In short the student is now a musician. Welcome to the world of infinite musical possibilities!
One of the challenges which has kept me playing bluegrass music over the years has been the need to create breaks for songs that are new to me. When you are in a hurry you can often adapt and modify familiar licks to new situations. This kind of recycling is common in bluegrass, as in jazz and many other forms of popular music. Think of the recycled lick as a base from which to experiment with variations, and use your ear as the final arbiter of what sounds good.
The first song Bill Monroe recorded with his new lineup of the Blue Grass Boys on 16th September 1946 was Heavy Traffic Ahead. This was a swingy 12-bar blues in the key of A, in which Earl Scruggs pulled out some appropriately bluesy licks for his banjo break. In the same recording session he used a very similar banjo break, this time in the key of C, when Monroe sang Jimmie Rodgers Blue Yodel #3 (mistakenly labelled #4). Earl recycled these licks in the key of G when Flatt and Scruggs recorded Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’ in 1951, and in 1954 the whole kit and kaboodle was reincarnated as an instrumental which they recorded as Foggy Mountain Special, also in G. The recording included breaks by all the instruments in the band: banjo, fiddle, bass, guitar, mandolin and dobro.
A ‘new’ instrumental often has a predecessor. Modify Bill Monroe’s ‘Blue Grass Breakdown’ by using an E minor chord in place of the F and you have ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’. And where would the bluegrass world be without those countless old-time fiddle tunes that have been taken up by the bands and made hotter, fancier and more exciting as a result?
Happy improvising – and happy Christmas!
John Baldry December 2019
