San Antonio, Easter, Fretboard Journal and more…

I hope everyone had a great Easter…I know my 3 year old did.

I was in San Antonio for a good portion of last week on business. I took my Weber mandolin and got in some good playing time, including an impromptu concert for a maintenance worker. Mr. Valderron came into my room to fix my internet connection and saw the mandolin….well, he thought it was a fiddle at first. He was so besides himself at the beauty and exoticness of the instrument that I couldn’t help but play some chords and an Arkansas Traveler for him. He really appreciated the effort, and admitted that he had always wanted to learn to play an instrument. He then went into a very detailed and gruesome account of how he couldn’t play an instrument because he had severed both of his hands in a saw mill accident when he was a lad. I put the mandolin into his hands, the strap around his shoulder and let him hold it. I gave him the pick and encouraged him to strum the instrument. You could just see the dreams and longing going through his head. The experience reminded me of how blessed I am to play an instrument (or at least lug one around everywhere pretending to play). It was also one of those random memories that makes life on the road fun and interesting.

In the airport I picked up a copy of Fretboard Journal. This is a great magazine. If I had the spare change then I would definitely subscribe. I went over to the website to check out them out, and apparently they have a pretty cool blog. They are going on my blogroll.

Otherwise, I had a great jam session with my dad on Sunday. We plugged in and played some jazz really loud. The police never showed up, so I guess the nieboors weren’t that annoyed. Hopefully I will get some good practice sessions in this week.

Filed under: Music & Mandolin Meditations, My Journal, Traveling Man , blessings, Blogroll, travel log

Jesse Cobb Mandolin Workshop 03-08-08

Here is the workshop…I had to split it into two parts.

Jesse Cobb Mandolin Workshop Part 1

Jesse Cobb Mandolin Workshop Part 2

Filed under: My Journal

Ron Clegg’s Blog

I stumbled across a cool blog the other day: http://ronclegg.wordpress.com/

Mr. Clegg is a pretty darn talented guitar player. He posts audio and video clips of musicians that he finds across the web. His last post has a great video of Tony Rice playing guitar. Ron also has some recordings of himself playing….I especially like his rendition of Timeless.

In fact, Ron has inspired me to listen to some Tony Rice Unit on the drive home from work today. I think I have a 1985 TRU show on the old hard drive.  I will have to follow that up with some Herbie Hancock when I get home.  Thanks Ron!

Tony Rice Unit – 2/15/85 (Jimmy Gaudreau, Wyatt Rice, Todd Phillips)
The Birchmere – Alexandria, VA

-disc one-
01 introduction
02 Cold on the Shoulder
03 Nine Pound Hammer
04 The Gold Rush
05 Ginseng Sullivan
06 Song for Life
07 band intros
08 Hold Watcha Got
09 Farewell Blues
10 More Pretty Girls Than One
11 Blackberry Blossom
12 Devlin
13 My Favorite Things
14 Midnight on the Stormy Deep
-disc two-
01 Wayfaring Stranger

02 set break
03 Little Sadie
04 Home from the Forest
-intro of Steve Thomas-
05 Jerusalem Ridge
06 John Hardy
07 Don’t Give Your Heart to a Rambler
-Rice solo-
08 Church Street Blues
09 Georgia On My Mind

soundboard source
unknown lineage
CDR > EAC > SHN by K. Asplundh May 2003

Filed under: My Journal , Blogroll, Tony Rice Unit

Question for the readers…

Has anyone been able to successfully listen to the Jesse Cobb workshop? It doesn’t seem to be working on my computer, and I am about to send an email to wordpress…

Jesse Cobb Mandolin Workshop 03-08-08

Filed under: My Journal

Argyle 2008 Mandolin Workshops

Here are the mandolin workshops of Ronnie McCoury and Jesse Cobb (of the Infamous Stringdusters) from the 2008 Argyle Bluegrass Festival.

I really appreciate Ronnie and Jesse for letting me record the workshops. I think it is a wonderful thing that they took the time to give the workshops, and both of them did a very good job.

There are a couple of interesting notes to these workshops. First is the contrast in philosophy between these two musicians. They have almost opposite opinions on everything from holding the pick, how to practice, the usefulness of TAB, and more.

In Ronnie’s workshop, he goes into great detail about how he came to his Lloyd Loar mandolin. He talks about what makes the Loar sound special, how he improvises onstage, and what make the McCoury band’s sound different. Ronnie also talks about Monroe’s playing style and picks some cool tunes on his Loar.

Jesse Cobb gave a great workshop also. Jesse talks about different chord voicings and rhythms that he likes to use. Jesse also dropped a hot opinion about the chop style of many modern bluegrass mandolin players. He talks about his struggles in Nashville and how he keeps loose on stage.

Jesse Cobb Mandolin Workshop Part 1

Jesse Cobb Mandolin Workshop Part 2

Ronnie McCoury Mandolin Workshop 03/08/08

Filed under: Music & Mandolin Meditations, My Journal, Show Notes & Song References, Show Reviews , field recording, mandolin, workshop

Archived Twitter Reports from Argyle

The live updates I tried out this weekend was a success. It was fun for me and a lot of people seemed to following them. This blog got over 300 hits that Friday and Saturday – an all time record. No one cared to comment, but hopefully I netted some new readers who may comment in the future. It was pretty easy for me to make the updates, although I didn’t use jott as much as I thought I would. My phone has a full qwerty keyboard, so it was just as easy to update that way.

A full report and thoughts on the festival will be coming shortly.

	festival closed at 12AM and a large group went to a local hotel…we picked in the lobby until 2AM…played some Cajun music…it was great 3:35 AM March 09, 2008 Went to pick straight after the show…got to play Old Crossroads.. 11:26 PM March 08, 2008 Del is rocking my face…playing a great King’s Shilling 10:20 PM March 08, 2008 Del smiled at me…he is such a goof. 10:03 PM March 08, 2008 Playing blackjack county…orignally recorded by willie nelson…I love this song…”a black snake whip…if any fool complained”.. 09:57 PM March 08, 2008 Del has bags under his eyes, but his voice sounds good and he is putting on a great show…they just played Vincent…no hippies dancing … … 09:38 PM March 08, 2008 There are hippies present for Del. 09:02 PM March 08, 2008 Time for the main event! 09:02 PM March 08, 2008 Watching Cherryholmes…they were rocking but now have gotten all sentimental…I might just go jam for a bit 07:53 PM March 08, 2008 Ronnie was great now time to go jam untl his Dad comes on… 07:30 PM March 08, 2008 The Lloyd Loar’s sound is ENORMOUS!! 06:27 PM March 08, 2008 Ronnie telling how he came to his Lloyd Loar…now playing it and it is very special… 06:21 PM March 08, 2008 I think that I have to choose Ronnie. 05:53 PM March 08, 2008 Have to choose between Ronnie McCoury workshop and Blue Highway…tough choice… 05:52 PM March 08, 2008 Sucked down brisket sandwhich dinner…then went to jam…got to jam with Willie a little and she played a great number in F… 05:47 PM March 08, 2008 I have snuck up to an empty seat in the front row….crowd applause for Starry Night…. 03:55 PM March 08, 2008 they just played a j.cobb instrumental that was phenomenal….I need to ask him the name of the song after the set…. 03:51 PM March 08, 2008 Watching the stringduster set…they are playing some really great stuff off an upcoming album… 03:50 PM March 08, 2008 Front and center with J. Cobb…he is playing a brand new collings mf sent gratis from the factory… 01:27 PM March 08, 2008 Next stop = mandolin workshop with Jesse Cobb of the Stringdusters… 11:49 AM March 08, 2008 Good news…heading out to Argyle and should be undisturbed for the remainder of the day… 11:48 AM March 08, 2008
	wow…my back is completely sore from moving chairs yesterday… 11:48 AM March 08, 2008
	SNAFU = baby and wife are sick…I had to return home w/o seeing ANY bands…tomorrow is in jeopardy also…we’ll see how it goes… 09:32 PM March 07, 2008
	The festival has begun!…I just got through jamming with a guy on a wonderful michael lewis mandolin… 03:59 PM March 07, 2008
	My friend the Colonel has arrived. 01:07 PM March 07, 2008
	Time for lunch….btw, the Argyle police report is hilarious… 12:27 PM March 07, 2008
	They’ve got me working up a sweat…but moving chairs is better than shoveling snow (or is it?)… 11:36 AM March 07, 2008
	Arrived @ Argyle…they are still settin up so I volunteered to help out…moving chairs in the auditorium. 11:15 AM March 07, 2008
	A beautiful drive out to Argyle with snow covered Texas Hills. 10:48 AM March 07, 2008
	Packing everything up to head out…Argyle got 8 inches of snow last night!…don’t forget the tickets! 09:35 AM March 07, 2008
	played some country blues tonight – no mandolin…it was a nice break 08:47 PM March 06, 2008
	Getting ready for Argyle…hopefully one more practice session tonight. 03:32 PM March 06, 2008

Filed under: Jam Reflections, My Journal , bluegrass festival, twitter

Argyle Festival

Well, Argyle is finally here, and I am super pumped.

I am going to be trying something a little new this weekend. I have set up an RSS feed on my blog to show up-to-the minute updates from the Argyle, TX bluegrass festival. I will be updating with show reviews, setlists, jam happenings and anything interesting that I come across. You can see the update feed just to the right.

I will be using a program called jott (check out jott.com) to do this. It will be very easy because I simply call a number on my cell, speak the update, and jott transcribes it and posts it to the blog. The RSS feed has a bit of a delay in posting. So, if you really want to see the updates real time then just click on the title to the right and it will take you directly to the twitter website and feed.

It should be fun, at least for me. I know everybody has much more important things to do than sit around waiting for updates on a bluegrass festival in Texas, but whatever.

I will have email access at the festival, and can check blog comments, so please feel free to shoot me a line, or a song request, or to say hello to someone, or anything else!

Filed under: My Journal

Breakneck Bluegrass Bootcamp Day #5

Got to fit in another 9PM session last night.

Here is what I did:

Exercise 4.1; 4.2; 4.3

• @ 100 bpm x 1 – perfect
• @ 120 bpm x 1 – perfect
• @ 144 bpm x 1 – perfecto
• @ 160 bpm x 1 -perfect
• Ark Trav @ 160 x 2 -very good
• @ 176 bpm x1 -great
• Ark Trav @ 176 – hung in there

4.4; 4.5

• @100 bpm x 1
• Ark Trav @ 100
• @120 bpm x 1 – distracted
• Ark Trav @ 120
• @ 144 bpm x 2 – got it worked out
• @ 160 bpm -too fast…fingers got knoted up

Finished up playing with Steve Kaufman one time slow and one time fast.

I tossed in the Arkansas Traveler breaks in between exercises. I was very happy that I was able to play it at 176bpm. When I played with the fast version of Steve Kaufman I could definitely notice an improvement. Like I have noticed in the past, things just kind of start slowing down in a Matrix kind of way. I must be doing something right.

Filed under: My Journal, Practice Session Notes , metronome workout

Breakneck Bluegrass Bootcamp Day #4

I am coming to find out that 9pm is my money practice time. All the kids are in bed and I still have a little energy left. Even the wife is in bed. I have been testing the volume limits in the dining room and so far I haven’t woken anyone up.

I changed strings again this weekend. I took off the Sam Bush strings and put J75’s back on. The chop is back.

Exercise 4.1, 4.2, 4.3

• @ 100 bpm x 1
• @ 120 bpm x 1
• @ 144 bpm x 1 – great control
• @ 160 bpm x 1 – good
• @ 176 bpm x 1 – no sweat
• @ 192 bpm x 1 – not perfect

Exercise 4.4 & 4.5

• @ 100 bpm x 2 – clean and fun
• @ 120 bpm x 2 – a challenge
• @ 100 bpm x 2 – milking it
• @ 120 bpm x 2 – pwned it
• @ 144 bpm x 2 – a challenge but i kept up

Next I played along with the Steve Kaufman recording of Arkansas Traveler. Through the slow version I played perfectly. Through the fast version I had definitely improved, but I am not anywhere near keeping up yet.

I think that my problem with the fast version is not so much a matter of speed per se, but a matter of technique. I am simply not used to playing the down up stroked quickly and fluidly. The right hand moves the pick, and the brain has intention, but the left hand is not connected in time with right hand. The fingers aren’t used to moving with the very quick down-up rhythm of the right hand.

I am thinking that to train this I need to be playing more scales, rather than chord rooted arpeggios….we’ll see.

After this meditation I went through the fast version of Arkansas Traveler again, this time really concentrating on keeping the left hand fingers and right hand pick in unison. It was better.

Next I took a break to watch The Daily Show as I had been playing for 1 hour.

Afterwards I went back to practicing. I decided to go through some of my favorite songs and not worry so much about the tab and the correct notes, but instead to just pick on it like I would in a jam.

I played Blackberry Blossom, Cherokee and Cripple Creek. It was really fun and I think I sounded pretty good. I finished off the night by jamming on Evening Prayer Blues. I played it really loud and didn’t even wake anyone up!

Filed under: Music & Mandolin Meditations, My Journal, Practice Session Notes , metronome workout, new strings, speed

Breakneck Bluegrass Bootcamp Day #3

Sunday afternoon I was able to sneak a cigar and some practice time in my back yard. Here is what I did:

Exercise 4.1, 4.2, 4.3

• @ 80 bpm x 1
• @ 100 bpm x 1
• @ 120 bpm x 1
• @ 144 bpm x 1
• @ 160 bpm x 2
• @ 176 bpm x 1
• @ 192 bpm x 2 – very good

Exercises 4.4 & 4.5

• @100 x 1

Started raining and I had to move inside. I was only halfway through my cigar.

• @ 120 bpm x 3 – challenging
• @ 138 bpm x 3 – kept up
• @ 120 bpm x 3 – playing with intention
• @ 138 bpm x 2 – not good; practicing bad habits

Exercises 4.6 & 4.7

• @ 80 bpm x 3
• @ 100 bpm x 3
• @ 120 bpm x2 – too fast/distracted

Filed under: My Journal, Practice Session Notes